School standards

The drive to establish more rigorous educational standards to raise student achievement levels took a step forward with a proposal from nearly all the states to establish uniform English and math guidelines.

Every state except Texas and Alaska has endorsed the proposal for uniform standards to replace the patchwork of state-by-state standards. The public will have until April 2 to comment on the proposed standards plan developed under the leadership of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

According to Associated Press reports, leaders of the move expect the new standards "to raise expectations of student achievement in some states and be in line with educational experiences of top-performing states and countries."

Adopting the standards will be voluntary since the states have responsibility over their educational systems, which is the reason cited by Texas for not going along with them.

"Texas has chosen to preserve its sovereign authority to determine what is appropriate for Texas children to learn in its public schools," Robert Scott, state commissioner of education, wrote in a letter to U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

States, though, have been under pressure to raise educational standards, particularly after passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which has set goals for improving student performance to be eligible for federal funding.

The lure of federal funding has also motivated states. The federal government is offering $350 million to help develop new national tests in states that adopt the national standards.

While states report meeting their individual standards, those standards have been criticized as too low. The national standard is expected to be more rigorous. "These standards are as high as the highest standards that any state has," said William McCallum, chairman of the math standards committee.

As though to emphasize the need for higher standards, testimony before the Senate Education Committee on Tuesday pointed to the low-achieving levels of U.S. students in comparison to other countries.

Andreas Schleicher, a senior education official at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said many other countries are exceeding the United States in student achievement. Graduation rates are also higher in all but four of the 30 OECD member countries.

Canadian 15-year-old students are on average one school year ahead American students of the same age, he said.

Student achievement is affected by many factors beyond the school. However, raising expectations is central to improving student performance.