Thomas B. Fordham Institute - Advancing Educational Excellence

The State of State Standards 2006

August 29, 2006

by Chester E. Finn, Jr., Michael J. Petrilli, Liam Julian

* notes that states have updated these standards since our last review.

Two-thirds of schoolchildren in America attend class in states with mediocre (or worse) expectations for what their students should learn. That's just one of the findings of Fordham's The State of State Standards 2006, which evaluates state academic standards. The average state grade is a "C-minus"--the same as six years earlier, even though most states revised their standards since 2000.

Does this make the case for national standards? See our other new report, To Dream the Impossible Dream: Four Approaches to National Standards and Tests, to find out.

Read Chester E. Finn, Jr.'s August 31, 2006, testimony before the No Child Left Behind Commission on this topic.

Read the media release for both reports.

Contents

The State of State Standards 2006--Introduction

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A Little History

Standards-based reform is by far the biggest deal in American K-12 education today and has been at least since the nation's governors met with President George H. W. Bush in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1989 to set national education goals.    

Its underpinnings go back farther, however, to the famed Coleman Report in 1966 and A Nation at Risk in 1983.

Coleman said, in effect, that there's no predictable relationship between what goes into a school by way of resources and what comes out by way of student learning. He said plenty more, to be sure, but this one insight was an ancestor of standards-based reform because it suggested that, if you're not satisfied with a school's (or group of students') results, you cannot count on rectifying matters by fiddling with school inputs, processes, and services alone. Few wanted to hear this at the time-after all, Lyndon Johnson had just signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) into law a year earlier-but it has turned out both to be essentially true and to reshape how America thinks about education reform.      

The urgency of reform was made plain 17 years later by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, which forcefully and eloquently declared that U.S. school kids weren't learning enough and U.S. schools weren't effective enough.

In other words: America had an acute achievement problem but couldn't count on solving it by tinkering with school inputs. Voila! Standards-based reform was born: a strategy that starts by setting forth plainly and clearly what results schools should produce and what skills and knowledge students should acquire as they pass through school, then works across multiple fronts to attain those standards, measure progress all the time, and "incentivize" schools, educators, and kids to improve their performance.

At almost the same moment, a cadre of governors, mainly in the South, was figuring out that their states' prospects for economic prosperity hinged in large part on producing a better educated population. ("Better schools mean better jobs for Tennesseans," Governor Lamar Alexander said about ten thousand times, and his colleagues were saying essentially the same thing.)

One state after another began to set academic standards for its schools and students. Whereas earlier statewide standards had typically been expressed in terms of high school course-taking requirements, time spent, and similar measures, now they began to be stated as skills and knowledge. Sometimes they were called "standards," sometimes "frameworks," sometimes "curriculum guides." (California published its first frameworks for mathematics and science in the 1970s.)

When the President and governors met in Charlottesville in 1989, they went further. They set national education goals for the year 2000 including this crucial one: "American students will leave grades 4, 8, and 12 having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter including English, mathematics, science, history, and geography."

This was a cogent statement of the outcome that schools needed to produce: kids who could demonstrate "competency" in "challenging subject matter" in five key subjects. But who was to say what constitutes such subject matter and what is "competency"?

The short answer: individual states needed, and still need, to promulgate explicit academic standards. There was, to be sure, an abortive effort by the first Bush administration to develop "voluntary national standards," but most of those turned out to be dreadful. They pretty much vanished ignominiously from the national scene, but it turns out they have had considerable lasting and mischievous influence on the standards of individual states. In other words, this bout of national standard-setting ended up doing more harm than good. 

The next big steps in this evolution came in 1994 when Congress passed the Goals 2000 Act and the Improving America's Schools Act, which in combination put considerable federal oomph and money behind standards-based reform.

This accelerated state-level efforts to set their own standards, and, by 1996, enough had been done so that it occurred to us at the (then brand-new) Thomas B. Fordham Foundation to see how good they were. So we asked reading expert Sandra Stotsky to review available state standards in English/language arts, and, in 1997, we published her ratings for 28 states as the first-ever Fordham report.

It wasn't a pretty picture. Only five states emerged with reasonably high marks; Stotsky deemed most of the others "immeasurable," found their early reading expectations sorely lacking, and noted their unwillingness to identify particular literary works (or even genres) that students should master. We then moved on to the other four subjects enumerated in the national goals and by 1998 had completed appraisals of all of them. That year we published a summary evaluation of "the state of state standards" across subjects.

As we noted at the time, the news was not good. Across all subjects, the national average was a pathetic "D-plus." While each discipline boasted some wondrous exceptions, most of the standards fell into common traps: they were vague, eschewed knowledge in favor of skills, focused too much on "relevance" instead of rigor, and overstepped the bounds separating standards (the results to be achieved) and curriculum (the means to achieving those ends).

Nor were we alone in reaching this glum conclusion. The American Federation of Teachers had also started reviewing standards and found most to lack the detail and clarity that would make them useful to classroom teachers. The (now defunct) Council for Basic Education came to much the same conclusion in its own examination.

We did another update in 2000, and found modest progress. The national average rose to a C-minus and, as many more states completed and published standards, the numbers earning As or Bs rose across all subjects. More states seemed to be hearing the message that, to be useful, their standards had to be specific. And content didn't seem like such a dirty word any more. Still, the majority of states had mediocre standards or worse.

What's Happened Since

We supposed that states would respond constructively to criticisms of their standards, correct their shortcomings, and strive for excellence. We further supposed that the added stakes of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act would cause state leaders to ask themselves, "are our standards up to the task at hand?"

So we supposed. But we also honor the arms-control mantra: Trust but verify. Beginning in 2003 (and culminating this spring) we set out again to see whether such improvement had in fact occurred, whether state academic standards in the NCLB era are significantly better than in 2000. Whenever possible--which was not always--we used the same reviewers and the same or very similar criteria.

The modest good news is that most states have indeed revised or replaced their standards in many subjects. Thirty-seven states have updated at least one subject's standards since 2000, and 27 have revised all of their standards.

The much more significant bad news, however, is that taken as a whole, state academic standards are no better in 2006 than they were six years earlier. And far too many of them are completely unsatisfactory.

The average grade that states earned from Fordham's standards raters is still C-minus, the same as in 2000. And two-thirds of U.S. kids still attend school in states with academic standards in the C, D, and F range.

Yes, there's been much volatility. Some states--Indiana, New York, Georgia, New Mexico--significantly improved their grades. But plenty of others made their standards worse. The big backsliders include Utah, Nebraska, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin.

Looking at individual subjects, our reviewers found math standards generally getting worse, while English/ language arts got better. (Science and U.S. history stayed about the same.) One hopes that the improvement in English has something to do with the National Reading Panel's report regarding early reading instruction plus NCLB's pressure on states to adopt "scientifically-based" programs--and extra Reading First dollars for those that do.

Only a select group of states do a good job across all four subjects. (Fordham did not evaluate geography standards again. We did, however, look at world history as well as U.S. history, and found that replacing geography with world history did not impact the overall grades significantly.)

But a great many states did a bad job across the spectrum. On the dishonor roll are 25 low-scoring states among which none received a single A in any subject and just five earned even one B grade.

Why trust our judgment? To be sure, the trend toward greater specificity in state standards--first spotted in 2000--has continued. As a result, the AFT, which has continued to review state standards, spots greater improvement than we do, since specificity is the value which that organization's reviewers seem to be most concerned. But the major distinction between the Fordham reviews and AFT reviews has always been around content: we examine whether states have identified a suitable body of knowledge and skills for students to master, and at the right level. Our criteria (available in each of the subject-specific reports on our website, www.edexcellence.net) make clear our values and priorities. For instance, science standards that don't tackle evolution or history standards without a chronology, don't make the grade by our reviewers' lights. Skeptical readers, then, should examine our criteria to determine whether they agree with our biases and judgment.

The Problem with State Standards

What exactly do we mean by bad standards? Much the same as we meant six years earlier. Too many states still produce vague platitudes instead of clear expectations. Knowledge is still subordinated to skills. Trendy educational fads like "multiple intelligences" and "constructivism" still sneak into state documents. And kitchen-sinkism is alive and well, as states refuse to make choices and instead develop encyclopedic standards that no teacher could possibly cover in the course of a year.

How and why does this happen? The interested reader might first turn to Joanne Jacobs's splendid essay, beginning on page 19, explaining what led to outstanding standards in three high-flying states. Bad standards are very nearly good standards' evil twin.

States fall short for four main reasons:

  1. Consensus Instead of Vision. Many state standards bear the hallmark of having been "created by committee." This leads to kitchen-sinkism as well as shoddy writing, convoluted organization, and educational confusion.

     

  2. The Absence of Real Expertise. At the very least, university-level subject matter experts (mathematicians, historians, etc.) could help states minimize factual errors. A better strategy is to include such experts fully in the development of the standards themselves. After all, they understand their own disciplines better than anyone. (We're not talking about professors of "math education." We're talking about real mathematicians.)Yet the ethos of many states has clearly been that only K-12 educators can develop K-12 standards. The results are not pretty.

     

  3. The Unfortunate Influence of 1990s-era National Standards. The standards developed by professional associations such as the National Council of Teachers of English and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics continue to create havoc, as states embrace their faulty fads and anti-knowledge orientation.

     

  4. Rampant Exceptionalism. Alternatively, too many states continue to pretend that standards must be developed within their borders in order to be legitimate. As a result, they refuse to build on the excellent standards developed by pacesetting states such as California, Indiana, and Massachusetts.

Why Good Standards Matter

We've argued for a decade that solid standards are the foundation upon which modern education reform rests. They aren't sufficient for success but they are necessary if a state wants to create strong incentives linked to test score results that are based on the standards. The three-legged stool of standards, tests, and accountability must be sturdy lest the entire enterprise tip over.

Good standards matter today even more than yesterday because the No Child Left Behind Act has placed a heavier burden on them and serious consequences now befall schools (and districts) that do not make suitable progress toward their states' standards in reading and math. (Science will soon be tested, though it won't count.)

It's well known that solid standards alone do not produce increases in student achievement and that, even when all three legs of the tripod are sturdy, other factors come into play. Yet standards are the template by which many of those other factors get shaped--or should. Teacher preparation, credentialing, and in-service education, for example, should be keyed to the state's academic expectations for its students. So should curriculum development and textbook selection. Indeed, to be legitimate the state's own tests must be "aligned" with the standards they are supposed to track. (And the AFT recently found that even most test "specifications" are not aligned with the standards.)

It's also well known that good education can occur in places with lousy state standards--provided that a district, school, or teacher does it right. We do not claim and have never claimed that bad standards are always fatal or that good ones are foolproof.

Still, the quality of a state's standards matters hugely, much like the quality of a cook's recipe or an architect's blueprint. They describe the desired result. If the walls shown in a blueprint don't meet at the proper angle or the electrical wiring diagram is messed up, the builder will have a heckuva task to produce the sort of structure the client expects. So with statewide academic standards.

Do Good Standards Improve Student Achievement?

For almost 10 years, critics of our reviews have complained that our grades bear no relationship to states' performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Therefore, some argue, strong state standards obviously don't matter when it comes to improving student achievement--and weak standards can go on unstrengthened.

This criticism is partly right. There is no simple relationship between Fordham's grades on state academic standards (in this case for English/language arts) and the percentage of a state's students who are proficient in reading (in this case, fourth graders).

But this is no surprise. It's well known that state NAEP scores are tied most directly to the state's demographics. One could fairly say that the goal of standards-based reform in general, and NCLB in particular, is to break that link. Hence what matters is whether any reform, including the adoption of rigorous standards, leads to progress over time.

Viewed through that lens, the picture looks more promising. From 1998 to 2005, only seven states made statistically significant progress in the percentage of their students reaching proficiency in fourth-grade reading, and just six states made such progress for their poor or minority students. All of these states except for one received at least a "C" from Fordham for their English/Language Arts standards. That's not iron-clad proof that good standards boost achievement, but it seems to indicate that really bad standards make it much less likely. Still, lots of states received a "C" or higher from us but did not make progress on NAEP. So having decent standards could be considered "necessary but not sufficient."

There also seems to be a relationship between good science standards and improvement on the science NAEP. Five states made statistically significant gains between 2000 and 2005 at both the fourth- and eighth-grade levels: California, Hawaii, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Virginia. Three of these (California, Virginia, and South Carolina) have among the best sets of science standards in the nation. Kentucky has weak science standards but is among only a handful of states that holds its schools accountable for achievement in science, which might explain its improvement. (We can't explain Hawaii, with F-rated standards and no accountability for science.)

What about math? Here there is only a minor relationship between Fordham's grades and state NAEP gains: four of the six states receiving "honors" grades from our reviewers made progress, either for the whole state or for poor or minority students, but so did many other states. In fact, 23 states made statistically significant gains between 2000 and 2005 in the percentage of their eighth-graders, or their low-income or minority eighth-graders, reaching the proficient level.

Why are good math standards not essential for improvement on the math NAEP? We have a suspicion:  NAEP itself has been substantially aligned with the standards promulgated by the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics, as have most state math standards. As everyone rows in the same direction, NAEP scores rise. Unfortunately, according to our reviewers, that's the wrong direction, one that moves America away from the kind of solid mathematics practiced around the world.

Still, at least for reading and science, setting solid standards appears to give states a boost when it comes to improving performance on NAEP. Good standards matter, after all.

Is There Hope for State Standards?

Robust state standards trump faulty ones when it comes to setting a good foundation for systemic education reform. And yet, over the past six years, state standards on the whole remain problematic. It's not because the states have not been idle in this domain.  As noted above, almost four-fifths of them have updated at least one subject's standards, in most cases without producing stronger documents. Waiting another six years for the states to get it right seems unlikely to change the outcome.

But what's the alternative? Even acknowledging its flaws, standards-based reform is still the most promising driver of educational improvement today. Just look at Massachusetts, the state that has most faithfully implemented this approach in the past decade--and one with some of the best standards in the country. Its NAEP scores have risen dramatically in practically every category, including for poor and minority students. Achievement gaps and big challenges remain, but most states would be thrilled to see the kind of progress the Bay State has enjoyed.

So we're left with a dilemma: the few jurisdictions that implement standards-based reform will see great results. Yet most states muck it up--and the situation hasn't improved in at least six years. Pushing and prodding states to get their act together hasn't worked. (Maybe Joanne Jacobs' essay will inspire a few jurisdictions.) So what else? The only way to fundamentally solve this problem, as we see it, is to build on the success of states like Massachusetts and move to a system of national standards and tests.

We understand that national standards would face the same perils as state standards. If written by committee, or turned over to K-12 interest groups, they could turn out to be vague, politically correct, encyclopedic, and/or fuzzy. If linked with real consequences for schools, they could be pressured downward. They could even wind up doing more harm than good.

But if done right, they could finally put the entire country on the sturdy path of standards-based reform. And if great standards can be written in Sacramento or Indianapolis or Boston, perhaps they could be created in Washington, D.C.

Some people say that national standards and tests will never happen, that they will prove (yet again) to be politically impossible. Perhaps. But we've grown just as skeptical about the chances of state standards getting any better. So we'll hedge our bets: we'll push for better state standards even as we fight for great national standards. For the sake of the country, we hope that one of those strategies will finally come to fruition.

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