Must Standards Past Be Prologue?

Brookings scholar Tom Loveless is a clear-eyed empiricist who digs deep into test score data and often emerges with surprising findings. A few years back, for example, he looked at individual-student NAEP data to learn that there was no correlation whatsoever between a state’s math score on NAEP and the percentage of students enrolled in advanced classes.

But sometimes empiricism can lead to a pessimistic dead-end. And that’s where Loveless ended up in the 2012 Brown Center Report on American Education that he released last week. He examined student achievement by state over the past decade or so and concluded that existing state standards have had no effect. Therefore, he argues, new Common Core standards “will have little effect on students’ achievement.”

To reach that conclusion he has to argue—as he does—that today’s schools are working as well as they possibly can and that, therefore, nothing can be gained by adopting new standards. If our schools were cars Loveless would argue that they’re already headed for the right destination at full-throttle and pressing the accelerator harder won’t make them speed up.

But what if that car had underinflated tires, a bad drive train, a dirty carburetor and worn-out spark plugs? Wouldn’t fixing those things would make it go faster? What if the road the car was traveling on—in this analogy, curriculum, teacher preparation and all the other parts of the system—was rutted and washed out in places?

Yes, states have had standards for many years—all of them since 2003 and many even earlier. The standards vary in quality, as Loveless notes, but that variation isn’t correlated with differences in achievement. So, he argues, standards don’t matter and, in a sense, he’s right about that. Standards that just sit on a shelf don’t matter. Standards without a rich, aligned curriculum don’t matter. Standards that are measured by only marginally related assessments don’t matter.

On the other hand, standards that drive every aspect of the system—teacher preparation and support, personnel evaluations (superintendents, principals and teachers), school accountability, curriculum, assessment and even spending—can matter. Loveless’ Brookings colleague Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst argued here that curriculum is particularly important.

Whether the Common Core makes a difference in the classroom will depend on the quality of that implementation, as the Fordham Institute’s Kathleen Porter-Magee observes. Right now, national organizations such as the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, professional organizations, foundations, states, districts and teachers unions are all trying to figure that out.

Given the history of state implementation, especially during a time when states are cutting their education budgets, one could be pessimistic about that, as Loveless is.

But there’s reason for optimism, too, as Robert Rothman of the Alliance for Excellent Education notes in his book on the history of the Common Core.

We’ve learned a lot about standards-based education over the past 15 years and we have some examples, such as Massachusetts, Minnesota, Long Beach, California,and others to look to. Digital platforms are being built so teachers can learn from one another and share good lessons. Online learning and other technologies that can personalize education are spreading. Although they still have a ways to go before they’re perfected, states are developing teacher evaluation systems that can be aligned to the Common Core. New assessments are being designed around the Common Core, meaning that they will reinforce the standards, not divert teachers away from them.

I hope that Loveless, being the careful scholar he is, will take another look at standards in five years. In the meantime, I hope that many scholars will pay attention to the quality of the implementation of standards so that when Loveless weighs in again, he’ll be able to consider this critical factor when judging whether standards make a difference.