Teacher Magazine: Do National Standards Make Sense?

Teacher Magazine: Do National Standards Make Sense?

National standards are hot right now. The case for common standards is predicated on a bedrock belief that high school graduates in America must share a set of skills and proficiencies. For the basic subjects—reading, writing, and arithmetic— that sounds fine.

However, schools today are offering increasingly diversified panoplies of skills and experiences. "Specialty" charter schools, focusing on areas like the arts or languages, are in. Incorporating the use of new technologies (blogs, Web sites, PowerPoint) into the classroom is in vogue. Successful schools are expected to offer a broad array of extracurricular opportunities for burnishing college applications. American schools—like the communities they are parts of— are profoundly varied and rooted in local educational values and resources. Should Amidon and Ramey be evaluated like the specialized Stuyvesant High School in New York City or a community school in El Paso?