How High Are the Standards?
Raise standards. High standards. Deciding whether Core standards are higher or lower than the old standards, or the newer standards.
And nobody has any idea what any of it means.
I mean, I'm not an idiot. I understand what it means to say that I hold my students to a high standard or that my classroom is based on having high standards or hold the donuts I eat to a high standards. As a general principle, we all know what high standards are.
But as a matter of policy, "high standards" is really meaningless. In fact, it's worse than meaningless because it's a metaphor that obscures an important truth.
"High standards" suggests a two-dimensional model of education. It suggests a model in which all students are trying to climb exactly the same ladder in exactly the same direction.It's a single one-directional arrow, with all students progressing steadily, dutifully along the single path toward the single point.
It's a model that doesn't correspond to anything in human experience or behavior. Instead of the blind men and the elephant, we can tell the modern fable of thousand blind administrators and the feds.
The blind administrators were called before the Department of Education. Looking down at them from his throne made of 95% excellent mahogany, the Secretary said, "Have you all led your schoolCURMUDGUCATION: How High Are the Standards?: