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Standards and School Reform: Asking the Essential Questions
Introduction
Much talk about school reform today
is talk about standards. References
to standards lurk especially within
the questions that policy makers
pose: Are American kids learning
as much math as their German or
Singaporean peers? Do they know
as much American history as their
parents did? Do they write as well
as kids used to? Are teachers professional
enough? Is there enough choice in
the system? Is the economy well
served by our schools? Such questions
multiply today with a force that
people who work in schools sometimes
find offensive. They are accustomed,
after all, to an accountability
based on norms rather than criteria,
and they are understandably confused
as to which of the many criteria
proposed have the most merit. Not
surprisingly, their reaction is
often defensive.
In what follows, we aim to cut below
the surface of rhetorical offense
and defense, and in a less contentious
space reflect on what standards
really are, on what legitimates
them, and on how policy makers and
practitioners may employ them in
a partnership aimed at deepening
the education of all children. Our
method is to pose and pursue two
basic questions about standards.
The first offers a hunt for the
word's deeper meanings. In asking
it, we use the writer Raymond Carver's
cadence: What do we talk about when
we talk about standards? Carver
posed the same question about love,
a word whose usage in American conversation
similarly conceals as much as it
reveals.1
We're particularly interested in
how use of the word standards may
relate willy-nilly to two old habits
of American thinking about public
policy. On the one hand, we are
moved as a people by the dream of
a better system--one that works
more efficiently, more comprehensively.
On the other hand, we are tempted
to wish for no system at all--to
surrender the system's function
to "natural" forces. The particularly
American version of this debate
is familiar, going back two-hundred-plus
years to the one waged by Hamilton
and Jefferson. By uncovering these
opposing tendencies in our talk
and thinking, we hope to free ourselves
from slavishness to either one.
Our second question grows directly
out of the first, emphasizing its
political aspects: Who shall set
the standards, and by what right?
In pursuing this question, we mean
to challenge complacency about how
power is distributed now in American
education, and to challenge as well
ideas about how it might be distributed
in the future. In the process, we
will lay out several options for
accountability policy that we believe
honor the interests of the many
and varied stakeholders of American
schooling.
Our advocacy of these options grows
not only from our analysis, but
also from our experience and our
colleagues' experience in the Coalition
of Essential Schools. We know the
options to be rooted in the possible.
What Do We Talk About When We Talk
About Standards?
A standard answers the question,
What is good enough here? Whether
here is the performance of a laundry
detergent or of a school. The standard
serves to hold us accountable, by
offering a vision "implicit or explicit"
against which the performance in
question can be measured.
Standards always involve criteria,
though some criteria are less thoughtful
than one might wish. What's considered
"good enough" in a laundry detergent,
for example, may depend on whiteness
above all other factors, including
cleanliness and environmental impact.
Similarly, what's now considered
good enough in a school may depend
on the school's average performance
on achievement tests, tests which
are often constructed with little
thought of what is most important
for kids to achieve and which reveal
little about those qualities we
value most in our kids. Or it may
depend on the school's provision
of "opportunities" that are really
no such thing: the chance to select
one of several levels of math courses,
for example, from the packed course
catalogue of a "shopping-mall high
school."2
One way to characterize the increasing
clamor about educational standards
today is to ascribe it in part to
a shared discontent with the usual
criteria. Our concern, we say, is
with ratcheting up standards in
order to improve the educational
outcomes of all kids. How shall
this be done? For several reasons,
including especially the growth
of a political rhetoric that links
national economic prospects to mass
intellectual development, we are
collectively moving toward a process
in the United States which grounds
school standards in values rather
than national norms.3 The thinking
is that standards rooted in values
"as opposed to those based on norms,"
will forecast more accurately for
all kids what constitutes "good
enough." They will be "fixed" in
a way that transcends the vacillation
of shifting averages. Yet the policies
proposed to facilitate these higher,
values-based standards often entail
unexamined contradictions. We are
worried that they may have deeply
undemocratic consequences.4
From our view, these policies reflect
one or both of two basic strategies.
The first aims to improve the system
massively by unifying it around
a "high-powered" set of--you guessed
it--standards. The other seeks to
scrap the "system" altogether in
favor of a market approach to standard
setting. In a gross simplification
of terms, we dub the first a neoliberal
strategy and the other a neoconservative
one.
The Neoliberal Strategy
The neoliberal strategy typically
begins with a systematic inquiry
into what all American kids should
know and be able to do as a result
of their schooling, then proceeds
to the design of a comprehensive
assessment system geared to those
outcomes. In both respects, the
strategy focuses on standards as
relatively fixed and tangible things-finding
them, setting them, enforcing them,
using them to drive teaching and
learning. A good example of the
complete strategy is the work of
the SCANS Commission, which has
defined a rich set of workplace
skills for the twenty-first century
and has also proposed means to assess
them.5 Other examples include the
many efforts under way in the states
and at the national levels to define
curriculum frameworks, so-called
"content standards"--one thinks
of the standards in mathematics
from the National Council of Teachers
of Mathematics and in science from
Project 20616--and the efforts under
way also in the states and at the
national level to define "performance
standards" relative to this content.
The partisans of this strategy tend
to have a sophisticated grasp of
the nature of knowledge, the current
state of the disciplines, the qualities
of context that good teaching and
learning demand, and the failures
of policy and practice that their
strategy would supplant. For these
reasons, their arguments are appealing
within policy circles--and for one
other reason, too: what they seek
is an improved system rather than
a new one, and that is always an
easier message to swallow. As they
like to point out, we already have
a national curriculum and a national
assessment system in the United
States--bad ones, in our view, controlled
almost completely by the textbook-
and test-publishing industries.
In approach and appeal, the partisans
of this strategy seem the twenty-first-century
counterparts of the administrative
progressives who transformed American
schooling at the start of this century.7
Like their forebears, they too seem
obsessed by the irrationality of
the current system: its unreliable
processes, its domination by parochial
interests, its unresponsiveness
to current economic demands, and
the uneven quality of its products.
For the neoliberals, standards inhere
especially in a vision of expanding
economic productivity. What knowledge,
they ask, does such productivity
require? Their method proceeds then
to revise the goals of school accordingly,
and to hold the schools accountable
to those new goals with assessments
skillfully devised to measure what
matters. What remains problematic
for the neoliberals is not the finding
and setting of standards but the
design of an efficient system capable
of being driven by them.
The Neoconservative Strategy
Similarly, partisans of the strategy
we call neoconservative anticipate
no serious problems finding and
setting standards, though for quite
a different reason. Whereas the
neoliberals proceed under the Platonic
assumption that good analysis alone
is sufficient to discover the "truth"
about what all American children
should know and be able to do, the
neoconservatives put their trust
in a later philosopher, Adam Smith.
So their strategy seeks standards
from another source. John Chubb
and Terry Moe explain:
"Within a choice system, the main
form of accountability is bottom-up,
a concept foreign to bureaucrats
and politicians. School quality
is in the hands of teachers, school
heads, and governing boards, who
make their own decisions about everything
that matters. Parents and students,
free to choose, then pass judgment
on how well the schools are doing
in providing the types and quality
of services they want. They support
schools that please them. They abandon
schools that don't. This is how
schools are held accountable--by
the power and decisions of the people
they serve.8"
What is problematic for the neoconservatives
is not system design, of course,
since they want as little system--meaning
as few overarching control mechanisms--as
possible. But they worry greatly
about how to achieve the near laissez-faire
they believe a humming market needs.9
They particularly fear the dangers
of partial success: that choice
plans will offer only limited choice,
that the system will still be in
charge, that there will be no real
opportunity on the supply side,
that special interests will manage
to intervene after all. Moreover,
Chubb and Moe in particular rail
against the "disabling constraint"
of democratic school governance,
which, they say, breeds bureaucracy
and instability.10 The problem,
in their analysis, is that democratic
governance seeks to impose "higher-order
values" the "demands of remote constituents"
on schools, but can manage to enforce
these values only through regulation.11
At issue is their dispute with the
imposition of secondary influences
"the checks and balances embodied
in elected school boards and legislators"
on "pure" market operation. One
reads in their complaint an entrenched
attitude toward the dilemma that
Amy Gutmann suggests lies at the
heart of democracy: whether to give
priority to civic virtue or to individual
freedom.12 In absolute terms, the
neoconservatives choose individual
freedom, whereas the neoliberals
opt for civic virtue.
Struggling for Common Ground
It is the complacency in their respective
polarity that most disturbs us about
the partisans of both strategies.
Finding and setting standards for
American schools and American schoolchildren's
performance is a highly problematic
undertaking, inescapably so. Plato
can't deliver the kind of standards
needed, nor can Adam Smith. This
is because the values that must
ground these standards are as diverse
as the country, but they are also
its unifying characteristics. These
values are frequently ambiguous
(as, for example, in the very case
of whether we prefer individual
freedom or civic virtue), changeable,
and profoundly dependent on context.
At the same time, they are also
widely distributed, deeply held,
and shared. They may indeed inhere
in certain visions of the ideal
twenty-first-century workplace or
in the best practices of the disciplines;
indeed, a pursuit of them there
is a worthy undertaking. This does
not mean, however, that they can
be readily abstracted from these
settings-the result of a two-year
project, say, undertaken by scholars,
teachers, and a federal agency or
a foundation. Even the disciplines,
though they are indeed disciplined,
are nonetheless in continual evolution
and subvert intentions to codify
them: when treated as other than
the organic forms which they are,
these areas of knowledge are cheated
of their substance and aesthetic.
Meanwhile, although the market provides
a valuable mechanism for encouraging
higher standards, we cannot trust
that they will arise spontaneously
from the mere availability of choices.
Who in adchoked America could believe
such a thing? That is, who would
say that one can make a good decision
even about such a relatively trivial
thing as what vacuum cleaner to
buy absent some source of independent
guidance -a consumer rating, a friend's
experience, something other than
a mere array of choices? And who
would say--in the face of the fact
that shopping malls are maldistributed--that
everybody enjoys an equal opportunity
to choose well among vacuum cleaners?
Of course, some neoconservatives
would argue that any choice, freely
made, is a good one--whether what
is involved is a vacuum cleaner
or a child's education. We think
too much is at stake in the latter
case to warrant such a bald assertion.
While we remain cautious about both
the neoliberal and the neoconservative
strategies, we also appreciate certain
features of both. We believe, moreover,
that it is possible to construct
policies which preserve the best
of both while protecting against
the worst of both. Indeed, this
may be the best practical course.
Michael Fullan argues that when
it comes to educational change,
top-down doesn't work and bottom-up
doesn't work; the only hope is to
get them together.13 We are persuaded
that a good rule of thumb in this
regard is to maintain the tension
that was posed by Gutmann's democratic
dilemma, which is to say, avoid
settling it definitively one way
or the other.
What Are "Good" Standards?
To know where and how to seek standards,
we think one must acknowledge that
good standards are not things which
are clear, discrete, and fit for
checklists. Much in the fashion
of Aristotle, who claimed that essence
is necessarily intertwined with
existence, we believe that standards
cannot exist apart from experience.
To answer the question, "What is
good enough here?" one must refer
to images of good enough--the way
people look, talk, act, or feel
while being good enough in whatever
performance they attempt. And in
the process, one should not stray
too far from where here is. It may
be useful to abstract qualities:
one can surely draw upon images
of actual performance in diverse
settings to create what are called
rubrics used for rating the likes
of "coherence" or "inventiveness"
on a scale of one to five--but disembodied
criteria lack vitality, and such
rubrics are short-lived. Anyone
who has ever used them to judge
actual human performance knows that
they only come to life in the face
of this performance, then fade in
clarity and power as images from
the performance fade.
In our view, the standards we use
in assessing schools and kids in
school require a method of collecting
and preserving images of excellence.
This system, of gathering and disseminating,
should allow for a basis of connection
among all a school's stakeholders
and should generate benchmarks of
comparison among all schools. In
this respect, we honor the neoliberal
view, which recognizes that American
democracy cannot tolerate the radical
liberties of an utterly open marketplace
in schooling, one which promotes
individual freedom at the expense
of civic virtue.
Yet good standards must also possess
room for dispute. By this, we mean
the kinds of differences which are
not easily or immediately resolvable.
Our view here is derivative of an
ethic, as Gutmann says, that makes
a virtue of disagreement. This means
we need to find standards, hold
them, and apply them in such a way
that they remain tentative, lively,
and open to all manner of possibility.
In this respect, we honor the neoconservative
view of standards, which cringes
at the extreme authority of a set
of detached and impervious standards
which are delivered from "on high"
by small, representative committees
of whatever good will.
How Can We Respect our Differences?
What we seek is a common ground between
these views in what Maxine Greene
calls an "authentic public space":
The aim is to find (or create) an
authentic public space . . . one
in which diverse human beings can
appear before one another as, to
quote Hannah Arendt, "the best they
know how to be." Such a space requires
the provision of opportunities for
the articulation of multiple perspectives
in multiple idioms, out of which
something common can be brought
into being. It requires, as well,
a consciousness of the normative
as well as the possible: of what
ought to be, from a moral and ethical
point of view, and what is in the
making, what might be in an always
open world.14
The standards of the sort we seek
may at once depend upon and sustain
such a space. Such "optimum standards,"
linked together by a variety of
mechanisms loosely coupled, will
appeal to and provide for imaginative
and intuitive capacities as well
as rational ones. They will not
deal merely with the knowledge that
inheres in the world as it is, but
will also push past such boundaries.
As such, optimum standards allow
room for uncertainty, for what may
not now be known. They offer us
means for inventing the future rather
than confining it by measurements
from the past, and help us to "look
at things," as Greene puts it, "as
if they could be otherwise."15
These are the standards that we think
we all ought to be talking about
in American education today, since
we can use them to teach as well
as to hold ourselves accountable.
Meanwhile, we also must carefully
attend to the distribution of power
(Who decides?), and we must devise
various accountability mechanisms,
intended to fulfill different purposes
and measure from different angles.
Who Shall Set the Standards, and
by What Right?
Take a seventh grade classroom: two
teams of kids serve as the sides
in a debate--effectively a "trial"
before the United States Supreme
Court, the 1944 Korematsu case.
They have filed "briefs," and the
sequential drafts of these "briefs,"
including each student's individual
contributions over the month prior
to the debate, have been made available
to the "jury." One side challenges
the Roosevelt Executive Order requiring
internship of Japanese-Americans
during the Second World War; the
other defends it. The "jury" includes
the teacher, the principal of the
middle school, a teacher from a
neighboring school, and two parents.
Six fifth-graders watch, seeing
(inevitably goggle-eyed) what lies
ahead of them in their studies.
The debate see-saws, with each side
ratcheting up the argument, marshaling
new facts, probing the other's inconsistencies.
At the end, jury members ask some
questions, which push the students'
grasp of the issues. All of the
members here are participants, and
the learning is powerfully served
by the process of probing feedback.
Meanwhile, though the setting of
the trial itself is an individual
teacher's classroom, its context
is much wider: the whole school
knows about it; the standards that
inhere in these fifth-graders' performances
infect the discourse of the school
in a most beneficial way.16
Take a senior presentation on AIDS,
again before a panel of adults,
including an assistant superintendent,
community members (including a physician),
and younger students. All the students
of this high school must make such
a presentationm --the culmination
of a year-long interdisciplinary
inquiry. This particular eighteen
year old moves from a presentation
on the human immune system and on
how the HIV virus appears to affect
it to the physiological effects
of that condition on patients. Spanning
the disciplines of philosophy, ethics,
statistics, sociology, and biology,
she addresses the global incidence
of the disease, with explanations
both geographic and cultural, and
posits rates of its spread. She
speaks of the nature of care, of
remedies and palliatives, of costs,
both financial and psychological.
Earlier, she turned in an essay
on these matters to her panel, and
its members now ask questions. What
assumptions did you make about the
global spread of the disease? Why
and how did you compute its scale?
On what basis might a community
allocate the scarce resources for
treatment and care? And more.
Exhibitions and Standards
These are both "public" exhibitions
of mastery. They require broad and
deep knowledge, and they require
the demonstrable use of the knowledge.
They allow for dialogue, for the
follow-up question, for the clarification
of language (especially for the
student for whom English is not
the home language). They also allow
possibilities for an examinee to
regroup and try again and to draw
on various media to convey understanding.
The topics are "real," of demonstrable
importance even to the middle school
student; even the historical example
above clearly represents a consequential
current issue. Students know what
is expected of them, which is itself
as much of an incentive as the bracing
excitement of "public" presentation.17
Through the practice of exhibitions,
we are able to glimpse the motion
of an evolving standard, to witness
learning and achievement--right
before our eyes. The performance
also affords us a glimpse at a rich
cross section of a student's acquired
skills and abilities as in one of
the cases above, from the student's
use of various modes of expression
to her ability to bring philosophy
and statistics to bear on biology.
Accordingly, as an assessment of
that child's work, the exhibition
has greater validity than a conventional
test, and it is at once fairer and
more useful. It is also more educational
in its own right. The exhibition
efficiently and happily blurs the
line between assessment and instruction:
the understanding we see is visible
in the interchange of performance
and feedback.
For the neoliberal, such exhibitions
represent worthwhile goals. To apply
the SCANS criteria, these exercises
demonstrate that "information is
acquired, evaluated, organized,
interpreted, and communicated by
students to appropriate audiences,
. . . disciplines needed for problem
solving are integrated; thinking
involves problem solving, reasoning,
and decision making."18 Exhibitions
at their best are authentic in that
they are fully lifelike representations
of real and complex intellectual
problems; they take their sense
from the rational systems of thought
we exercise in the real world. But,
exhibitions grow out of the systematic,
careful operation of "planning backwards."
Much as in the eminently logical
system of the neoliberal, an exhibition
begins with the determination of
what kids should know and be able
to do and proceeds methodically
"backwards" to define what and how
kids must be taught to reach those
outcomes.19 The aims, made clear
in advance, drive and shape the
teaching.
However, in our conception of exhibition,
the scale differs. Exhibitions are
local "displays," open to and reflective
of their constituencies rather than
of professionals in remote and protected
bureaucracies. The criteria attend
less to the unified thinking of
"best" analysis, and more to the
freedom of civic and cultural diversity,
as in the neoconservative strategy.
Thus, one can imagine their service
within a radical "choice" scheme:
those parents who do not like the
substance or standards of the exhibitions
they see can withdraw their children
to search out a truer articulation
of their values. By the same token,
one can also imagine their service
within a system where the state
still plays an active role in fostering
and maintaining high standards:
they become a rich means by which
the state may inspect or audit the
schools' efforts and results.
Such exhibitions, for an individual
or for individuals in groups; written,
displayed, oral, or in some combination;
within courses or apart from them,
provide the "public spaces" that
Maxine Greene would have us create
for the display and for the neverending
evolution of standards.20 As such,
they provide a basis for standard
setting--one legitimated by their
rootedness in learning and in actual
school communities.
Building an Accountability System
If all schools must exhibit their
own work in the public performances
of their students, then some schools
will exhibit work of exceptional
quality. The next step in building
a workable and legitimate accountability
system, therefore, will involve
creating public awareness of such
quality and providing incentives
to take heed of it. The objective
is to pressure weaker schools to
expect-and to teach toward similar
standards. This presumes broad access
to the best of exhibitions, and
it also presumes some system of
commentary whereby teachers and
scholars independent of any particular
school may help shape awareness.
Finally, it presumes a system of
state governance and support of
education that preserves equity
while encouraging diversity of approaches
to accountability, supports pioneer
schools, honors the dialogue of
the local "public space," and is
committed to enhancing (but not
overwhelming) this dialogue with
perspectives from elsewhere.
Modern computer and televideo technology
and the expanding "information highways"
represented, for example, by Internet/NREN
can help the state fulfill the last
of these functions. In the foreseeable
future, they will provide the means
to display and distribute complex
images of excellence in student
performance and to engage in a large-
scale and far-flung conversation
about them.21 States might not only
provide the network and other supports
for such a conversation, but might
also insist that schools take part.
Today, almost all states insist that
schools report on their students'
performance in test scores that
drain the life from that performance.
What we propose is that they insist
instead on reports enlivened with
student performance, and then insist
also that schools help each other
grow in their capacity to hold students
to high standards. They can do so
by simply engaging in a facilitated
conversation that alternates "warm"
and "cool" perspectives,22 in which
the schools balance appreciative
and supportive commentary on their
peers' work, with discerning and
constructively critical commentary.
This conversation can have a very
powerful impact on schools, particularly
within states that preserve each
school's authority and responsibility
to take action in response to what
they learn about themselves in these
encounters. These will be states
that have learned to go beyond checklist
standards and bureaucratic accountability.
Standards that grow out of shared
local exhibitions might promote
an unending national conversation
about what really matters in education,
one grounded in actual images of
actual performance in real and local
settings. This would represent an
enormous improvement over the current
conversation where liveliness withers
in the abstract discourse of goals
and outcomes.
Who Sets the Standards Here?
Who sets the standards here, and
by what right? First of all, the
individual school takes the initiative,
by the right of being closest to
the students who are to be held
to the standards. Of course, much
of the current palaver over standards
and accountability arises from the
belief of many among the public
and within the educational policy
community that schools are currently
incapable of positing and maintaining
academic standards of a quality
required by the emerging global
economy and culture. So, the argument
goes, others must take over this
work.
But the argument overlooks the fact
that the entire enterprise is ultimately
dependent on developing this capability
among teachers-- since one cannot
teach to a standard one is incapable
of imagining.23 The argument also
begs the question, Who is capable
of setting and maintaining standards,
if school people are not? The states
acting alone? The federal government?
Some national and quasi-public agency?
The Educational Testing Service?
Who will argue that any large bureaucracy--with
any manner of support--is likely
to be more responsive to economic
signals and shifts in cultural values
than are small groups of professional
educators who enjoy the simple support
of having some time to read and
discuss what outsiders write?
State bureaucracies are freer from
the parochial concerns of particular
communities, but this insulation
is as much a political peril for
school reform as it is a boon. In
this regard, consider the interests
and rights of a second constituency,
namely, parents. In what we propose,
schools initiate standard-setting
in the presence of parents, who
may wish to dispute their choices.
States or other faraway entities
might well persuade parents that
they ought to set standards for
computational mathematics or reading
or the production of expository
prose, but can they persuade parents
that their views should out-weigh
the parents' views in more ambiguous
matters: which books to read, what
historical interpretation should
hold sway, what constitutes appropriate
behavior in sexual and moral matters,
etc.? The educational press often
carries stories about one state
or another's failure to do so. In
some questions of standards, most
American parents seem to want to
retain the power to question the
standard-setters directly. Reforms
that diminish their power in this
respect are likely to run into much
political trouble in the long run--
but trouble of a kind consistent
with democracy.
But others, too, besides teachers
and parents, have rights in this
matter of standard-setting, and
they exercise them in the model
we propose. So the larger professional
community--researchers, the unions,
the curriculum associations, etc.--has
the chance, for once, to function
as a professional community and
in a conversation anchored by rich
images of teaching and learning.
Because that conversation is electronic
as well as face-to-face, other stakeholders
can exercise their right to take
part, too. Meanwhile the state--with
richer access to the actual performance
of schools than ever before--can
better exercise its right and constitutional
responsibility to ensure equity
and quality. Moreover, the rights
of each group -including the students
themselves, their particular teachers,
the scholarly community, the immediate
community of employers and cultural
partisans, and the state -may be
exercised directly, not (as is often
now the case) through token representation
on committees.
The "public space" in which this
dialogue occurs will, of course,
be full of tension, as these constituencies
play out their rights; such tension
is both the fuel and the protection
of democracy.24 Implied here is
the extension to education of habits
common in the political and cultural
spheres. There, the question of
a good or bad policy, as of good
or bad art, is never clearcut and
is expected to provoke contention.
Moreover, Americans have historically
considered contention in these realms
to be beneficial rather than deleterious,
even necessary, to approximating
the inherent "truth" of such questions.
Policy Options for Accountability
Inevitably, the schools affect us
all, so we need an accountability
system that reflects that fact,
one that allows many voices. Achieving
this in practice will take generous
invention and experimentation and
is likely to spawn much local and
regional variation. We leave room
for this invention, experimentation,
and variation in the framework which
follows.
The framework is made up of practices
that honor the individual school
as the proper locus of accountability;
it acknowledges, however, that the
school cannot manage this responsibility
if it continues to be isolated in
its setting of standards. It is
a framework of policy options insofar
as the practices it suggests require
in some instances the support of
policy and in all instances the
forbearance of policy. It grows
directly out of our belief that
the current ferment around standards
-complete with economic, political,
and cultural incentives-provides
a unique opportunity for profound
open-mindedness about educational
policy and for the invention of
radically new constellations of
shared authority.
An Accountability Framework
We propose the following six features
for a framework that respects the
interdependence of policy and practice.
We believe this mix of "accountability
measures" addresses the claims of
a student's and her school's various
constituencies, and it does so at
a financial cost that the public
is likely to be willing to pay.
- Exhibitions as a central
feature of the school's assessment
system. By exhibitions
we mean performance assessments
that introduce authentic contexts
into teaching and learning,
that dare to show the school's
stakeholders what the school's
students have achieved, that
help the school take stock
of whether its systems are
working to ensure high achievement
for all students, and that
push learning deeper even while
they assess it.
- Continued provision of basic
general testing as a supplement
to the Exhibitions.25 This
should involve the best standardized
tests available in computational
mathematics, reading, and expository
prose--whether developed by
commercial publishers or the
states. Our caution here is
that such tests must be kept
supplementary to Exhibitions.
The point is to maintain a
trendline of achievement in
basic empowering skills, and
so preserve political confidence
while experimenting with richer
accountability mechanisms.
- Maintenance of portfolios
of each student's work, including
that student's Exhibitions.
These files, kept by the school,
perhaps in an electronic format,
will be open to the student,
his teachers, his parents or
guardian, and to designated
representatives of the district
and state. The student's progress
is thereby visible to those
who care most about him, and
who may ascertain his achievements
in relation to others' by using
"benchmark" measures (see #5
below) or by examining the
student's work against the
collection of images of excellence
provided within a tele-communications
network.
- Development of an accountability
capacity within the school.
By this we mean the dedication
of time, space and institutional
priority to building and designing
standards, collaborating on
assessment across classrooms,
communicating with stakeholders,
and ensuring that individual
students do not fall through
the cracks in the system. As
Linda Darling-Hammond suggests,
this last objective especially
will involve the invention
of mechanisms of "continual
collegial inquiry in which
hard questions are posed."26
- State "audit" of individual
student files or portfolios.
This audit might take the
form of, say, an examination
of the work of every fifty-ninth
student against a general standard
agreed upon by the state and
by the school. This standard
might be annually "set" by
the school community and the
state "auditor" on the basis
of discussions (facilitated
by the national telecommunications
network) of highstandard work
exhibited by students of roughly
similar age across the country
and informed by the periodic
reports of the National Assessment
of Educational Progress (NAEP).
The auditor would report on
the school (but not on the
individual students whose files
were pulled) to that school
itself and to the state, establishing
benchmarks of achievement -based
on the aggregate of student
files--without imposing highstakes
consequences for individuals.
Consequences to schools, on
the other hand, will come from
pressure the community brings
to bear, a result of increased
public and professional awareness
regarding the schools' operations.
- Publication of an annual
school report. This report
would include a statement from
the state auditor, and it would
be necessitate a public meeting
to discuss the findings. The
public library would maintain
a set of these reports and
also provide access to examples
of high standard student work
drawn nationally, and to the
reports of NAEP.
Schools are ultimately about helping
young people to use their minds
well and to develop a thoughtfulness
about all aspects of their lives.
Schools don't primarily yield a
"product," save at the margins (a
person who can calculate percentages,
for example). They are about preparing
individuals to cope with an inevitably
uncharted future. Coping with this
unknown future in an informed and
principled way is in fact a crucial
standard. Therefore, schools need
to prepare graduates who can engage
in this art of informed mental activity.
And schools' assessments must focus
on these complex ends, no matter
how difficult they are to test.
Unlike virtually any other American
activity, elementary and secondary
schooling is compulsory. Citizens
are forced to attend. Accordingly,
the definition of the routines of
school and, particularly, the shape
of its substance and standards have
to be approached with patience and
addressed with careful restraint.
Complacent, politically rigid, or
ideologically codified positions
are anathema to any mindful consideration
of standards. Setting standards
is not a science. It mimics the
process of creating art.
Notes
- Raymond Carver, What We Talk
about When We Talk about Love
(New York: Knopf, 1981).
- See Arthur Powell, Eleanor
Farrar, and David Cohen, The
Shopping Mall High School (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1985).
- There is nothing new about this
impetus to associate economic
success with the performance
of schools. What is new is
the increasing perception that
in order to compete worldwide
for highwage jobs--the demanding
"knowledge jobs"--the United
States must provide better
education for and demand higher
standards from all students.
The argument is made in the
Report of the Commission on
the Skills of the American
Workforce, America's Choice:
High Skills or Low Wages (Rochester,
NY: National Center on Education
and the Economy, June 1990);
and in two reports of the Secretary's
Commission on Achieving Necessary
Skills (SCANS), What Work Requires
of Schools (Washington, DC:
US Department of Labor, June
1991), and Learning a Living:
A Blueprint for High Performance
(Washington, DC: US Department
of Labor, April 1992). The
same argument underlies the
creation of the National Education
Goals.
- Our reference here is to a
wide array of state and federal
policy initiatives bearing
on school reform and school
accountability.
- See the citation of the SCANS
reports in note 3.
- Commission on Standards for
School Mathematics, Curriculum
and Evaluation Standards for
School Mathematics (Reston,
VA: National Council of Teachers
of Mathematics, March 1989);
Project 2061, Science for All
Americans: A Project 2061 Report
on Literacy Goals in Science,
Mathematics, and Technology
(Washington, DC: American Association
for the Advancement of Science,
1989).
- See, for example, David Tyack,
The One Best System (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1974).
- John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe,
A Lesson in School Reform from
Great Britain (Washington,
DC: The Brookings Institution,
1992), p. 13.
- We say near laissez-faire since
most partisans would acknowledge
the need for minimalist intervention
in the school-choice market,
for example, to protect health
and safety or to prevent racial
discrimination.
- Chubb and Moe, A Lesson in
School Reform, p. 217.
- Chubb and Moe, p. 188.
- Amy Gutmann, "Democratic Education
in Difficult Times," Teachers
College Record 92, no. 1 (Fall
1990), pp. 7þ20.
- Michael Fullan, with Suzanne
Stiegelbauer, The New Meaning
of Educational Change (New
York: Teachers College Press,
1991).
- Maxine Greene, The Dialectic
of Freedom (New York: Teachers
College Press, 1988), p. xi.
- Greene, Dialectic of Freedom,
p. 102. The idea of standards
that leave room for uncertainty
is John Dewey's; see his Quest
for Certainty (New York: Milton,
Balch, 1929). For an argument
about the productive role of
uncertainty in teaching, see
Joseph P. McDonald, Teaching:
Making Sense of an Uncertain
Craft (New York: Teachers College
Press, 1992).
- This example is adapted from
an exercise designed by Jim
Brown for his seventh-grade
class at the Wheeler School
in Providence, RI.
- Theodore R. Sizer, Horace's
Compromise: The Dilemma of
the American High School (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1984), Chapter
5.
- SCANS, Learning a Living, p.
42.
- Joseph P. McDonald, "Dilemmas
of Planning Backwards: Rescuing
a Good Idea" [Coalition of
Essential Schools Studies on
Exhibitions no. 3], Teachers
College Record 94, no. 1 (Fall
1992).
- For a view of three high schools'
exhibition systems, see Joseph
P. McDonald, Sidney Smith,
Dorothy Turner, Marian Finney,
and Eileen Barton, Graduation
by Exhibition: Assessing Genuine
Achievement (Alexandria, VA:
Association for Supervision
and Curriculum Development,
1993).
- For an analysis of the role
that networks in general (of
even the nonelectronic variety)
do and might play in school
reform, see Ann Lieberman and
Milbrey W. McLaughlin, "Networks
for Educational Change," Phi
Delta Kappan 73, no. 9 (1992):
pp. 673þ677.
- See Joseph P. McDonald, "Three
Pictures of an Exhibition:
Warm, Cool, and Hard" [Coalition
of Essential Schools Studies
on Exhibitions no. 1], Phi
Delta Kappan 74, no. 6 (1993):
pp. 480þ 485.
- See, for example, the case
of Mrs. Oublier and the California
curriculum frameworks in David
Cohen, "Revolution in One Classroom
(Or Then Again, Was It?),"
American Educator (Fall 1991).
- See Theodore R. Sizer, Horace's
School: Redesigning the American
High School (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1992), Chapter 8.
- We are indebted to our colleague
Lois Easton of the Education
Commission of the States for
her wise response to an early
draft, wherein she advocates
sampling not only content but
students.
- Linda Darling-Hammond, "Reframing
the School Reform Agenda: Developing
Capacity for School Transformation,"
paper presented at the annual
meeting of the American Educational
Research Association, San Francisco,
April 1992.
The Coalition of Essential Schools
gratefully acknowledges the IBM
Corporation and the UPS Foundation
for their support of its research
on Exhibitions.
About the Authors:
Joseph P. Mcdonald is a Senior Researcher,
Bethany Rogers is Research Assistant
to the Chairman and Theodore R.
Sizer is Chairman of the Coalition
of Essential Schools
A version of this article appeared
in the Stanford Law & Policy Review
4 (Winter 1992þ93)
Price: $5
Code: EX8
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This resource last updated: May 08, 2002
Database Information:
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Source: Coalition of Essential Schools, October 1993.
Publication Year: 1993
Publisher: CES National
School Level: All
Focus Area: Community Connections
STRAND: Community Connections: community collaboration
Community Collaboration: Accountability, Communicating Goals & Strategies
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