The Atlantic Reports on the Standards Question

In the current issue of The Atlantic, Matt Miller frames the crisis in public education by calling for more national leadership and responsibility for schools, particularly common American standards. He even cites some of our campaign's polling data in support.

The usual explanation for why national standards won't fly is that the right hates "national" and the left hates "standards." But that's changing. [...]  Two surveys conducted for the education campaign Strong American Schools, found that a majority of Americans think there should be uniform national standards.

[Furthermore], research in 46 countries by Ludger Woessmann of the University of Munich has shown that setting clear external standards while granting real discretion to schools in how to meet them is the most effective way to run a system. We need to give schools one set of national expectations, free educators and parents to collaborate locally in whatever ways work, and get everything else out of the way.

Nationalizing our schools even a little goes against every cultural tradition we have, save the one that matters most: our capacity to renew ourselves to meet new challenges. Once upon a time a national role in retirement funding was anathema; then suddenly, after the Depression, we had Social Security. Once, a federal role in health care would have been rejected as socialism; now, federal money accounts for half of what we spend on health care. We started down this road on schooling a long time ago. Time now to finish the journey.

Readers of this blog know where I stand on common education standards and how a federal government can be instrumental in helping states to implement them. What I most appreciate about Miller's take is in that last quote, the idea that as a nation we must take action to address the challenges we face in education. Just as we have mobilized in our history to meet oncoming demands, we must now revise our thinking on education to face the 21st century head-on. Small reforms are not good enough, and Miller gets it.