voluntary national math and science standards: draft Dodd-Ehlers bill

I attended a panel discussion of the bill drafted by Sen. Dodd (D-CT) and Rep Ehlers (R-MI) bill yesterday. The event was sponsored jointly by Fordham and the New America Foundation, at the latter's offices in DC. Michael Dannenberg, former staffer for Ted Kennedy and now director of the Education Policy Program at the New America Foundation moderated the panel discussion. Sen. Dodd opened with a statement on why we need national standards. He cited the plethora of "great" state test scores in math and science, and poor scores on NAEP, the 50 different state standards for math and science, and the need for a method to assess fairly how schools are doing, with respect to the requirements of NCLB which is up for reauthorization this year. Rep Ehlers was supposed to be there, but was unable to attend; he is a co-sponsor of the bill.

Other speakers included former Gov John Engler of Michigan, former Gov Bob Wise of W. Virginia (now president of Alliance for Excellent Education, Michael Casserly (Exec Director of Council of Great City Schools) and Michael Petrilli of Fordham.

Bill would task NAGB (these are the people who write the NAEP exam) to draft national standards for math and science. (Anyone familiar with the non-rigorous nature of the NAEP exams should be plenty concerned about this bill). These would be voluntary standards, but if states adopt them, then they get a grant to implement the standards and other things. Standards must "ensure that the volumary American education content standards are internationally competeitive and comparable to the best standards in the world."

Among the questions was one from Jeff Mervis of Science magazine. He asked what happens if states are falling short even after adoption of national standards? Would there then be a "national curriculum"? The question was addressed to Sen. Dodd who said the last thing the govt will do is tell local govts how to sequence and/or design curricula. Mervis asked again: "Does the bill tell the states how to meet the standards?" Dodd dodged the question again, but this time alluded to weaknesses in the NCLB law itself that prevents qualified teachers from teaching. He referred to the teacher certification requirements that make it mandatory for teachers to have certification in a subject area in order to teach it; so a biology teacher who may be qualified to teach chemistry could not teach chemistry under the current law. Don't know that that answered Mervis' question, but that's all I could glean from that one, folks.

The bil would not establish a national test, though Sen. Dodd said that maybe that would emerge as a result of states adopting the national standards. Perhaps they would get together and decide they needed to design and use a common test.

One comment from the moderator, Michael Dannenberg, intrigued me. He is definitely for this bill and said that the "standards based reform movement" has had the greatest success with respect to math. Wha HUH? What's he talking about? NCTM's standards? State standards? Has he even read Fordham's State of the State Math Standards report? Oh, he musta been talking about California, yeah, yeah, that MUST be what he was referring to. Or maybe the Focal Points, yeah, yeah, that's the ticket.

(Description of the bill, plus a link to the draft and a link to a video of yesterday's event can be found at Preparing US Students for the Global Economy.)

Among the key private endorsers of the bill are NEA and (wait for it) NCTM. Any questions?