Testing Our Kids:
New Education Standards Should Be Set by States

President Clinton's plan for national testing at first glance seems to be much-needed and courageous. However, the best place for education reform is in the individual states.

Several states are already creating standards that raise the level of knowledge expected of our children. Virginia, in the vanguard of this trend, created content-rich, demanding and rigorous standards for every child in the core areas of history, math, English, science and social studies.

While Virginia is on its way to developing an assessment which will eventually serve not only as a barometer of how well her children are performing but whether they should graduate, other states, such as Florida, Arizona and Massachusetts, are cribbing heavily from Virginia and elsewhere, and creating their own high standards that put children to the test and require much more of our schools.

All that is great. Standards with consequences can not only wake up a complacent populace, but more to the point, indicate to youngsters what they must know to achieve. This trend is long overdue since even some students at the top of their classes are among the 40 percent who find reading proficiency a challenge.

Standards are our road map to accountability. Only by knowing where we are going can we get there. Secretary of Education Richard Riley outlines an ambitious proposal to create a national test that states could use for assessing math and reading in individual students, schools, districts and states. It is very similar to a proposal of then President George Bush, who recommended a full expansion of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP).

Only Mr. Riley recommends a new test, not an expansion of NAEP.

The proposal to create a NAEP-like math and reading test for voluntary use by states is welcome news. What is not so welcome is the process right now being employed that makes the test an instrument of the U.S. Department of Education - the same department whose employees have challenged NAEP's rigor for years.

What also is puzzling is why anyone would want to spend $ 8 million to launch tests that already exist in Virginia and elsewhere. Why not use NAEP as it exists and simply remove a federal prohibition on states' use of the scores to compare districts and schools? Or perhaps states could opt to use NAEP to evaluate every student in the fourth and eighth grades, in lieu of a test that does not exist and may not be a good test once it does.

Expand NAEP, and let states such as Texas opt to use it if they believe it will help. In addition, ask states that have set good standards and contracted for assessments to provide others with the tools they used, or engage in "assessment" sharing with those standards that are most similar from state to state.

But don't stop there. Consider that standards and testing are just one piece of a very complex puzzle to cure deficiencies in education. Even if parents have good standards to measure schools, in most states they have no avenue to pursue should they be unhappy with the results. Increasingly, states have adopted new charter school laws that allow communities - parents, teachers and civic groups - to start new independent public schools, which are freed from many of the restrictions that stand in the way of schools making the grade. There are 480 such schools now in existence in 16 of the 26 pioneer charter states, and another 200 close behind.

To the dismay of many in groups that are wed to conventional public schools, these charters are breathing new life into public education by making solid options available to parents, instilling teachers with autonomy to teach the way they see fit and allowing schools to tailor their programs to best meet the needs of students and the demands of families. Parents choose to send their children there, and boy, are they choosing. More than 105,000 attend charters today, and it is estimated that an equal number are on waiting lists.

The Urban League of Miami has a charter tailored to children who have fallen through the cracks. Vaughan Learning Center in Los Angeles now has a 99 percent attendance rate, higher test scores and a yearly budget surplus used to build a library and technology center, as well as employ members of its troubled community.

Phoenix's ATOP Academy teaches the basics to mainly minority youth; Boston's City on a Hill instills civic responsibility and a high caliber of educational achievement. Ford Motor Company helped create a technical school in Michigan.

These schools and others like them have become catalysts for change in traditional schools and are helping to expand opportunities for all children in public education.

Likewise, we must recognize that there are schools too troubled to really help many children. Children in our worst performing schools are stuck with nowhere to go while more affluent children have been going to private schools. While some talk about equality, real equality is in allowing these children the same opportunities afforded to President Clinton himself, members of Congress and other national leaders. Poor children should not be stuck in failing schools by virtue of their place of residence; they, too, should be permitted access to a plentiful supply of existing private schools that are ready, willing and able to meet their immediate needs.

Finally, throughout the education system the call for standards is matched by a call for more accountability, period. People are fed up with hearing reasons why schools can't do this or that.

Union contracts hamstring the flexibility of local administrators wanting to make changes. Great but non-tenured teachers are often left out in the cold while more senior teachers move up regardless of performance. The president has called for an end to this unproductive shuffling; let's match his interest with action.

Some school boards are working to tie performance to pay in modest ways. Others are challenging the whole basis for lifetime tenure, yet are often rebuffed by unions or legislators who don't understand how difficult it is for well-meaning principals to clean house.

Decisions about how schools are run should return to the schools that have the most to do with our children on a daily basis. Money should flow with children, rather than to programs that are often bureaucratized and leave few dollars after various offices have taken their share. And hiring and firing should be school-based.

Let the states set standards, let there be guidelines to safeguard our children, but let the schools be ultimately free to excel.

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Jeanne Allen is author of THE SCHOOL REFORM HANDBOOK: How to Improve Your Schools and president of The Center for Education Reform in Washington, DC. CER is a national non-profit advocacy group providing support and guidance to thousands of individuals and communities nationwide who are working to bring fundamental reforms to their schools. For more information, please call (202) 822-9000 or (800) 521-2118, or send e-mail to cer@edreform.com.

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