New Standards for U.S. Education

Today, an expert panel announced its recommendations for common statewide standards in American educational achievement. Forty-eight states participated in writing the Common Core State Standards Initiative. The Initiative recommends common concepts and skills for all students to achieve by grade level. If implemented, these standards will go far to make states’ standardized tests comparable from state to state, and comparable with existing federal standardized tests. Education is an area of social policy that has been historically governed by localities and states, yet this push for nationally consistent standards appears well-supported. The Initiative is supported by state governments, the U.S. Department of Education, and teachers’ groups.

Authors of the new standards claim that “it is important to recognize that fewer standards are no substitute for focused standards. Achieving fewer standards would be easy to do by simply resorting to broad, general statements. Instead, the draft Common Core State Standards … aim for clarity and specificity.” For example, the core standards for mathematics consist of only 8 standards, such as suggesting students can “reason abstractly and quantitatively” and “model with mathematics.”

How we measure educational attainment is crucial. The new standards appear to be concise and brief enough to not stifle local achievement goals, yet also broad enough to present a regarded floor for learning standards. By measuring educational attainment in the U.S., we are given a snapshot of the state of education, with all its weaknesses and bright spots.