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Illinois School Board Journal - ARCHIVES
July-August, 2001
ASK THE STAFF:
Educators, boards must drive school reform
This issue's question is addressed by Jerry Glaub, IASB's deputy executive director for member services.
Question: What is "standards-based school reform" and where is it taking us?
Answer: School reform based on standards is a movement driven by those who want schools to shift their focus from inputs to outputs.
Traditionally, school quality has been measured by such input factors as class size, number of books in the library and dollars spent per pupil. Today, the focus on standards is pushing schools everywhere to measure results.
The good thing about this shift in emphasis is that it supposedly gets policy makers (legislatures and school boards) out of the business of telling educators how to educate and into the business of specifying desired results. The bad thing is that the focus on results too often translates into an obsession with test scores and ignores the teaching-learning process.
Pure "standards-based reform" calls for renewed efforts among teachers and administrators to elevate their expectations for students and identify new and better ways to motivate and teach. Testing is an integral part of this approach, of course, because tests can help us see how well we're teaching and whether we're teaching the right things. If you're going to have standards, you need to frequently monitor compliance and measure performance against those standards.
However, the real focus for school improvement has to grow out of collaboration among the educators within each school. It's essential that teachers have a big hand in setting school standards and in determining how they will meet them and measure their results. The standards that really make a difference in school effectiveness are the standards that reflect community aspirations and the values of parents, teachers and students.
A January 2001 Gallup poll revealed that while Americans "appear to approve of the concept of mandatory testing," they don't believe it is the only way, or even the best way, to improve education. The public is split as well over the amount of achievement testing in their local schools. While 43 percent say the amount of testing is about right, the remainder splits between believing there is too much or not enough. When asked an open-ended question to name what government action might be most effective in improving public schools, very few of those polled mentioned mandatory testing.
It appears accurate to say, however, that the testing industry is overwhelming the standards movement. Driven by demands for so-called "accountability," many state legislatures have bought into state-mandated standards that specify precisely what academic specialists believe each and every student should know and be able to do. And where such precisely worded standards go, high-stakes tests are sure to follow. Because all this is happening with nary a word of real input from the people who must make reform work, it also is safe to say there are no real standards and no real reform.
Where we're going is where we are -- except where alert school boards and superintendents are taking it upon themselves to spur real standards-based reform. Which is their job anyway.