Answering the question: 'are we there yet?' You've got to love California's 3,448 content standards, even if they make you ill.

I have a confession to make. If I hear the term "standards based" one more time I'll be fighting back the urge to vomit. And I'm one who believes that a "standards based" (Why do I do that to myself?) system is an essential foundation for giving meaning to the concept that all children will learn." How do such contradictory notions exist in the same, usually logical, brain?

One reason is that many existing programs and approaches have recycled themselves under the standards based reform banner. A workshop that once may have been billed as "Effective Practices," is now marketed as "Effective Practices in a Standards Based System." But the content of the workshop is exactly the same.

Another reason is that standards are everywhere--there are standards for nearly everything. I know that one day I'm going to see an article on "Standards for Reflective Thinking."

A third reason is that there is a huge confusion between standards and learning objectives. For me a free association on the word "standards" would have led immediately to "high standards," a concept that has everything to do with expectations and very little to do with learning objectives.

What to expect

When I read most of the California content standards I find them to be objectives that tell us what should be taught and what should be learned. Infrequently do they tell us what to expect. Such confusion in terminology helped to create the following dialog between an external facilitator and a teacher.

"Does your school have high expectations for students?"

"Absolutely."

"What happens when high expectations aren't met?"

"When students don't met our expectations we flunk them. Our standards are high!"

So much for "standards based" reform.

Years ago I was a woefully underprepared beginning teacher. About three weeks into my first year of teaching (those poor first graders) I asked the following question at a staff meeting. "What is it that I'm supposed to teach?" Whatever "it" was, I thought I could teach it. But no one had an answer that worked for me. I remember suggestions like:

"Use the textbook."

"Teach them to read."

"Take a look at the ECE (Early Childhood Education) skills checklist."

"Ask the kids what they want to learn."

Someone asking the same question today would be told, "Teach the standards." Thank goodness!

I've recently completed a searchable database of the California Content Standards. Did you know that in the areas of language arts, mathematics, history-social science, science, and visual and performing arts there are 3,448 standards? If a student was to attend school every day for 13 years, that student would spend approximately 2,340 days in a California classroom (or 2,171 should he or she be unfortunate enough to attend a multi-track year round school). That means that there is approximately 2/3 of a day available to master each standard (excluding physical education and English language development needs). Go read the first paragraph again--especially the second sentence.

Yet, it will be impossible to leave no child behind if we don't have a clear understanding of where a child could be left. To a great degree, the content standards--to a greater degree, the performance standards, should we ever complete them--make it clear where we are headed. They provide the information needed to answer the age-old question, "Are we there yet?" They eliminate the arguments about what to teach and allow the education community to focus on how to teach. That's a blessing.

Clearly, standards based reform is not complete. I'm one of the many who hope that it doesn't go away. It does need to have the "breadth" beat out of it so there is room for "depth," but we'll never arrive if we don't know where we are going.

Every student can be a child of privilege

As an adult I've learned that the process is often as important as the product. If I'd not learned to read, write, compute and think I'd never have been able to make that discovery. Far too many children, because they were not born into conditions of privilege, have not had that same opportunity. The standards based movement, at its best, provides the opportunity to create conditions where every student can be a child "of privilege." Let's not ever abandon it--even when it makes us sick.

George Manthey is an educational services executive for ACSA.