Apply standards of good reporting and critical thinking to editorializing: Observations on today's hottest topics in education offer some perspective on the promise and the problems. (The State of Education).

In education, it sometimes feels as if everything always changes and nothing is ever very different. Pity the poor editorial writer who carries the education portfolio and has to make sense of all this. Innovations come and go, often without actually being implemented, and many of the most troubled school systems seem unable to improve no matter how much time they have to do so.

What can one say about this dismal situation in an editorial or a commentary? How may one take a constructive stance and throw the weight of the news organization behind the most promising ventures? Given the record in education, it is no easy matter to sort through the slew of ideas that someone in the commentary seat has to examine.

I can't categorically tell you what to accept and what to reject, but I can offer some observations about the day's hottest topics in education. Let's limit the discussion to four of them -- reform, standards, assessment, and charter schools.

Reform

What happens when wave after wave of reform washes over the schools and they remain roughly the same, which has, by and large, been the pattern until now? One wants to remain sanguine, to shun cynicism. Yet, the best course, as in much of journalism, is skepticism. Why skepticism? After all, no one wants to editorialize against making schools better.

Education has a shoddy record when it comes to improving scholastic outcomes for the neediest children. Memphis this year rescinded a systemwide reform package that was put in place by a prior superintendent. Philadephia flirted with and then wrote a Dear John letter to the Edison folks, and now the state, after taking over the system, is wooing Edison again. And so it goes, as Mr. Vonnegut wrote.

When a reform proposal comes across your desk, get on your computer and see what happened in other school systems that wrestled with similar reforms. Find out whether teachers in those districts believed in the proposals and whether they got the preparation they needed to implement them. Ask how the proposal in front of you will affect the home environment and the inclination of parents to reinforce learning -- which every statistic says correlate more highly with school performance than anything else.

Don't feel like a traitor if you end up not buying into the reform package. No news organization has an obligation to back a school proposal just because the situation is dire and something, anything, appears better than what exists.

Standards

Remember that there are two kinds of standards -- content standards and performance standards. As implied, content standards indicate what a student should know or be able to do: add three columns of numbers, show an understanding of a Judy Blume novel, explain the workings of the circulatory system, write an essay that demonstrates comprehension of the controversies engendered by the Vietnam War.

Performance standards set levels at which students should master the knowledge or the task in order to pass the assessment. Set cutoff levels too low and lots of students will pass, but many may not possess the desired knowledge; set levels too high and lots will fail, but the expectation may be unrealistic and unnecessary. How much calculus, for example, does the average editorial writer really have to know?

Editorial writers should inquire deeply into the rationale for specific content and performance standards. Why is it important, for instance, to know this particular information or to be able to perform that particular task? The editorial and op-ed pages can serve as a wonderful forum for engaging the community in a discussion of what people who will live almost the entirety of their lives in the 21st century must know and be able to do and at what levels of proficiency.

Assessment

In November, a judge in New York State refused to allow 28 public schools, mostly alternative high schools in New York City to avoid having their students submit to the Regents examinations. The schools maintained that if their students took the examinations the schools would have to concentrate their lessons on the material on the tests, not on what local school personnel had determined it most important to teach students. Such objections have been raised by critics of testing around the United States as mandatory testing has spread in conjunction with the imposition of standards.

The question for editorial writers to explore -- and few tend to do so -- is this: What is wrong with teaching to the test?

If it is important to be able to write a persuasive essay, for instance, then the proper approach would be to imbue students with the concepts of writing a good persuasive essay and have them spend time learning the issues involved and writing essays, providing feedback to each draft. Then, finally, the test would call for writing a persuasive essay. This is teaching to the test. Is there some better way to teach persuasive writing?

The only reasonable objections to teaching to the test should revolve around the appropriateness of the learning goals and whether the tests that purport to measure attainment of those goals are valid and reliable means of assessment. Instead of inveighing against teaching to the test, it might make more sense for editorial writers to raise questions about the learning goals themselves and about the ways of measuring the attainment of those goals. Assessment, after all, should be obverse side of the curriculum coin.

Charter schools

Most NCEW members who attended public schools went to the elementary and secondary schools closest to their homes. In educationese, these are called "catchment districts," a phrase that resonates of something involving a sewer system. This particular way of matching children with schools was instituted because of its predictability, divvying up kids so that schools can plan for staffing and facilities. A messier system, one that might push public schools to be perhaps more responsive to the needs and wishes of students and their parents, would let pupils and their families choose from among public schools.

Proponents of charter schools deem them a more equitable approach than simply assigning children to the closest schools. Families, after all, are not compelled to use the nearest pharmacy or the nearest supermarket. More to the point, many who favor charter schools say that public schools might improve if they competed for students. Maybe, maybe not. There is not much evidence either way.

Accountability has not moved hand in hand with the proliferation of charter schools. More should be revealed about the records of their students. An editorial writer who is about to comment on charter schools should visit some such schools, as well as going to some of the neighborhood schools that the children in the charter schools previously attended.

Remember: A charter school represents, more than anything else, an approach to educational governance. They provide choice, but there is nothing by way of pedagogy that unites all charter schools. One differs from the next. This is fine just so you recognize that an editorial for or against charter schools has little to do with the teaching and learning that occur in the many different kinds of charter schools.

RELATED ARTICLE: Hechinger education seminar deadline is March 22

The Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media is accepting applications for its annual seminar for editorial writers.

The session, presented in partnership with NCEW, will meet May 3-5 in New York City.

Topics will include: the classroom after September 11, the race gap in achievement, standards and assessment under the new federal requirements, and teacher shortages.

Editorial writers will also participate in roundtables to share and discuss their editorials.

Each year about 30 participants are chosen. The institute provides housing and meals and offers a travel grant. The application deadline is March 22.

Contact Gene I. Maeroff, Director, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 W. 120th Street, Box 127, New York NY 10027-6696. E-mail [e-mail]

Gene Maeroff is director of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, which partners with NCEW annually for an editorial writers seminar. Contact him at [e-mail]