National standards: should the federal government tell schools what to teach?

At a time of increasing global economic competition, continued signs of backsliding in state oversight of schools, and growing impatience with No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the debate over national education standards has heated up.

Chester Finn and Michael Petrilli see national standards as the surest route to leaving no child left behind. James Peyser says national standards will harm charter schools and hamstring reform-minded states. Robert Gordon says national standards are now a tough sell for Republicans, but provide a ready-made opportunity for Democrats.

A New New Federalism

The case for national standards and tests

The federal government has pushed far too deeply into the routines and operations of the nation's public schools, now regulating everything from teacher credentials to the selection of reading programs.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) made the problem worse. Ironically, the one way to extricate Washington from the minutiae of K-12 education is to give it more power in one realm--specifically, the power to set national standards and tests--and then ask it to back off from just about everything else.

The federal role in education has always been a disappointment and a frustration. For most of our history, Uncle Sam steered clear of the issue; in the days of Jim Crow, this amounted to shameful neglect. After Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965), the pendulum began to swing toward the other extreme: Washington became an overbearing, micromanaging schoolmarm, attempting to coerce equity, then excellence, from the K-12 system through regulation and bribery. This, too, has failed to produce schools of which our nation can be proud.

NCLB was supposed to improve the situation, to signal a new New Deal between the federal government and the states. Think management. In concept, the states would embrace tough accountability for their schools and districts and the schools would yield markedly higher achievement; the feds would back away from regulation and slash the red tape. The combination would give schools what they needed to be successful: strong incentives to boost student achievement, combined with the freedom of action to innovate and get the job done. When announcing his program in 2001, George W. Bush described the principle this way: "If local schools do not have the freedom to change, they cannot be held accountable for failing to change." Parents, too, would be empowered through additional information and school choice, said the president. Freedom and transparency would rule, and the payoff would be millions more "proficient" kids.

Unfortunately, politics, compromise, and bureaucracy reared their familiar visages. Neither states nor the feds have kept their part of the grand bargain, leaving our schools undermotivated and overregulated, our parents frustrated and bewildered, millions of our kids subproficient, and thousands of our schools stuck with "in need of improvement" labels but not improving.

The Race to the Bottom

Consider the states' reaction to NCLB. Evidence is mounting that they are responding by lowering their standards, making their tests easier, and shielding their schools from accountability. Some of this is happening in plain view; Missouri, for example, recently backed away from its high standards specifically because NCLB was fingering so many of its schools as subpar. Many other states are gaming the system behind closed doors. One sign of this quiet rebellion is the growing disparity between student performance on state exams and on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). According to an analysis by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, from 2003 to 2005 at least 20 states posted gains on their own 8th-grade reading exams, yet none of these showed progress at the "proficient" level on NAEP. While there could be explanations for this discrepancy, one must suspect that states are finding subtle ways to make their own tests easier.

What would prompt states to lower the bar? After all, money flows to schools whether they make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) or not. Most likely, the incentives to which they are responding are not those imposed from Washington but from below: irate local superintendents and school board members who don't want NCLB to shine a harsh light on their schools' shortcomings.

This pressure appears to be having an impact beyond tests. States are also finding ways to game their definitions of AYP to let more schools off the hook. In Oklahoma, for example, the number of schools failing to make AYP dropped by 85 percent from 2003-04 to 2004-05, not because its students learned more but because bureaucrats made a technical change to the state's NCLB formula. Such educational finagling is rampant, and explains why, as standards are supposedly being ratcheted up the closer we get to 2014 (when all students are to be "proficient"), the number of schools across the nation "in need of improvement" is stable. Is there any doubt that the standards-and-accountability movement is in peril?

There are a few happy exceptions. Massachusetts is fairly termed the "poster child" for NCLB. Its decade-old education reforms anticipated many of NCLB's policies, thus allowing the Bay State to keep on course when the federal law came along. Its academic standards are outstanding, its assessment system is highly regarded, and its results are impressive. Massachusetts now posts America's highest test scores in several categories. Recent gains among its poor and minority students are especially compelling. Nor have state officials used the federal law as an excuse to lower the bar. But basing our lessons on the Massachusetts experience is like judging a school's obesity problem by examining the track team. Things look good there, but the sample is by no means representative. Massachusetts school reform may well be worse off under national standards and tests, but that can't be said about most other jurisdictions.

What Ever Happened to Deregulation?

Washington's record is equally unimpressive. Despite the rhetoric about NCLB providing "flexibility in return for accountability," by the time President Bush's law cleared Congress there was precious little flexibility left. Most of the rules and regulations that had accreted over the previous 40 years stayed in place; NCLB's new "flex" programs have gone largely unused because they offer scant relief. Meanwhile, Uncle Sam added two huge mandates: that every teacher in the country be "highly qualified" in very specific ways and that schools use "scientifically based" classroom methods, especially teaching young children to read. Neither of these is without merit, but the cumulative effect is to shackle schools with red tape rather than encourage innovation and a "whatever it takes" attitude. State and district officials respond predictably: by going through the motions, focusing on compliance instead of performance, playing games with federal regulators, and cutting secret side deals with Washington at the political level.

The most pernicious example of this cat-and-mouse game involves the standards-and-accountability system itself. We've already seen how states try to work the system; in response, federal officials write new rules in an effort to force states to live up to the spirit of the law. For example, early in the NCLB implementation process, some states discovered that they could shield their schools from its sanctions if they decreed that the performance of subgroups, such as disabled students, would only count toward AYP if the groups were quite large. Other states followed suit; after the Associated Press reported that upward of 2 million children--most of them minorities--were being excluded from NCLB's accountability system via such gimmicks, Congress pressured the Department of Education to rein in the practice. Yet we know that states will find new ways to punch holes in the law. They always do. And, as we can attest from personal experience, the Education Department lacks the competence, capacity, and political resolve to win this war. So we're left with classic compliance-oriented behavior around a performance-oriented law. And lots of games being played and smoke blown.

Even as the bureaucrats battle over nuanced issues of measurement, Washington has no say over what really matters: the content of the academic standards, the rigor of the tests, or the ultimate consequences for school failure. NCLB made the wrong compromise. Instead of being tight about results and loose about means, it tries to be tight about means and heedless as to ends.

Parents, meanwhile, face a paradox. They have access to loads of new data but, because the yardstick keeps changing and comparability ends at the state line, they actually have little information about how their child's school is really doing.

Surely there's a better way.

The New New Federalism: Measure Results, Then Get Out of the Way

We envision a radically different approach, a role reversal in which the feds play a much smaller role in the day-to-day affairs of local schools, but are much more specific about achievement expectations. Under this scenario, Washington would do three things--and only three things--in K-12 education: 1) fund high-quality research and data gathering; 2) distribute dollars (ideally through a formula weighted by student needs); and 3) measure the schools' progress with common standards and tests, just like other grown-up countries do. That's it. Okay, it should also investigate civil rights violations. Full stop. Nothing else.

Is such a deal possible? James Peyser is skeptical (see "Hoop Hassles," p. 52); once the feds set the standards, he argues, they will inevitably intervene when the results disappoint. The kind of federal restraint that we picture would be an historical anomaly. Furthermore, who is to say that Washington will set rigorous standards rather than the vague or politically correct kind that are in place in most states today?

We recognize these concerns. So here's a proposal; it's a version of "if you build it, they will come." First, set the standards and develop the tests, building on the excellent ones from Massachusetts, Indiana, and California. Make them available for public inspection. Develop a national version of AYP. Then offer the states a deal: if you opt into this national measurement and reporting system, all the pesky federal rules (such as "highly qualified teachers") go away. Or you can keep your own standards and tests--and the full panoply of federal regulations.

We suspect that many state officials would jump at the opportunity to switch. After all, it provides them with political cover to do the right thing. Before long you'd have de facto national standards, without any states being forced to submit. And if the feds renege and go back to their micro-managing ways, states are free to pull out--and return to their heedless ways.

It's a win-win plan. Parents would have clear signals about the effectiveness of their child's school, and the other schools they might choose among. As in England, with its national "league tables" of school achievement, educators and policymakers could make simple, valid comparisons. (We would favor "value-added" as well as absolute comparisons.) Principals and superintendents, freed from the red tape that frustrates them, would have the authority and incentives to make real change, and would be denied the excuse that "the feds won't let me." Employers would have comparable information about educational quality from sea to shining sea. And, through the standards, our society would have a common cultural language to support the cause of E Pluribus Unum.

We know that many conservatives and Republicans recoil at the idea of national standards and tests. To date, Washington's expanding role in education has left local schools with less power and authority and more obstacles and headaches. But conservatives should ask themselves: what's going to change this situation? Efforts to roll back Washington's role in K-12 education always crash and burn. It's simply too important an issue to the nation's citizens. National standards and tests just might be the way out of the morass--and the way into the education future that our country needs.

Chester E. Finn Jr. is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, where Michael J. Petrilli is a vice president. Both are affiliated with Stanford's Hoover Institution.

BY MICHAEL J. PETRILLI AND CHESTER E. FINN, JR.

Hoop Hassles

Incentives, not national control

There can be little doubt that there is wide variation in the rigor and quality of state standards and assessments.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Moreover, it is clear that the vast majority of states have set their academic achievement bar far lower than federal standards, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Since No Child Left Behind (NCLB) pegs its accountability mechanism to state test results, rather than NAEP, there is a natural incentive for states to maintain or even weaken their already-low standards. If this pattern of behavior persists, much of NCLB's promised educational benefit will be lost.

One response to this disappointing reality has been a renewed call for nationalized standards and assessments. The concept of common standards for all American children has a definite appeal. After all, algebra is the same in Massachusetts as it is in Mississippi. More tellingly, in an era of labor mobility and global competition, our national economic well-being is threatened by the weakness of many state education systems. In other words, it matters to California employers that New Jersey's academic standards are low.

Nevertheless, transforming NAEP (or its successor) into a mandatory national test to replace state assessments as the primary measure of school and student performance is a highly questionable proposition. Indeed, the whole enterprise sounds like a case study of being careful what you wish for; it is fraught with potential for producing a cure that is worse than the disease.

We're from Washington and We're

Here to Help

Let me frame my comments by declaring that I am an NCLB supporter, albeit one who has a narrow view of the law's virtues and a fairly jaundiced view of its most sweeping aspirations. In my opinion, NCLB's greatest value is creating accountability for the allocation and use of federal funds with at least some connection to school performance and student outcomes.

At its most basic level, NCLB introduces the notion that federal money will continue to flow only if districts and states are actually able to demonstrate that they can run effective schools, not simply comply with rules and regulations. The only way to reliably evaluate such performance is through a system of standards and assessments. I'm sorry to say that most of the law's other requirements (like "highly qualified" teachers) seem to me mostly symbolic and prone to creative (and wasteful) noncompliance or endless backsliding. The federal dollar itself is still just a small slice of the education funding pie (see Figure 1).

Equally important, we take the federal government's limited constitutional role seriously. There are always good reasons for creating a single, national solution to the problems of the day, whether the problem is education, welfare, health care, housing, transportation, or economic development. In almost all these cases, federal policies and programs have had serious negative consequences that all too frequently offset their benefits, stemming at least in part from the conceit that complex human problems can be solved by getting a bunch of smart people together to craft an elegant solution.

Establishing a single set of national standards and assessments would effectively make the federal government the owner and operator of America's public education system. This would in turn inevitably draw the Department of Education deeper and deeper into the business of operating schools, most likely by issuing an ever-expanding set of ineffectual yet burdensome edicts. Such an outcome is not consistent with my view of a wise and limited federal government.

The State of the States

The question on the table should not be whether or how to adopt national standards, but what problem are we trying to solve? There is a great deal of frustration, which I share, that state standards are inconsistent and that some states are making themselves look better than they really are by gaming the system. While that's truly unfortunate, I think this controversy is ultimately a sideshow. The real issue is how to substantially raise the level of academic achievement.

My home state of Massachusetts is arguably an NCLB poster child. We have curricular standards that are highly regarded. We have assessments aligned with those standards and they are reasonably consistent with NAEP. And we have an accountability system that has led to at least a few cases of direct state intervention in underperforming schools and districts. Nevertheless, I would not pretend to say that we have yet figured out how to dramatically and persistently improve educational outcomes, especially for poor kids. Standards, assessments, and accountability are absolutely necessary, but they are not even close to sufficient. Creating great schools is infinitely more messy and contextual than creating a performance measurement system. Expending intellectual and political capital on nationalizing the yardstick is probably not as valuable as applying these scarce resources to building great schools.

For many states, moving to NAEP-based standards would clearly be a step in the right direction, at least in the long term. But making the transition by federal fiat would in all likelihood stop current progress in its tracks for all states, mine included. In Massachusetts, we have made measurable progress in performance, although in many cases these gains have been incremental and are beginning to level off. I'm convinced that much of the modest success we've enjoyed has been tied to the adoption of a statewide graduation requirement based on our 10th-grade MCAS test (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System), beginning with the class of 2003, not the result of a national standard or ethic. That graduation requirement set the passing standard at "needs improvement," which is roughly equivalent to NAEP's "basic" level. Now that we are seeing the vast majority of students get over this threshold, the current challenge is raising everyone's sights toward proficiency. This will be as difficult a process as setting the graduation requirement in the first place, which was no walk in the park.

If we were all of a sudden to drop MCAS in favor of NAEP, or some other national test, I have no doubt that all forward momentum would stop as we attempted to bring our state laws and regulations in line with new federal requirements and as schools recalibrated their education programs to a slightly different set of standards and tests. The process would again get in the way of the substance. From where I sit, this interregnum would serve no higher purpose for the children of my state, and would be damaging to the current cohort of public school students, especially those entering the upper grades.

Carrots, Not Sticks

Finally, under the heading of unintended consequences, I am very fearful that placing sole responsibility for standard setting with the federal government could result in the worst of all possible worlds: national standards and assessments that embrace the conventional wisdom and social agendas of the education "experts" who staff our schools of education, teachers unions, and national associations. It's naive to believe that the cloistered environment of the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), NAEP's progenitor, can be sustained if the stakes are raised so high. Although the rhetoric has been dampened or driven underground, the curriculum wars are not yet over. In a different political context, one that is more hospitable to the "education establishment," there should be no doubt that there would be enormous pressure to mold national standards and assessments to fit that establishment's worldview. Indeed, as Chester Finn and Diane Ravitch acknowledged recently in the Wall Street Journal, the Bush administration itself is already responding to the heat by turning a blind eye to stagnant NAEP results in order to showcase NCLB's success and "to accommodate state pleas for flexibility."

If we could adopt a constitutional amendment empowering Diane Ravitch, Chester Finn, and their heirs to oversee the development and maintenance of national standards, I'd be willing to set aside my reservations and sign on the dotted line. But short of that unlikely occurrence, centralizing this much power in a single place creates far more risk of catastrophe than allowing 50 states to muddle along their more diverse paths.

Because of such concerns, I'm against pushing for mandatory national standards and assessments. Instead, I propose a more incremental approach, one that tries to create greater rigor within our current state-based systems, without ripping them up root and branch.

Specifically, I suggest adding NAEP performance as a factor in determining the allocation of federal funds. For example, if a district makes Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) based on low state standards (relative to NAEP), it may lose some federal money or be ineligible for certain grant funds, even though it is not technically "in need of improvement" under NCLB.

To support this new system, DOE should fund the development of more-detailed curriculum frameworks (perhaps several different alternatives) and a national test-item bank for interim and annual assessments, all aligned to NAEP standards. States would be free to choose among these frameworks or stick with their own homegrown versions.

This approach might lead to more consistent standards over time, but it would do so gradually through incentives, rather than quickly through compulsion. It would also avoid (I hope) a distracting and potentially damaging political food fight on the nationalization of education standards. Instead of devoting scarce time, energy, and money to this sort of risky venture, I would prefer to expend these resources on developing effective strategies for turning around failing schools, accelerating the pace of new-school creation and replication, deepening the educator talent pool, and broadening parental choice.

James Peyser is a partner with NewSchools Venture Fund and chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education.

BY JAMES A. PEYSER

Little Leverage (Figure 1)

Although the portion of public school revenue from the federal
government has increased slightly over the part 13 years, state and
local governments continue to carry more than 90 percent of the budget
burden.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education
Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), "National Public Education
Financial Survey"

Political Realities

To get national standards, leaders will need to be bold

Wonks love national standards. Politicians don't.

Wonks love national standards for solving wonky problems, like the downward pressure on standards and the incomparability of states' test results under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Wonks love the frisson of danger from embracing an idea that their ideological allies don't like, whether they are conservatives committed to states' rights or liberals troubled by inflexible standards. Finally, wonks love the fact that every past effort to establish national standards has crashed and burned. The implausibility is testimony to their (well, our) purity of heart.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Politicians are less interested in purity than in popularity. And they know recent history. When Bill Clinton proposed voluntary national testing in 1997, he drew opposition from both ends of the political spectrum, including the Eagle Forum, the Christian Coalition, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the National Education Association. Who can blame him for folding his cards? There is not a leader in Washington eager to go up against that diverse crowd.

Yet a few years later, a standards-based accountability system became the core component of NCLB. That law put standards and accountability at the center of education nationwide, even as it left the determination of standards to the discretion of the states. In important ways, NCLB made standards advocates victims of their own success. They won passage of the law by painting a sunny picture of a standards-based future, but at least for the moment, reality is cloudier. At a time when many activists are agitating to cut back the role of Washington in education, a politician aiming to expand it with national standards could seem naive or stupid.

An Entry Strategy

There is a way forward, however. Politicians are already taking modest steps toward national standards without creating a firestorm. Consider the recent work of the country's governors. Although in principle they should be eager to defend state prerogatives, governors do not live in principle. They have to get the job done. Last year, at their national summit, 16 governors agreed to work with Achieve, Inc., a national nonprofit organization, on setting lofty standards for high-school graduation, increasing the rigor of high-school curricula and tests, and aligning standards and tests with the demands of work and college. Now 22 governors are involved. These states have begun quietly combining efforts and borrowing from each other. State pride is a reason to root for State U., not to waste scarce state money.

While the Achieve approach does not yet apply to earlier grades, quiet congressional action could. The reauthorization of No Child Left Behind will contain countless provisions initially known only to Hill staffers and lobbyists. Opponents of national standards can try to stir their armies over issues both large and small, but that may prove difficult if the proposals are framed in sufficiently sensible but obscure ways. For example, Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy recently introduced legislation that would require national rankings of state standards and assessments against the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). From the other side of the political spectrum, Harvard's Caroline Hoxby, a member of the Hoover Institution's Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, has also proposed benchmarking against NAEP, with the added wrinkle that states with tougher standards would receive extensions of the deadlines in NCLB.

Both approaches would lift standards and encourage national movement toward NAEP standards. Both also avoid the most controversial aspects of the Clinton efforts. Measures like those proposed by Kennedy and Hoxby don't turn the Department of Education into a standard-setting body (to be known to critics as a "national school board"), and they don't establish "national tests" beyond the highly respected ones we already have. It is difficult to see ordinary churchgoers and teachers mobilizing in protest against benchmarking, though tempests in the Hill teapot have begun over less.

As with Achieve's efforts, the features that make the Kennedy and Hoxby approaches more viable also restrain their impacts. These initiatives would, for example, limit national benchmarking to the three grades tested by NAEP. And they would leave in place the crazy quilt of state tests. Any proposal to take on those aspects of the status quo--to extend national testing, for example, and strongly push it on states--would meet fierce opposition.

The Leadership Quotient

Yet it is wrong to imagine that the strange alliance that defeated standards in the nineties, from Phyllis Schlafly on the right to Maxine Waters on the left, would necessarily prevail in the new century. After all, most of the folks who opposed national standards also had grave misgivings about NCLB, but it became law. And it became law for one reason: a (then) popular president badly wanted it. That is no surprise. In America, presidents have unique power to initiate change. So the question is whether we can imagine leading national figures embracing national standards.

While political insiders often disparage national standards as a dry-as-dust technicality that won't interest voters, voters themselves may take a different view. They see the new global demands for skills; they want their kids to be ready; and they may well be happy to see Washington seize responsibility for that readiness. In 1996, 87 percent of Americans said they supported a nationwide academic examination for high-school graduation. The NCLB backlash has grown since it was signed into law in 2002, but many polls have remained surprisingly favorable. In early 2004, a National Education Association (NEA) poll showed substantial, though not majority, support for expanding the federal education role to include national standards. Another 2004 poll showed that 59 percent of Americans supported increased federal oversight of public schools.

Yet good politicians don't choose policies based on polls. They choose policies that fit into their own larger vision for the country. National standards will only find political support if they fit into such a vision.

In theory, it's possible to imagine a Republican campaigning for national standards within a broadly conservative vision. In 2000, George W. Bush promoted education reform, including a strong federal role in education, as the best evidence of his "compassionate conservatism." A natural successor in time of war could be "national-greatness conservatism," first trumpeted in the Wall Street Journal nearly a decade ago by David Brooks and William Kristol.

Citing Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, Brooks and Kristol praised "limited but energetic" use of government in the service of American strength and individual initiative. At a time when America's achievement on international tests falls somewhere between Cyprus and Hungary, it is possible to imagine an articulate conservative who demands that every red-blooded American pass a test as tough as France's. The blow to states-rights principles from national standards could be softened with pledges to block-grant federal education spending and encourage competition through charter schools or school vouchers, along the lines described in the contribution from Chester Finn and Michael Petrilli in this issue (see "A New New Federalism," p. 48). The business community, always friendly to national standards, would gobble it up. Of greater interest, some minority voters with kids in lousy schools might do the same.

In theory, Arizona senator John McCain could take this line. So too could Governor Mitt Romney, touting his own Massachusetts miracle of rising test scores and a tough graduation exam. But there is an enormous problem. The Republican base, so critical to the nominating process and so committed to local control, would hate it. In 2000, social conservatives accepted Bush's ambitious education agenda because they wanted to win. Four years earlier, Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole had pledged to abolish the Education Department, but in polls, voters said they preferred Clinton's ambitious federal education agenda to Dole's plan by a margin of 30 percentage points. Four years later, with education near the top of voters' agendas in 2000, social conservatives calculated that they could live with their nominee offering an ambitious federal plan of his own. And it was a smart calculation. As recounted in a new book on NCLB by Drew University political science professor Patrick McGuinn (No Child Left Behind and the Transformation of Federal Education Policy, 1965-2005), GOP pollster David Winston attributes Bush's 2000 victory to his education agenda.

In 2008 it will be difficult for a Republican to make the case that electoral necessity requires a strong education agenda, much less national standards. Education has dropped as a public concern. The president's success in reasserting a serious Republican claim to education means that for all of his party's problems, lack of concern for schooling isn't among them today. And no longer starved for power, the Republican base today seeks to return to first principles, which for them are not Lincoln and Roosevelt's, but Goldwater and Reagan's. That is why leading Republican candidates for president like Virginia senator George Allen now pepper their speeches with potshots at "federal education bureaucrats." And at a time when frontrunner John McCain is courting the religious right, he seems as likely to support home schooling as national standards.

Between a Rock and National Standards

Democrats have their own difficulties but should have an easier time. When it comes to national standards, their problem hasn't been the "national," but the "standards." Civil rights groups have worried that minority students will not meet national standards in disproportionate numbers. And teacher organizations have never liked the idea of a government agency telling their members what to teach once the classroom door has closed. The lawsuits by the National Education Association and the bright-blue state of Connecticut show just how difficult it would be to unify the Democratic base around national standards.

But overcoming the opposition may not be as hard as it seems. Today, unlike in 1996, we already have the standards. And virtually all Democratic leaders have expressed their strong commitment to those standards. It is hard to go back.

More important, adding the "national" to the "standards" can become a vehicle for meeting many critics' concerns. Democrats can assail the waste and confusion that the current 50-state, 50-test regime has created. Never shy about finding fault with corporate malefactors, they can attack the testing companies that make millions from the new status quo. In language their union supporters will appreciate, they can also criticize the current tests and pledge funding for the development of superior, sophisticated exams that measure higher-level thinking skills. National standards can become the basis both to critique the status quo and to fix it. It is not difficult to imagine a Democratic nominee making exactly this argument.

Democrats can make such claims because they have nothing against the federal government in theory, however much state and local school officials have been complaining about NCLB in practice. In fact, Democrats have long believed in vigorous use of national power to ensure greater attention to forgotten children. The argument for national standards parallels the historical argument for federal action to desegregate schools or to serve children with disabilities. In principle, states could be achieving these goals; in reality, they aren't. That is why a federal commitment matters. And that is why civil rights groups are now more supportive of accountability than they were a decade ago, as the recent intervention of the Connecticut chapter of the NAACP against that state's lawsuit demonstrates.

Standards con Brio

Much as a Republican might make national standards more palatable to his base by linking them to school choice, a Democrat will want to link national standards to a greater commitment to funding the means to achieve them. During the 1990s, the policy term was "opportunity to learn standards"; the political formula was that "spending without accountability is a waste of money, and accountability without spending is a waste of time." That formula still works, in policy and in politics. So Democrats could promote reforms in education financing. Title I has ameliorated some interdistrict funding gaps, but recent research has revealed vast gaps both within districts, owing in part to the loopholes in Title I's comparability requirement, and among states, resulting from states' different resources and levels of effort. Today, a Democratic candidate could bring together the party's wings by calling for a national commitment to high standards and the resources to meet them.

To be sure, putting national standards on the national agenda is one thing; making them law is another. A Republican president will have difficulty getting his party to put up the dollars or concede local control to the federal government. A Democrat will have to persuade union leaders to live with more serious standards in exchange for more money. But a new president from either party can move the agenda forward. Much will take place--within the National Governors' Association or a House-Senate conference committee, for example. But it will require a national leader's embrace for the biggest changes to happen. When a politician supports national standards with as much gusto as we wonks do, national standards will stand a fighting chance.

Robert Gordon works for the New York City Department of Education and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He worked for John Kerry and John Edwards on education issues during the 2004 presidential campaign. The views expressed are his own.

BY ROBERT GORDON