Standards for Our Schools: How to Set Them, Measure Them, and Reach Them.

The longer American kids stay in school, the further they fall behind their counterparts in other industrialized countries. That's the troubling finding of a big international study of students' math and science skills conducted over the past couple of years. U.S. fourth-graders end up near the top of the global pile in science and above average in math; eighth-graders are slightly above average in science and below average in math; 12th-graders outperform only Cyprus and South Africa among 21 nations in a test of general math and science knowledge. The 12th-grade results, released only a few weeks ago to front-page coverage in the major dailies, explode the conventional wisdom that our top students are as good as those of our economic competitors: U.S. kids ended up tied for last on a special test of physics and advanced math. To add insult to injury, Asian nations, whose students routinely turn in world-beating performances in math and science, sat out the 12th-grade study.

Not surprisingly, pundits have taken to their hobby horses in the wake of these results, venting their pet peeves with the educational system and trumpeting favorite reform nostrums. But the simplest and most important lesson to be drawn from the Third International Math and Science Study is that expectations are a lot lower and the curricula much less rigorous in U.S. secondary schools than in those of other industrialized nations. Virtually all students in other developed countries take algebra by the eighth grade, for example, while only a quarter of U.S. students do so. Ross Perot was right when, as head of a Texas school reform commission in the 1980s, he railed against 12-coach football teams and electric cleat cleaners, deriding high schools in America as "places dedicated to play."

At one time, the U.S. could tolerate a small role for subjects like French and physics in many high schools because we had an industrial economy that required most workers to use their hands rather than their heads. But in the modem knowledge-based economy workers increasingly need the sort of rigorous education that was once largely reserved for the gifted and the privileged. That's the thesis underlying the school reform movement of the past 15 years, and it's the core belief of the new book Standards for Our Schools, by Marc Tucker and Judy Codding.

Tucker arguably has been the most influential school reformer in the nation over the past decade and a half, though he has received far less recognition than such peers as Theodore Sizer, Ernest Boyer, and Albert Shanker. Many of the most significant reforms now in place in U.S. schools can be traced to his writings, from the breaking of the vice grip of public-education bureaucracies through "site-based management" of schools, to the linking of teacher pay to performance through a National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and the establishment of national curriculum standards and tests, both of which he has drafted through his non-profit National Center for Education and the Economy and affiliated organizations.

In contrast to many in the school reform world, Tucker has both a capacity for the fine grain of individual reforms and a big-picture sense of how the many parts of an educational system fit together. Just as importantly, he has the coalition-building instincts of a politician: He has raised millions of dollars of public and private monies to find major reform projects that involve not only thousands of teachers but also dozens of governors.

This book is a blueprint for the changes in the educational system that Tucker believes are needed to achieve his holy grail of high expectations for all students. He and Codding, a former high school principal, leave no part of the system unexamined: Abandon middle schools, they urge, and replace them with more personal elementary schools that run through the eighth grade; replace elementary generalist teachers with science teachers and other specialists; give financial incentives to schools that raise student achievement; supplement textbooks with paperback "concept books" that explain the key ideas in every core course; narrow the mission of high schools to rigorous instruction in core subjects, leaving vocational education and other work of traditional "comprehensive high schools" to other institutions. Such ideas and others in the book are sound, if not always original to Tucker.

The linchpin of school improvement, Tucker argues, is national standards. "Countries where achievement is high have clear national standards," he writes, "and all the links in the chain are tied to the standards." Tough universal standards are particularly important in the U.S., he points out, because many local educators -- in sharp contrast to their counterparts in Asia -- believe that natural talent rather than hard work is the defining factor in student achievement. Tucker also argues, persuasively, that many educators won't buy into tough standards unless the standards are backed up by tests that have consequences for both students and their teachers. He therefore proposes giving schools financial and other rewards for lifting scores on tests based on such standards.

Not surprisingly, Tucker takes pains to promote his own organization's new standards and tests. The president's proposed national tests in making and math are a good but flawed idea, Tucker argues, because they don't peg test questions to a specific set of achievement standards. Not that it matters. Students are unlikely ever to take the Clinton tests, since the plan has been quashed in Congress by an improbable coalition of conservative Republicans bent on defending "local control" in education and liberal Democrats who worry that higher standards would slow the advancement of minorities.

The reality, of course, is that local control and high standards have proven to be mutually exclusive in most American communities, and the notion that higher expectations would leave minority students less well off educationally simply isn't compelling. The average African-American 12th-grader reads at the level of the average white eighth-grader, and 40 percent of Hispanic students drop out of school. They have nowhere to go but up.

The good news is that moderates in both parties are embracing the idea of tougher standards linked to tougher tests. A meeting of governors and CEO's convened by Gov. Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin and IBM's Lou Gerstner two years ago has resulted in the creation of an organization that's helping to introduce new standards in the states. And a few states, notably New York and Maryland, are phasing in tough end-of-course high school exams that should make a difference. These steps are remarkable in a nation where the mention of centralized standards and tests would have been heresy only a decade ago. But it remains to be seen whether the political center will prevail against both the left and the right on the standards issue. If not, it's unlikely that the rankings of U.S. students in international studies will budge.

Thomas Toch is a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report.