Starting Early on Common Standards

Today’s big education policy news is that 49 states and the District of Columbia have signed on to an effort, led by the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers, to establish a common core of voluntary, rigorous standards in mathematics and English language arts in grades K-12, to be shared across participating states.

That’s big news and, given the abundant evidence of disparities and lack of rigor in states’ existing standards, a positive development.

We have two concerns, though: First, we’re very disappointed to see the effort limited to K-12 standards, rather than PreK-12 standards. America’s public schools already enroll significant numbers of pre-k students, and even more are enrolled in state-funded pre-k programs offered through a range of community-based providers. These programs need common standards and expectations for what children should learn in pre-k that are aligned with common K-12 standards. High-quality pre-k standards, aligned with K-12 standards, are a critical first step in building an aligned PreK-3rd system and ensuring that children are able to meeting rigorous common standards in the early elementary grades.

Second, we very much hope that this work will focus heavily on the need to improve standards in the early elementary school grades. Much of the public conversation around the need for more rigorous, common standards focuses on the need for “college and career-ready” standards that ensure students leave the public education system with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in higher education or the workforce. That’s certainly true. But there’s often an unspoken suggestion, in these conversations, that what we’re doing in the elementary years is okay, and we really need to focus on increasing rigor in the middle and high school years.

Yet analysis suggests that the elementary school grades–particularly grades K-2–are often the weakest area in existing state standards. An analysis published last year by the American Federation of Teachers lays this out clearly: Because the early elementary grades aren’t usually subject to NCLB assessments, many states have given short shrift to standards in these grades. State standards in the elementary school grades are often too vague to give teachers clear guidance about what children actually need to learn each year, or repeat the same content across multiple grade levels, making them ineffective in driving vertical alignment of curriculum. Some states don’t even have standards at all in the early grades, and others cluster the entire grade range into one single set of standards–again, no help for teachers seeking to implement a vertically aligned curriculum. Any effort to establish a common core of standards in math and English language arts needs to avoid replicating these shortcomings in existing standards.

Moreover, evidence suggests that the need for greater rigor in standards isn’t just at the high school level. Analysis by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute shows that many states’ elementary school standards are insufficiently rigorous–students who achieve proficiency according to the states’ elementary standards often are not actually on track to achieve proficiency in middle and high school grades. In other words, the reason are elementary schools often appear, judging by state test results, to be more successful than our middle and high schools isn’t actually because our elementary schools are doing a better job of educating kids–it’s because the bar we’re judging them against is lower. Given the critical importance of the elementary school years for building the base of skills and knowledge on which children’s later education rests, watering down expectations in the elementary grades does no one any favors.

We also share some of the concerns Andy Rotherham voices here.

NGA, CCSSO, and the 49 states (+D.C.) that signed on to move towards common standards are doing something potentially beneficial, but only if their efforts to establish common standards begin with a solid core of aligned, challenging standards in the early grades (including pre-k) that offer meaningful guidance to teachers, support vertical and horizontal curricular alignment, and put elementary school children on a path towards proficiency in later grades.

Also: What’s the deal with Alaska?