There is a clear mandate to build “data systems that measure student success and inform teachers and principals how they can improve their practices.” This is one of the “reform areas” in the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top Fund. A second area of reform is the adoption of internationally benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare students for success in college and the workplace. There are two other areas including the recruitment of effective teachers and principals, and an effort to turn around the lowest-performing schools.

In order for States to be eligible under this program (Race to the Top), a State must not have any legal, statutory, or regulatory barriers to linking student achievement or student growth data to teachers for the purpose of teacher and principal evaluation. Only a few States (California and New York) had a law that would restrict the use of student test data to evaluate individual teachers (see this article in the New York Times for details). California has since repealed the law, making it eligible to apply for $4.6 billion in Race to the Top Funds.

The second area of reform that I want to mention here is the adoption of “internationally benchmarked” standards. As you know there is a movement afoot called The Common Core State Standards Initiative under the auspices of the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the National Governors Association for Best Practices. Nearly all of the States are on board this initiative. The movement is to create a common set of standards (first in math and reading), and then to develop assessments based on these standards. All of this effort is designed to standardize curriculum and assessment, and in my opinion reduce the emphasis on innovation (and in science education this would mean less emphasis on inquiry-based teaching and learning, and increase in content-based instruction). But there is an interesting phrase in this reform effort, and that is “internationally benchmarked.” All of this has to do with the drive to “align” (line up) standards, assessment, curriculum, teaching materials, and so forth. When you read the documents upon which this thinking is based you will find words and phrases such as rigorous standards, true common standards, end-of-high school expectations, evidence-based learning.

The common standards movement, and the insistence by the Federal Government that States can have no law that would prevent student achievement scores being used to assess teachers and principles creates a non-innovative environment for education in the nation. And a recent report on American schools entitled Leaders and Laggards, suggested that schools lag in educational innovation. The report showcases examples of marque reformers, many private ventures into schooling (EdisonLearning, Wireless Generation), charter schools, and some teacher education reform efforts such as Teach for America. None of these are without their critics, yet according to the report, there is much to learn from these efforts. But overall, the report found much that “impedes innovation” such as rigid bureaucracies, finance systems of schooling and others. Yet, when you examine the details of the report, the movement of common standards, and the use of achievement tests to evaluate teacher performance are seen as principles in an innovative school culture. The report basically endorses the Race to the Top Fund strategy, and our overall penchant for driving schools toward a more regulated and common curriculum.

PISA type assessments could be seen as an example of an international benchmark of what students should be able to know and do in science, and could then be translated by educational bureaucrats into the framework for developing assessments that would be used to evaluate teacher performance. Very unfortunate if this happens.

More to come on this topic this week. In the meantime, what do think? Please add to this discussion.