Weaker standards a disservice to education

“What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must the community want for all its children.”

– John Dewey, 1900 The progressive educator John Dewey understood the critical link – long since established by ample educational research – between high expectations for students’ learning and high levels of student achievement. Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn’s proposal to delay and reduce high school graduation standards is in clear opposition to this fundamental principle and – if enacted by the Legislature – will derail education reform in Washington.

More important, it all but ensures that increasing numbers of our students will graduate from high school unprepared either for college or for careers that require the technical training essential for a living-wage job. More of our students will not be prepared to compete in even the local – far less, the global – economy.

Dorn’s desire to postpone, yet again, meaningful graduation requirements in math and science until 2015 and 2017, respectively, is procrastination, not the aggressive leadership for improvement that our students deserve.

He argues that because schools don’t currently teach enough science to students, they can’t be expected to know enough to pass the test. Students’ interests would be better served if the lead spokesman for education in our state worked diligently to support those teachers and school districts already engaged in improving the quantity and quality of math and science curriculum, materials and instruction in our classrooms. For starters, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction could stop fiddling with the standards every two years and then using the need for re-alignment to new standards as a rationale for delay.

Of most concern, though, is Dorn’s argument for a two-tier system whereby students can earn a diploma by achieving at the lower “basic” level instead of the higher “proficient” level in math and science. Dorn views his proposal as a means to boost high school graduation rates, and it would certainly do that. Obviously, more students will pass a lower standard.

It’s also clear which students would most likely be tracked into the basic level tier; they will be disproportionately poor students, students of color, ESL or migrant students. It is ironic that at the same time the College Bound Scholarship program promises paid tuition to poor students who maintain a C average (another standard that’s too low), Dorn’s plan will graduate them at a less-than-proficient level of achievement.

Free tuition won’t help if students aren’t prepared to do the work. Already, far too many of our students who are admitted to two- and four-year colleges require remedial instruction or drop out after the first year because of inadequate preparation.

Dorn argues that the proficient level of achievement is roughly equivalent to minimum college entrance requirements and thus a “too stringent” standard. Besides, he adds, “not every student is going to college.”

The notion that “college isn’t for everyone” is a seriously outdated and misleading paradigm. The comprehensive study by the ACT, Measuring College and Career Readiness, asserts the need for rigorous common academic standards that recognize “the reality that students need a comparable level of knowledge and skills whether they are preparing for college or for work” in jobs that produce a living wage.

Kati Haycock of the Education Trust regularly addresses large groups of educators. When she asks them where own children are heading after high school, the answer, she says, is “college, always college.” How can we educators accept a lower level of achievement for other people’s children than we expect for our own?

To adopt a system that enables large numbers of students to graduate unprepared for post-secondary work in effect institutionalizes the achievement gap that we’ve all been working so diligently to eliminate. As educators, we are the keepers of the aspirations of the students given to our care. I hope we will, as wise parents do, maintain high expectations for them all.

Patti Banks is superintendent of the University Place School District.