No National Standards: A Strength or Weakness of US Schools
15 June 2011
Students at Lorain Southview High School in Lorain, Ohio
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
What American students are expected to learn has long been different from state to state. We talked last week about the tradition of local control of schools. To some people, the lack of national academic standards is an important limit on federal powers. But others say all it does is limit American competitiveness in a world that is becoming more educated.
Now, state governors and chief school officers are leading a movement toward what are known as the "common core state standards." These list content in math and English language arts that students are expected to learn each year from kindergarten to high school.
In the past year, most of the fifty states have adopted these standards. That speed is partly explained by President Obama's Race to the Top competition. Accepting the standards helped states that competed last year for federal money for school reform efforts.
Patrick Murray has been an elected member of the school governing board in Bradford, Maine, for four years. The public school system is small, just one thousand two hundred students from five towns. In April, Maine became the forty-second state to approve the common core standards.
Mr. Murray says he does not trust supporters of these standards. "They say this is a state-led effort," he says, but he thinks the goal is national control of education.
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