January 10, 2008

Systemic reform followed by standards based reform in K-12 education begins with state content standards. Based at least in part on policy research in education, the pair of reforms make the assumption that what is taught is a strong predictor of what students will learn. Thus, being clear about what it is that we want students to know and be able to do and expressing that message in content standards is the first step in standards based reform. Being clear as to the desired outputs of schooling, however, is hypothesized to be insufficient. To give weight to content standards the reforms call for student achievement testing aligned to the standards. The results of student achievement testing can be used in accountability in a variety of ways and to the extent the student achievement tests are aligned to the content standards, accountability should add to the influence of the contents standards on teachers' instructional practices and, ultimately student achievement. An aligned education system can and has been extended to include aligned professional development and instructional materials. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, now up for re-authorization, puts standards based reform into law requiring, among other things, that each state publish grade specific challenging academic content standards in English, language arts and mathematics (grades 3-8 and at least one other grade in high school) and content standards in science in at least one grade level for elementary, middle and high school. NCLB also requires that states have aligned student achievement testing at the same grade levels and academic subjects and that they use the results to hold their schools accountable. Some have suggested that voluntary national content standards would have advantages over state specific standards. They argue that math is math, reading is reading and science is science. They ask why does each state need to have their own standards for these subjects? If there were voluntary national content standards there could also be voluntary national achievement tests. The advocates for this approach hypothesize that the quality of standards and student achievement testing would increase dramatically, while the cost nation wide would plummet. (Porter, 2007). Of course, the United State is a country of states rights in education; those opposed to voluntary national content standards and voluntary national student achievement tests see both as infringements upon states' rights. The purpose here is to investigate similarities and differences among states' content standards to …