Title:
No National Standards: Strength or Weakness for
Schools in US?
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
What American students are expected to learn has
long been different from state to state. We talked
last time 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," but he thinks the goal is
national control of education. He says many states
have adopted the common core standards only because
they were offered federal money. "My opinion is when
you have federal mandates and federal money
involved, it's no longer state-led."Mr. Murray says
national academic standards would violate the United
States Constitution. He believes the federal
government should have no role in education -- none.
Patience Blythe disagrees. Ms. Blythe has taught for
five years. She recently moved to Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. Before that she was a science teacher
in Texas -- one of the few states not to adopt the
common core standards. Ms. Blythe says national
standards could improve the results of American
students on international science tests. She says:
"Not everything has to be a state issue. There could
be a benefit from some more federal involvement in
our education system, that we could address a lot of
the inequalities that we have."She also disagrees
with those who say the standards could limit the
ability of teachers to be creative. "The reality is
the standards give you keys and tools to understand
what the objectives are." For VOA Special English,
I'm Alex Villarreal.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
