A lapse in standards: Linking standards-based reform with student achievement

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 82, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 128-132

  Nave, Bill ^a   Miech, Edward ^e   Mosteller, Frederick ^b,c,d  

^a Technology Education Research Center   (United States)

^b Roger I Lee Department of Mathematical Statistics

^c HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL   (United States)

^d AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES   (United States)

^e NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0010742545     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/003172170008200209     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. Philadelphia is using the SAT 9, a relatively recent version of the test that includes "performance" questions requiring open-ended responses from students - for example, explaining why they solved a math problem in a particular way.
2. Michael Grunwald, "Philadelphia Puts School Chief to Test," Boston Globe, 19 October 1997, p. A-1.
3. Chris Argyris and Donald Schön, Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978).
4. Grunwald, p. A-22.
5. Linda Darling-Hammond, "National Standards and Assessments: Will They Improve Education?," American Journal of Education, August 1994, pp. 478-510;
6. "The Push for New Standards Provokes Hope and Fear - and Both Are Justified," Harvard Education Letter, September/October 1993, pp. 1-3, 5;
7. Anne C. Lewis, "An Overview of the Standards Movement," Phi Delta Kappan, June 1995, pp. 744-50;
8. and Milbrey W. McLaughlin and Lorrie A. Shepard, "Improving Education Through Standards-Based Reform: A Report by the National Academy of Education Panel on Standards-Based Education Reform," ERIC ED 387 867, 1995 .
9. David Cohen, "What Standards for National Standards?" Phi Delta Kappan, June 1995, pp. 751-57.
10. Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (Reston, Va.: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1989);
11. and Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics (Reston, Va.: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1991). Revised standards were published in the spring of 2000.
12. The five states are Vermont, Kentucky, New York, California, and South Carolina, and the three projects are the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' standards, the College Board's Advanced Placement program, and the National Science Foundation's programs of the 1950s and 1960s. For details, see "Developing Content Standards: Creating a Process for Change," CPRE Policy Brief, ERIC ED 362 981, October 1993.
13. For a detailed examination of how the National Assessment of Educational Progress determines its performance standards, see Setting Performance Standards for Student Achievement: A Report of the National Academy of Education Panel on the Evaluation of the NAEP Trial State Assessments: An Evaluation of the 1992 Achievement Levels (Stanford, Calif.: National Academy of Education, 1993).
14. Act 60: Vermont's Equal Educational Opportunity Act: Your Handbook (Montpelier: Vermont Department of Taxes, 1997).
15. Lewis, Act 60: Vermont's Equal Educational Opportunity Act: Your Handbook op. cit.
16. A Review of the Research on the Kentucky Education Reform Act 1995 (Frankfort: Kentucky Institute for Education Research, February 1996).
17. James D. Allen and Anne Dietrich, "Student Differences in Attribution and Motivation Toward the Study of High School Regents Earth Science," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, 1991, ERIC ED 338 482.
18. The researchers selected this unit because the concepts were likely to be new to all the students. That is, few students were likely to have had any past experience with the process of tracing the flow of water through a specific locale or using knowledge of rainfall amounts, soil moisture retention limits, relation of evapotranspiration to temperature regimes, and so on. Therefore, all students began this unit on a "level playing field."
19. At the end of the school year, 12 previously low-achieving students also earned passing scores on the demanding Regents exam for the entire course, thus earning Regents credit for the course.
20. This is an example of what Carol Weiss describes as "theory-based evaluation." See Carol H. Weiss, Bringing Theory-Based Evaluation Within Our Means (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Project on Schooling and Children, 1997).
21. Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils' Intellectual Development (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968);
22. and Robert Rosenthal, "Interpersonal Expectancy Effects: A 30-Year Perspective," Current Directions in Psychological Science, December 1994, pp. 176-79.
23. Thomas Kellaghan, George F. Madaus, and Peter W. Airasian, The Effects of Standardized Testing (Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff Publishing, 1982).
24. Center for the Study of Athletics, Summary Results from the 1987-88 National Study of Intercollegiate Athletes (Palo Alto, Calif.: American Institute for Research, Studies of Intercollegiate Athletics, Report No. 1, 1988).
25. Caroline Hendrie, "Reconstitution Gaining New Momentum," Education Week, 24 September 1997, p. 1.
26. For a case study of this takeover, see Margaret Dolan, "State Takeover of a Local District in New Jersey: A Case Study," ERIC ED 345 370, 1992.
27. James P. Comer et al., Rallying the Whole Village: The Comer Process for Reforming Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996).
28. One of us (Nave) has been involved with various components of this process since 1990.
29. Nave conducted a phone interview with Hombeck on 24 March 1998. See also Children Achieving (Philadelphia: School District of Philadelphia, 1995);
30. and Curriculum Frameworks, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: School District of Philadelphia, 1998). These volumes cover grades K-4, 5-8, and 9-12.
31. Children Achieving, p. I-1.