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All High School Graduates Should Have These Skills

September 25, 2009 RSS Feed Print

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In recent months, an alliance of the nation's governors and state education officials has led an initiative to develop common academic standards to which all public K-12 students would be held. In an early step toward that goal, experts convened by the group this week released a set of math and English skills they say students should master before high school graduation, the Washington Post reports.

The hefty standards envisioned in the proposal, which is posted at www.corestandards.org, leave little to be desired in terms of quantity. In math, they range from core practices such as constructing viable arguments and making sense of complex problems to modeling quantitative relationships and mastering probability and statistics. And the standards for English language arts focus on reading and writing skills as well as speaking and listening proficiencies, including presenting information and responding constructively to advance a discussion.

Currently, academic standards can vary widely from state to state, and the proposal aims to lift expectations and to establish for the first time an effective national consensus on what public school students should learn to help the United States keep pace with global competitors.

Feedback from national organizations representing teachers, such as the National Education Association, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and the National Council of Teachers of English, has been part of the standards development process, but the actual writing and determination of what goes into them has been taken up by officials from Achieve Inc., a standards reform group; the College Board, which oversees the SAT college admissions exam; and the ACT testing program.

Supporters of common national standards say that uneven expectations for students are folly when the United States trails several countries in Europe and Asia on international exams. Opponents, however, argue that a one-size-fits-all approach to education is not the right way to go.

Michael Cohen, president of Achieve, told the Post that "this is more bottom-up than top-down" and that the federal government should not take a key role in the effort. But the Obama administration has been very vocal about its belief that student standards need to be raised and is planning a $350 million grant competition to help fund common assessments for states that adopt common standards.

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There should be a common core group of learning tools and skills. The objective of going through school is to learn how to think and process information. These common core ideas might actually put us back on the path to doing just that.

Larry A Cochran of IL 1:57PM October 20, 2011

I realize that not everyone is going to get the same job, and not everyone will be attending college. It is important though that they have basic knowledge in areas such as English and Math, as well as learning basic morals/values and other life skills.
I have seen students gradaute, or about to graduate, who cannot do the simplest math problems without using a calculator. I'm not saying they have to be an expert at everything, but just contain basic knowledge. For example, I have seen students use their calculators for problems such as 5x6 or 9/0. Basic multiplication and division should have been learned long before high school. I have also been asked how to spell words such as "Paragraph" or "Difficult" Shouldn't they at least learn this stuff? Especially before high school?
And I agree, they need to stop focusing so much on competing with other schools, states, and countries and focus on what the student is actually learning. They should also try removing some of the ridiculous things they have on the core of content. Very few people is actually going to use all the theories and equations they teach you in math. Why not save that for college students who needs to know that information for their future career?

Brittany of KY 2:58AM January 20, 2010

It sounds like such a sensible idea - but not every student leaving high school needs the same set of skills as every other. They would if they were all going to work at the exact same job at the exact same time. But is that what will happen? Do we really want it to? Not every student will go on to college, or work for a large corporation. We need all types of workers; plumbers, lawyers, mathematicians, janitors, teachers, social workers, prison guards, neurosurgeons. Does anyone really think that the same skills are needed by all of those professions? What about instilling a love of learning, a desire to pursue knowledge, creativity, the ability to persevere (self-discipline), the ability to think for oneself, civility, caring for others, idealism, stewardship of the planet? Skills that are essential for living in the 21st century. But these skills cannot be tested on any standardized test. And so, unfortunately, they are not valued by the proponents of uniform national standards.
Who will be served by instituting these standards? Not the students who will be force fed a one-size-fits-all curriculum. Not the students who are differently-abled or who learn differently, or who do not want to work for corporate America. Not the students whose test scores will rise, but not the quality and scope of their learning. Not the students who will drop out of high school rather than subject themselves to yet another test. Who will benefit from the push for standardized curricula? The corporations that write the tests, sell the workbooks, and publish the textbooks. But will our nation be better off?
We are being fed misinformation about how "poorly" our students are doing compared to other nations. We are also being misinformed as to the reasons they appear to do less well than other nations. When we lead other nations in numbers of children living in poverty and in numbers of teen births, and lag behind them in providing health care for expectant mothers and children it follows that we trail those nations in "test scores".
It is still crucial to remember that not everything that is tested is important. And not everything that is important can be tested.

Sue Monaco of VT 5:12PM October 17, 2009

All High School Graduates Should Have These Skills

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