Association of American Colleges and Universities, June 2000

Greater Expectations National Panel

A Summary of Efforts in School Reform Since 1983

Prepared by Ross Miller, AAC&U

I. History

A Nation At Risk—A Report to the Nation and the Secretary of Education by The National Commission on Excellence in Education—1983¹

Describing the erosion of American educational foundations as a "rising tide of mediocrity," the Nation at Risk report is often credited with jump-starting the current wave of education reform. The report documented that primary and secondary education in the United States lagged far behind the levels of achievement in other industrialized nations and predicted problems in international competitiveness if our education system did not improve.

The data indicating poor performance of American students were subjected to intense and repeated scrutiny. But while legitimate variations in interpretation were possible, an overall troubling picture of achievement provoked widespread concern with K-12 education. The Report included these findings:

high school curricula were criticized for having no central purpose and described as "cafeteria-style" where "appetizers and desserts can easily be mistaken for the main courses";
few students took challenging courses; "general track" enrollment more than tripled between 1964 and 1979;
expectations for students as expressed by state requirements for graduation, were uniformly low;
one-fifth of public 4-year colleges had to accept every high school graduate in that state regardless of grades or program taken;
the American school day (average 6 hours) and school year (average 180 days) were both significantly shorter that those of other industrialized nations (for example, England had 8 hour days and a 220 day school year);
teachers often taught out of field, particularly in subject areas where there were teacher shortages.

The Report urged school reforms on multiple fronts:

strengthening high school graduation requirements to include 4 years of English, 3 years of math, 3 years of science, 3 years of social studies, and one-half year of computer science for all students and also two years of foreign language for college—bound students;
adopting more rigorous and measurable standards, and higher expectations for academic performance and student conduct from grade school through college;
expanding the time available for learning, giving high school students far more homework, and linking promotion and graduation to academic progress, not merely attendance or age;
giving teachers stronger preparation in their major areas, higher salaries, eleven month contracts to allow for professional development and planning time, and well-defined career ladders to provide incentives to remain in the classroom;
holding educators and elected officials responsible for providing leadership to achieve reforms; and charging citizens with providing stable financial support for schools.

National Governors’ Association—1986

The governors’ 1986 report, A Time for Results, advanced the idea that the most appropriate benchmarks for our education systems were international ones.

The First National Education Summit—1989²

In 1989, most of the state governors met with White House staff and members of the U.S. Congress in Charlottesville, VA in an effort to plan a coordinated national education strategy. Among the results of the summit meeting were the adoption of six National Education Goals (two additional goals were added later by Congress) and the formation of the National Education Goals Panel (NEGP). The Goals were called national, not federal, to indicate that education was a national concern with control primarily at the local and state levels.

The NEGP was charged with tracking progress toward the national goals. NEGP reports on progress toward the National Education Goals can be viewed at www.negp.gov.

The National Education Goals

By the year 2000:

All children in America will start school ready to learn.
The high school graduation rate will increase to at least 90 percent.
All students will leave grades 4, 8, and 12 having demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter including English, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history, and geography, and every school in America will ensure that all students learn to use their minds well, so they may be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in our Nation's modern economy.
United States students will be first in the world in mathematics and science achievement.
Every adult American will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
Every school in the United States will be free of drugs, violence, and the unauthorized presence of firearms and alcohol and will offer a disciplined environment conducive to learning.
The Nation's teaching force will have access to programs for the continued improvement of their professional skills and the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to instruct and prepare all American students for the next century.
Every school will promote partnerships that will increase parental involvement and participation in promoting the social, emotional, and academic growth of children.

President Bush introduces America 2000—1991³

America 2000 was introduced as a legislative package but was never passed by Congress. It evolved into a strategy to involve communities in organizing to reform their schools in order to achieve the National Goals. By the end of 1992, forty-eight states and over 2000 communities had committed to achieving the National Goals.

The Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) report from the U.S. Department of Labor—1991⁴

The SCANS report challenged schools, parents, and businesses to help all students develop competencies in the basic skills, thinking skills, and personal qualities required for work in the current and future workplace. It identified five broad categories of competencies that would lead to successful transition from school to work:

RESOURCES—Identifies, organizes, plans, and allocates resources;
INTERPERSONAL—Works with others on teams, teaches others, serves clients, exercises leadership, negotiates, and works with diversity;
INFORMATION—Acquires, organizes, interprets, evaluates, and communicates information;
SYSTEMS—Understands complex interrelationships and can distinguish trends, predict impacts, as well as monitor and correct performance;
TECHNOLOGY—Works with a variety of technologies and can choose appropriate tool for task.

The SCANS report recommended that these competencies be learned in the environments in which they would be applied. This and subsequent supportive legislation (School-to-Work Opportunities Act, 1994) fostered collaboration between schools and employers in creating new and innovative internship and school-to-work programs. SCANS made it clear that employers’ expectations for the knowledge and skills of current and future workers had moved to challenging new levels.

President Clinton introduces Goals 2000: Educate America Act—1993

With bipartisan support for continuing school reform efforts, the Goals 2000: Educate America Act was passed by Congress. By 1998, Goals 2000 provided $466 million per year in grants to states for programs designed to achieve the National Education Goals. Specific principles of change were recognized and supported through these federal grants.

The authorization of Goals 2000 was based on recognition of fundamental principles that underlie effective school change: 1) all students can learn; 2) lasting improvements depend on school-based leadership; 3) simultaneous top-down and bottom-up reform is necessary; 4) strategies must be locally developed, comprehensive, and coordinated; and 5) the whole community must be involved in developing strategies for system-wide improvement.

Goals 2000 supported the "systemic reform model" of school improvement.

This model of reform was selected primarily due to a widespread perception that most of the reforms adopted by states and the federal government since the early 1980s were only minimally effective because they dealt, in "piecemeal" fashion, only with selected aspects of the education system. The theory underlying systemic reform is that all major aspects of the system need to be reformed together and made more coherent, as has been attempted in a few states in recent years (e.g., Kentucky). The concept has also been promoted in Goals 2000 because it is relatively broad and flexible, allowing for a wide range of state variations in implementation.¹

While the characteristics of systemic reform are broad and abstract, there are certain essential elements of systemic reform that distinguish it from most past practice in the states. Foremost among these key elements is the setting of explicit standards at the state level for curriculum content and pupil performance. Goals 2000 and other federal legislation do not require that these state standards be connected to any national standards. Nevertheless, it is required that standards be set in order for states to receive Goals 2000 grants, or to continue to receive grants under Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title I.⁶

The Second National Education Summit—1996⁷

Under the sponsorship of the Education Commission of the States and the National Governors’ Association and hosted by the International Business Machines Corporations (IBM), a second education summit was held in 1996 in Palisades, NY. Several important outcomes resulted from this meeting.

The governors agreed to develop and establish internationally competitive education standards, assessments to measure achievement of the standards, and accountability systems.
Businesses agreed to begin requiring high school transcripts as a part of the hiring process, thus linking the quality of a graduate’s work completed in high school with their future employment prospects. Some ten thousand employers are currently active in this program and additional program participants constantly being added.
Achieve, Inc. was formed as an independent, bipartisan, not-for-profit organization whose purpose was to promote much higher levels of achievement for all students through "high academic standards, demanding tests to measure those standards, and accountability for performance."

The Achieve web site allows direct, side-by-side comparison of state standards and contains information about a variety of education initiatives advancing the recommendations from the National Summit. The standards database can be accessed at www.achieve.org.

Federal Information About Schools

The federal government provides data important to tracking progress in education through the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NCES publishes the Digest of Education Statistics as a comprehensive source of data for the states and the nation. Also available on the NCES web site are data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS), providing international comparisons of achievement in math and science. (More information about NCES and access to many NCES publications are available at www.nces.ed.gov. Information about the NAEP can be found at www. nagb.org and at www.nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/site/home.asp.)

The Third National Education Summit—1999⁸

At the 1999 Summit, the governors, together with business leaders and educators, reaffirmed their commitment to rigorous academic standards. While disagreements about specific education policies (charter schools, vouchers, etc.) remained, there was nearly universal commitment to developing, implementing, and assessing rigorous standards. Efforts were refocused on improving teacher quality, providing all students with fair opportunity to meet higher standards, and holding schools accountable for results. Most states have now written detailed plans for raising student performance and improving the quality of education for all students and have submitted them for posting on the Achieve Inc. web site. (Link on the front page of the Achieve web site —www.achieve.org.)

II. The Standards Movement

While many other industrialized nations have long utilized national curricula, assessments, and accountability systems, the United States has maintained a system of locally controlled schools. Under the tenth amendment to the Constitution, education is one of the powers "reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." The development of voluntary national standards (by disciplinary and other groups) and state and local standards has proven to be challenging. Additional problems are sometimes encountered during implementation of standards-driven curricula.

Common problems associated with standards include:

vague standards that prove difficult to interpret;
standards that are not benchmarked to world-class levels and that do not challenge students;
standards that repeat work and/or concepts year after year without increasing the level of challenge;
standards written for multiple grade levels (i.e. grades 1-4, or grades 5-8, etc.) that leave unclear exactly when specific goals are to be achieved and who is responsible;
difficulty in assessing student achievement of standards; important outcomes often left unmeasured;
administrators and teachers uncomfortable with or unprepared for teaching to standards;
high school standards that are not aligned with post-secondary education entrance exams and expectations.

As states and local districts began writing standards in the wake of A Nation at Risk, many specified only the knowledge that was to be covered in a given time or course. More common now are standards that address both what students should know and what they should be able to do with that knowledge. The National Council for Education Standards and Testing (NCEST) writes that "Content standards should set out the knowledge, skills, and other understandings that schools should teach in order for American students to attain high levels of competency in the subject matter."⁹

According to NCEST, content standards should be:

world class;
important and focused;
useful;
reflective of broad consensus-building;
balanced (i.e. they should promote breadth and depth, be specific but permissive of alternatives, address theory or principles and factual knowledge, include formal knowledge and activities, utilize performances and applications, and include the best of both new thinking and traditional practices);
clear and usable for students, teachers, and parents;
assessable and indicate the nature of the evidence that would be required to judge whether the content standard has been met;
adaptable and flexible;
developmentally appropriate.

Standards alone will not raise achievement for all students. Even if excellent standards have been written, schools and communities must still address critical issues such as:

designing curricula that advance students toward meeting the standards;
improving teacher preparation, implementing meaningful professional development, and retaining the best teachers;
developing and using valid, reliable, and appropriate assessments related to the standards so as to improve teaching, learning, and curricula;
linking pedagogy to desired outcomes and to individual learning styles and needs;
holding high expectations for all students, eliminating lower expectations for disadvantaged students;
providing safe, high-quality buildings and equipment for all students;
creating support systems of tutoring, after school instruction, weekend classes, and summer instruction to assist students requiring extra help to achieve at high levels; and
evaluating the appropriateness of high-stakes testing.

Secretary of Education Riley recently renewed the call for eleven-month teacher contracts that would allow sufficient time both for professional development and for individual and small group coaching that some students will need beyond the duration of a normal school year. Teacher education reform, recommended strongly at the time of A Nation at Risk, is spreading to university education departments across the nation spurred on by state mandates and new protocols for accreditation adopted by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE).

Not everyone supports the move to standards-based curricula and schools. One major concern is that the increased demands of world class standards may cause struggling students to become discouraged and to quit school. Schools must try to maintain uniformly high expectations while ensuing progress for each individual. Vastly different opportunities-to-learn in our schools leave many students without qualified teachers or adequate infrastructure to meet even modest learning goals. There are additional concerns in some quarters that standards will:

promote "cookie-cutter" education, forcing all students to think and act in similar ways;
promote social and political goals rather than educational goals;
result in watered down curricula with the needs of the best students ignored;
discourage local innovations and creative curricular reforms;
result in state or federal control of curricula in local districts.

A widespread problem associated with the implementation of standards has been the practice of moving quickly from setting standards to using high-stakes testing. All too often, intermediate steps of planning curricula, instituting professional development for teachers, choosing pedagogy that promotes higher levels of learning, providing appropriate coaching and support services for students challenged by higher standards, designing cycles of formative classroom assessment, and creating valid and reliable summative tests are skipped. In some cases, standardized tests that are poorly linked to standards and local curricula are being used to measure progress or are used as barriers to high school graduation. In many districts, teaching-to-the-test in an effort to raise test scores begins to dominate classroom teaching. Teaching and learning become drill and practice to the exclusion of challenging and engaging lessons.

Data are vital to school improvement efforts, but those data must be reliable and valid if they are to guide schools well. Multiple-choice, knowledge-only questions neglect the assessment of many important educational goals and are of limited use in providing feedback to students and guiding teachers toward improving teaching and learning. In some locations, careless test administration practices (such as using the same form of a test several years in a row) bring into question even the meager data that have been gathered to show positive results from reform. While the standards movement promotes valid, ongoing assessments and evaluations, the reality in many places is far from that ideal. Assessment, evaluation, and high-stakes testing must be implemented correctly and used wisely if school reform based upon standards is to succeed.

It is unclear how some issues related to standards will be resolved. It is clear, however, that seventeen years after the Nation At Risk Report, much remains to be done to meet the challenges raised therein.

III. Issues Arising, Related to the Greater Expectations Initiative

The Pragmatic Question

The pragmatist asks the hard question "what difference does it make"? Will higher standards and achievement in high school result in better outcomes for college students? Data suggest that the answer may be "yes" if one believes that improving college graduation rates is important. Research shows that "academic intensity and quality of one’s high school curriculum" best predict college graduation.¹⁰

"Academic intensity and quality" is an individual student measure of the number and the quality of high school credits in six core curriculum areas. Students scoring in the top quintile on this variable have a 70 percent college completion rate. Progressively lower quintiles have lower completion rates of 44, 19, 5, and 3 percent. Researcher Clifford Adelman points out that academic intensity is a criterion variable and that "theoretically, everybody can reach the highest interval of curriculum intensity and quality."¹¹

Educators and citizens alike generally support efforts to improve high schools and to provide challenging curricula and sufficient resources for all students to help them achieve at high levels. As programs of high academic intensity and quality develop and spread, they may provide increasing numbers of students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to succeed in high school, college, and beyond.

Articulation between high schools and colleges

In an education system in which 75 percent of high school graduates enter college, colleges and high schools logically should have a clear and mutual understanding about what students learn in high school, what is expected for college admission, and what constitutes successful college-level work. The current situation is quite different from this ideal, with a pronounced mismatch existing between high school learning and a) college entrance exams (such as the SAT and ACT), on the one hand; and b) college faculty expectations of entering student performance on the other. Regarding the former, students spend millions of dollars on out-of-school courses to prepare for standardized college entrance tests. Regarding the latter, 50% percent drop out of college before the end of their second year.

An Example of Reform

One interesting approach to eliminating the disjunction between high school and college is the state of Oregon’s Proficiency-based Admission Standards System (PASS). Beginning in fall 2005, Oregon students applying to the Oregon University System (OUS) will be expected to meet challenging proficiency requirements in six subject areas (English, math, science, social science, a second language, and the arts). These proficiency requirements are being aligned with the content standards and benchmarks for two new measures of high school achievement now being offered in every Oregon high school, the Certificate of Initial Mastery and the Certificate of Advanced Mastery (CIM and CAM).

The goal of the PASS system is to give students "a single seamless educational system from kindergarten through college. Another priority is to coordinate the assessment systems so that results from CIM and CAM assessments can provide information relative to college admission."¹² PASS changes the emphasis in both high school graduation and college admissions from courses taken to knowledge and skills mastered.

With the implementation of PASS classes, more teachers began using a variety of teaching methods designed to actively engage students in the learning process. Reports indicate that students, while initially skeptical, have come to enjoy working in these classes with more demanding, but clearly defined goals.

The requirements for the CIM and CAM are clearly established and rigorously upheld through statewide assessment criteria. Thus a broad and well-defined academic profile of an entering CIM/CAM graduate, developed over several years and in six subject areas, will be available to the OUS. Such a profile will be a significant improvement over a profile created through a single test and a high school transcript which lists courses taken but leaves undefined what the student has learned and can do. Other states are also working to align high school outcomes with college entrance requirements including (but not limited to) Georgia, Wisconsin, Maryland, California, and Texas.

Student Intellectual Capacities: College Expectations

In addition to developing proficiencies in specific subject areas during high school, college freshmen need to be ready for intellectually challenging study, different in nature from (although building on) high school academic work. Colleges will expect students to:

demonstrate and improve sophisticated powers of critical analysis and investigation;
learn both independently and collaboratively;
integrate knowledge from and transfer knowledge across many fields;
take increasing responsibility for developing and supporting their own judgments;
grow perceptibly in their capacity to work with others.

Capacities such as these develop across disciplines, through diverse experiences, and especially over time. Collaborations among high schools, colleges, and policy-makers involved with education at all levels should help students improve their broad intellectual skills. Collaborations that:

design curricula that advance students toward meeting the standards;
link high school standards to college expectations of entering freshmen;
address student intellectual capacity-building in a coherent manner;
create teacher preparation programs that stress disciplinary competence, sophisticated intellectual skills in the future teachers themselves, pedagogical adaptability, and an understanding of the developmental nature of student learning;
link standards for teacher preparation to the abilities future teachers will need to help all their diverse future students reach the higher expectations desired.

1 An Open Letter to the American People, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, A Report to the Nation and the Secretary of Education, United States Department of Education, by The National Commission of Excellence in Education, April 1983. Obtained from www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk.

2 Information concerning the 1989 Education Summit and the National Education Goal Panel summarized from

NEGP: Goals Work!, acquired from www.negp.gov/page1-5.htm on 4/26/00 and U.S. Department of Education (ED) National Education Goals obtained from www.ed.gov/Welcome/tnatgoals.html.

3 Summarized from Progress of Education in the United States of America – 1990 through 1994, America 2000, obtained from www.ed.gov/pubs/Prog95/pt3fed.html.

4 SCANS information summarized and excerpted from Lankard, Bettina A. SCANS and the New Vocationalism, ERIC Digest No. 165. This document obtained from www.ed.gov/databases/ ERIC_Digests/ed389879.html.

5 From TITLE III--STATE AND LOCAL EDUCATION SYSTEMIC IMPROVEMENT SEC. 301. FINDINGS. obtained from www.ed.gov/legislation/GOALS2000/TheAct/sec301.html.

6 From the Congressional Research Service Library Of Congress Number: 95-502 EPW Goals 2000: Educate America Act Implementation Status and Issues, by James B. Stedman and Wayne C. Riddle. Obtained from www.senate.gov/~dpc/crs/reports/ascii/95-502.

7 Summarized from ED Initiatives…, April 2, 1996, obtained from www.ed.gov/pubs/EDInitiatives/96/04-02.html, and from Tucker, Marc .S. and Judy B. Codding. 1998. Standards For Our Schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. p.42.

8 Summarized from 1999 National Education Summit Action Statement Adopted October 1, 1999 obtained from www.achieve.org/achieve/ achievestart.nsf/ a36f0172b9ca0296852566260060236f/
e17860588c024e4b852568190062fd7f/ $FILE/ACTION+STATEMENT.pdf .

9 This quotation and the list of characteristics of content standards excerpted from Promises to Keep – Content Standards obtained from www.negp.gov/issues/ publication/negpdocs/9.html on 4/26/00.

10 Adelman, Clifford. 1999. Answers in the Tool Box: Academic Intensity, Attendance Patterns, and Bachelor’s Degree Attainment. Jessup, MD: Education Publications Center (ED Pubs), pp. 12 – 15.

11 Ibid., pg. 14

12 From A Brief Overview of the PASS System by David T. Conley and Christine Tell, found at www.ous.edu/pass/info/about_pass.html on 4/26/00.