The Assumptions and Possible Futures of Standards-Based Education

Abstract

Standards-based education is the most important and widely implemented education reform idea of the last several decades in the USA, one supported by the full weight of the mainstream bipartisan educational establishment. Motivated by 'global economic competitiveness' as the ideological driver and big business as the empirical driver, it has become a settled and integral part of local, state and federal education policy. In spite of all this, little has been said about its fundamental assumptions and their implications for the future. This is especially concerning because its most notable implicit assumption is that the ever-increasing consumption of the planet's finite natural resources by a seemingly ever-increasing population can continue indefinitely. This is a mathematical impossibility. Therefore, this difficult discussion needs to be more fully engaged and possible solutions explored, which this article strives to do.Over the last decade, building on such initiatives as the American Diploma Project of Achieve, Inc., the full weight of the bipartisan mainstream education establishment in the USA has fallen in line behind national standards, including Presidents Bush and Obama, Secretaries of Education Paige, Spelling and Duncan, the National Governors' Association, National Academy of Education, National Research Council, Council of Chief State School Officers, National School Board Association, many prominent academics, and the Gates and other key charitable foundations.Even before the widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards, standards-based education was a settled and integral part of local, state and federal education policy. Now, with the Common Core State Standards having been adopted by 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and three territories, we are witnessing the increased nationalization not only of standards, but of teacher training, curriculum and assessment as well. This is a major departure from a 400-year-old US tradition of local control over education, propelled by a momentum that is sustained, pervasive and growing.The preponderant influence of big business and the ideology of global economic competitiveness on standards-based education over the last several decades includes buried within it three major assumptions. These are: (1) the globalized economy can and will continue indefinitely; (2) wage-based participation in the globalized economy is the main socially legitimated avenue to personal happiness, fulfillment and development in most parts of the world; and (3) extrinsically motivated attainment of credentialing, provided by education, is the primary means of advancement within this globalized economy.An extended discussion of these assumptions, hidden within the policy debate and rarely discussed, is vitally important because it can help explicate clear, distinct and important characterizations of (1) the disparity between the ideology of weakening nation states so often professed by neo-liberal ideologues and the practical reality of strong nat...