This column is part one of a two-part series.
Could No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the landmark education reform legislation passed last January, have unintended consequences? NCLB requires each state to establish standards and tests for reading and math for every student in grades three through eight. There is little doubt that the public supports this approach -- when asked in the 2002 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll* if they would favor or oppose testing students as required in NCLB, 67% of Americans favored it.
Data from this survey further suggest that the public would approve of a much larger federal role in education. Given the alternative of allowing each state to use its own test -- as NCLB requires -- or requiring all states to use a single, standardized test, 68% said they would support a nationally standardized test. Even further, 66% favor a standardized national curriculum (see "Can Federal Involvement Help Struggling Schools?" in Related Items).
Is this what the Bush administration intended with NCLB? Probably not. In fact, a Department of Education release quotes President Bush as saying, "We believe education is a national priority and a local responsibility…." At the No Child Left Behind Web site, the department stresses that states possess flexibility to create their own standards and tests to meet local needs, and there is no national test.
A National Curriculum in All But Name?
In considering the pros and cons of federal efforts to shape a national curriculum, it's helpful to consider the forces already at work in that regard. The structure of American education is, ostensibly at least, highly decentralized -- education is considered a state responsibility, and most states have largely delegated decision-making to counties or school districts. Federal law expressly forbids the federal government from interfering with curricular areas, though states and school districts can be required to comply with standards (such as NCLB) to receive federal funds.
Yet there are many forces in American education -- national curriculum associations, competency testing, textbook publishers and pressure from colleges and universities -- already pushing local school districts toward a cohesive national educational perspective.
National Councils
National councils exist for many of the major curriculum areas. Groups such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the National Council for the Social Studies serve as think tanks in their respective areas. Standards generated by each of these national groups influence standards committees at state and local levels, and cause nationwide curricula to converge somewhat.
Achievement Testing
National and statewide testing programs provide another powerful converging influence, indirectly specifying what is taught in classrooms to allow students to do well on the tests. Beginning in the 1980s, state standards and minimum competency testing created common expectations within individual states. In most states those tests evolved from ensuring the presence of minimum abilities to gauging broader measures of knowledge. As they became more prevalent, statewide tests encompassed more topic areas and began to focus what was taught in each.
Achievement tests then began to shape the nature of education on a national basis. The National Assessment of Education Progress compares students' performance nationwide in reading, writing, mathematics, science, social studies and other subjects. Prominent instruments such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills or the California Achievement Test are used across the country to measure student progress in a variety of areas.
There is currently considerable pressure on many schools to align their curricula with one or more national tests. Districts receive comparisons to national norms for individual students, schools and districts. Most colleges and universities require students to take either the ACT or the SAT as part of the admissions process, the justification being that they provide a common way to measure the abilities of students from widely varying schools.
Textbooks
Perhaps more than any other factor, the textbook industry contributes to the consolidation of nationwide curricula. Despite efforts by states and school districts to create local curricula for specific subjects, the textbook still defines curricular content. Four states (California, Texas, New York and Illinois) dominate 30% of the textbook market because of their statewide adoptions of single texts for subjects. As a result, a text purchased by a school district in Montana probably has content acceptable to one of those four states, and instructional content in Montana becomes more like that in California or New York.
Colleges and Universities
The pressure for colleges and universities to accept students also creates greater similarity of curricula nationwide. High school curricula largely serve college-bound students. Consequently, high school courses tend to look very similar in order to prepare students in any one locale for the expectations of state, regional or national universities.
Key Points
While none of these forces is explicitly intended to create a national curriculum, their cumulative effect is the promotion of wider acceptance of testing similar curricular goals and similar instructional approaches nationwide.
The NCLB legislation, which reflects frustration with a slow-to-change educational system, requires standards and testing in every state for the first time, and testing in more grades than previously found in most states. Further, it threatens underperforming schools with reduced federal funds, media exposure and public pressure. Though NCLB allows each state to set individual standards, given the centripetal forces already at work on U.S. schools, the new law is likely to drastically reduce the variation in curricula from state to state and district to district. It would not be a big leap from there to explicitly nationalized curricular content for all kids.
Would that a good thing for those students, or not? Next week I will explore the potential implications of a nationalized curriculum for the future of American education.