Every morning I read the newspaper while drinking my coffee and eating breakfast. My ritual is one way I can stay in touch with the world and doubles as morning relaxation before heading off to the chaotic classroom. As a result I tend to stay fairly up to date in terms of what is happening in Baltimore City Schools and Maryland public schools in general. I was originally going to write about the report that recently found great progress in special education in city elementary schools. However, yesterday an article caught my eye that seemed more appropriate and in tune with previous dialogue within class.
As we all know, President Obama recently passed a huge recovery plan. As part of that recovery package, $5 billion has been allotted for states that are interested in raising their academic standards. A handful of states, including Maryland, are projected to apply for grants that would give federal aid to act as guinea pigs in implementing new national standards. These standards are currently being worked on and written by a nonprofit group called Achieve. Achieve, which has been founded by governors and other business leaders, hopes to finish standards for math, reading, and writing by this coming fall.
The eventual hope is that once these national standards would be implemented, students test scores would be benchmarked against scores of international students. In addition, the idea is that students would improve their overall chance of being more competitive internationally as well as prepare students for college and careers. If Maryland were to adopt these new standards, the MSA would probably no longer be used. In its place, we would see new tests written collaboratively with other state school systems. I believe this to be an interesting prospect. While it would probably not be something that we could see instantly within the school system, I would be very interested in seeing how national standards affect student performance.
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