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CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY
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National Standards and Tests: An Unwise Decision for Indiana

Testimony for Indiana Senate Education Committee January 25, 2012

Lindsey M. Burke Senior Policy Analyst The Heritage Foundation

My name is Lindsey M. Burke. I am Senior Policy Analyst for education at The Heritage Foundation. The views I express in this testimony are my own, and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation. American education has room for improvement. On international math assessments, American children rank in the middle of the pack on measures of student performance, falling behind their peers in the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Slovenia. Here at home, there is ample evidence that K-12 education is in a state of crisis. Since the 1970s, academic achievement has remained relatively flat. Math achievement has increased only nominally, and reading achievement has been completely flat for the past 40 years. Not only has academic achievement remained flat, but academic attainment has also been stagnant. Graduation rates today hover around 73 percent, essentially unchanged since the 1970s. Sadly, in many of our nations largest cities, less than half of all students graduate high school. There are other signs that Americas education system is failing to meet the needs of millions of students: one-third of students need remedial coursework when they enter college, and the achievement gap between White and minority students, and between low- and upper-income children, persists. According to the new Global Report Card developed by University of Arkansas researchers, achievement in many of our affluent suburban public school districts barely keeps pace with that of the average student in a developed country. These failures have persisted despite significant growth in the federal role in education over the same time period. What began with President Lyndon Johnsons Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, and the idea of compensatory education by spending taxpayer dollars through federal education programs, quickly morphed into Washington becoming involved in systemic education reform. Instead of simply targeting federal dollars to low-income districts in an effort to improve outcomes for poor children, federal policymakers began creating education programs designed to dictate school policy. In the years to follow and throughout the 1990s, numerous niche programs were created, greatly increasing the size and scope of Johnsons original Elementary and Secondary Education Act. President George W. Bushs tenure included the eighth reauthorization of Johnsons ESEA, the No Child Left Behind Act. Today, NCLB is a 600-page federal law that leaves virtually no aspect of school policy off-limits to Washington. Yet, despite all of this growth in federal involvement over the past half century, we have seen little in the way of improved outcomes for children. In fact, this involvement has produced the exact opposite effect: academic performance has stagnated, schools have become more opaque about student results, and parents are often left in the dark about their childs educational outcomes. Now we have Washingtons latest attempt to fix what ails American education. While the architects of the Common Core state standards might have planned for the effort to be voluntary, federal policy and dollars quickly became intertwined with the push, resulting in significant pressure on states to adopt this one-size-fits-all approach to what is taught in local schools.

Washingtons role in the national standards effort. The Common Core State Standards Initiative began in earnest in the spring of 2009 with an announcement by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers that they would be supporting the development of Common Core standards and assessments. While the effort was supposed to be voluntary states could choose to adopt the Common Core State Standards in math and English Language Arts to replace their existing state standards the Obama administration quickly became involved with the effort, creating questions about the voluntary nature of the national standards push. In February 2009, President Obama carved the Race to the Top program out of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act stimulus funds, providing $4.35 billion to states that agreed to implement the administrations policy recommendations, which included common standards and tests. Applications for RTT funding asked states to describe how they would transform their standards and assessments to college and career-ready standards that were common to a significant number of states. The only common option available at the time was the Common Core State Standards Initiative, creating an implicit federal endorsement of the effort, backed with federal funding. Moreover, Race to the Top required states to join one of two testing consortia crafting assessments aligned with the Common Core State Standards Initiative. $350 million in Race to the Top grant money was earmarked for the funding of national assessments. In addition to Race to the Top funding, the Obama administration has also announced that it will offer No Child Left Behind waivers to states that agree to conditions stipulated by the Department of Education, including college and career-ready common standards. The federal incentives and increasing federal involvement in the effort led Representative Glenn Thompson (R-PA) to note that the Common Core is being transformed from a voluntary, statebased initiative to a set of federal academic standards with corresponding federal tests." There has been clear support, both rhetorically and financially, from the Obama administration for the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Federal backing has cemented the effort as one to establish national standards and tests that will define what every child in America must learn in school. Problems with the Common Core National Standards Push Problems with Content. In addition to problematic federal involvement, questions linger about the quality of the content of the standards. Members of the Common Core mathematics advisory panel said of the original draft standards that they would encourage the same kind of bureaucratic enforcement of state standards that has already damaged math education. The head of the mathematics advisory panel also noted the rushed timeline for the standards, and stated that a normal timetable for standards adoption would go through multiple iterations, with pilot testing. Zeev Wurman, a former senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Education and a member of the Committee that crafted Californias math standards in 1997, notes that the common core standards require only Algebra I and segments of Algebra II and Geometry, despite the fact that most four-year colleges and universities require at least three years of math in high

school: a minimum of Algebra I, Algebra II, and Geometry. In a December 2009 article, Wurman and former Assistant Secretary of Education for Policy Bill Evers wrote: In other words, students who graduate from high school having taken only math coursework addressing those standardswill be inadmissible to any four-year college around the country. Lack of evidence in support of national standards. Proponents of the common core standards frequently argue that nations that outperform the United States on international tests of student achievement have national standards. While it is true that many of the countries that outperform the United States on international tests have national standards, so do many of the countries that do not outperform the U.S. Countries such as Belgium, Australia, and Canada have education systems that are decentralized, yet often outperform the United States on international tests of student achievement. As Professor Jay Greene of the University of Arkansas has argued, the best way for the United States to improve the quality of standards is to decentralize the process of setting standards and assessments: When we have choice and competition among different sets of standards, curricula and assessments, they tend to improve in quality to better suit student needs and result in better outcomes. Questions remain about ownership of the standards. Concerns have also been raised about the subsequent process of maintaining and updating the standards, which has yet to be determined. National standards are likely to become rigid standards that are difficult to change and adapt, due partly to questions of ownership. Who will ultimately own the standards? Who will update them? Who will maintain them? Professor Greene, in testimony before the U.S. House Education and the Workforce Committee in 2011, warned: Once we set national standards, curriculum, and assessments, they are nearly impossible to change. If we discover a mistake, or wish to try a new or possibly better approach, we cant switch. We are stuck with whatever national choices we make for a long time. And if we make a mistake we will impose it on the entire country. National standards will not provide meaningful information to parents. Adoption of Common Core national standards will not ensure Indiana parents are able to better understand how their children are performing relative to other children across the country. Before assuming national standards will provide parents with useful information about their childs performance, we should consider what types of information parents need about their childs school success. Parents need two critical pieces of information to determine whether their child is excelling in school: 1) whether their child is mastering content appropriate to their grade level, and 2) whether their child is on pace with other students across the country. Meaningful information about student achievement already exists. To provide information about content mastery, states currently conduct criterion-referenced tests, which measure a students mastery of the content outlined by the state standards. To provide information about how rigorous the content is compared to other states across the country, many states also conduct normreferenced tests, which measure achievement compared to other students nationally. Moreover, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), often referred to as the nations report card, acts as an external audit of state standards, providing a common gauge for quality. No Child Left Behind also required every state to issue report cards to grade school systems. What has been missing in some instances is transparency about that data. But inadequate access to information does not justify a national standards and testing regime. Instead of ceding authority

over standards to national organizations, Indiana should work to supply clear information to parents about school performance. Common Core Adoption: An Unwise Choice for Indiana Indiana has long been a leader in setting high quality state standards for what Hoosier students will learn. In fact, Indianas state standards are recognized as some of the best in the country: the standards received a grade of 97.8 in Education Weeks Quality Counts 2011 survey, and the math standards were ranked as some of the very best in the country by the Pioneer Institute. Indiana has exceptional standards that are internationally competitive. Adopting the common core national standards will be a step backwards for Indiana, as the rigor and content of national standards will face pressure to scale down toward the mean among states, undercutting states with high quality standards. Relinquishing control of Indianas educational autonomy to distant bureaucrats in Washington by adopting national standards and tests will fail to improve outcomes for children, and will further remove parents from the decision-making process. National standards will strengthen federal control over education while weakening Indiana schools direct accountability to parents and taxpayers. Reversing Course Indiana has the opportunity to reverse course and reclaim control over the content taught in local schools. This should begin with recognizing and reclaiming the state authority lost in the decision to join the national standards movement. While the Indiana Board has wide-ranging control to set standards and assessments, the adoption of Common Core national standards cedes this authority to national organizations and Washington bureaucrats and further removes parents and taxpayers from the educational decision-making process. The state board of education was appointed to govern education policy on behalf of the states citizens, not to surrender educational authority to a centralization movement. Advocates of federalism should be concerned that their state officials have ceded authority of the standards and assessments that drive what is taught in local schools. They should also be concerned that, in addition to the heavy cost to liberty, states stand to incur significant new expenses as a result of Common Core adoption. Adoption of nationalized standards means overhauling Indianas existing ISTEP standards and tests, which could prove a costly endeavor for state taxpayers. State and local taxpayers expended significant amounts of money to implement and maintain existing state standards and tests. Making pedagogical and curricular changes, revamping professional development, and aligning textbooks and assessments to adhere to the Common Core will place a new burden on taxpayers. To assess the full fiscal impact, Indiana leaders should request an independent cost analysis of national standards adoption to inform taxpayers about the short-term and long-term costs of the overhaul. At the same time, policymakers concerned with the national standards push should refuse to expend any state or local resources to align state standards, tests, and curricula with the Common Core national standards and tests.

If not common core national standards, how does Indiana improve outcomes? 1. Strengthen state-based accountability systems by strengthening state standards and tests; 2. Provide school performance information to parents and taxpayers by publishing state standards and cut-scores in a manner that is accessible to parents; and 3. Empower parents to act on school performance data by offering more school choice options. Conclusion Adopting national standards and tests to define what every child in America will learn distracts from fixing the fundamental deficiencies of our education system: a lack of choice for families and the absence of competition to force schools to improve. Worse still, common core adoption will centralize standards-setting, turning-back the pages on a long-held principle of state and local control based on the idea that those closest to the students are in the best position to identify and meet their education needs. Conservatives have the opportunity to reverse course and reject this latest centralizing overreach. Indiana should reject the nationalization of standards, tests, and ultimately, curricula, and instead work to strengthen and improve excellence in local schools through state and local policy.

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