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Taking Stock Summary of a Workshop (1997) / Chapter Skim
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What Are Internationally Competitive Education Standards?
Pages 5-8

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From page 5...
... Numerous surveys showed that what the public really wants is "basics first" and that they were likely to be disappointed with standards that did not seem to reflect this priority. As LeMahieu and Bickel noted, this is "a point of potential conflict between reformers and the public" because current thinking about classroom practice has moved away from the language of "basics first" to an approach in which basic skills are integrated with other skills and material (LeMahieu and Bickel, 1996:13-14~.~ The focus on international comparisons reflects a shift in thinking 1A study done by the Public Agenda Foundation that explored public opinion on this point suggests that there may not be a conflict (see Johnson and Immerwahr, 1994~.
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From page 6...
... The business leaders tended to see the actual development and implementation of standards as a largely technical matter and to see their value as that of a guidepost, a source of motivation. Those from the education and policy communities, in contrast, were far more aware that both developing and using standards are political and social processes, in which decisions among alternative methods of setting and enforcing standards have profound implications.
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From page 7...
... student achievement in many subjects is below that of students in many other nations, and that the conditions in which public education takes place in the United States and, consequently, the opportunity to learnare in many respects inadequate in comparison to those in other places. What has also emerged from such studies is that there are few systemic incentives for students in the United States to meet high standards or penalties for those who do not do so (Resnick et al., 1995:439; Ravitch, 1995; American Federation of Teachers, 1995b; American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1995~.
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