VOLUNTARY STANDARDS? HARDLY

Education reform in Illinois is following the course already charted by many other states, including Missouri and Kentucky. Basically, each of the states has drafted new school standards which sound like an attempt to upgrade the quality of what schoolchildren are learning but which, in fact, are little more than a system for state control of learning at the local level.

As Kentucky residents have already experienced, and as Missourians are in the process of discovering, state standards all pretty much sound alike: gibberish at best, outright fraud at worst.

What makes the standards so hard to swallow is the fact that they are being foisted on local districts with the bold disclaimer that no school board is being told how to meet the standards. All of which begs a couple of simple questions: If implementation is voluntary, why are the standards set in stone? And if local district can be trusted with implementation, why can't they be trusted to develop their own standards -- policies that would have meaning to the children they are trying to educate?