In a few years, North Carolina elementary pupils could be learning to read with science books and high-school students could find fresh torment in their math problems.
The State Board of Education is expected today to make North Carolina one of the first states to adopt national standards for math and English for public school children, setting milestones for learning that are meant to push U.S. students to be more competitive. In doing so, North Carolina will join what the nation's governors and state school chiefs call an important endeavor to ensure equity and quality.
The National Governors Association and state school superintendents led the effort to develop a stack of education essentials that they said would make U.S. students better able to compete with students from other countries. The standards would put states in sync, so fifth-graders in Honolulu would be learning the same things as fifth-graders in Chatham County.
The approval comes as U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visits schools in Durham today with Gov. Bev Perdue. State officials have applied for federal Race to the Top grants, which could bring an infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars for schools. The money is awarded on a competitive basis, and states that adopt the standards by Aug. 2 will pick up a few points on their grant applications.
North Carolina, which lost out in the first round of the competition, hopes to win in the second round. Perdue has pushed hard for a win.
The national standards are meant to help students hone their skills at thinking analytically. For example, young children would be expected to describe the feelings and motivations of characters in a story. High school students would have to read a text, analyze and summarize the main themes, and determine how ideas build in complexity.
All but a handful of states participated in developing the standards and promised to consider adopting them. If the State Board of Education adopts the standards today as expected, North Carolina would be the fifth state to agree to use them, and would put them in force in 2012. The final standards were released Wednesday, though math, literature and writing experts had been working on them about a year.
The standards have a strong analytical bent, not just in math, but in reading and writing as well. For example, the language arts standards stress teaching literature and technical texts, and set benchmarks for reading in science and social studies.
"We worked to be analytical," said Chris Minnich, director of standards and assessment at the Council of Chief State School Officers. "We think that's a critical piece of this."
The writers were careful not to push analysis too far into the lower grades, he said, but want young children to have a foundation for later work.
Aiding a mobile nation
Elizabeth Plotkin, a kindergarten teacher who is Wake County's teacher of the year, said national standards could help in today's mobile society.
The standards could aid statewide education overall, she said, because teachers who move from other states would have greater familiarity with North Carolina standards.
But she anticipated problems implementing a nationwide standard when it is already hard for a large district such as Wake to keep all its kindergarten classes meeting the same objectives. Looking at the standards as they were being developed, the kindergarten parts look very similar to what the state has now, she said.
"I'm anxious to see how it pans out," she said.
Goals and activities
Grade by grade, the standards lay out goals and suggest activities. For example, young students would work together on reading and writing projects. Kindergart ners would share their opinions about books by a favorite author, and first-graders would work together on reading "how to" books on a topic and using them to write their own instructions.
High school math focuses on students figuring out how to solve multistep or "messy" problems, as they would have to at a job.
"It's obvious a lot of thought has been placed into these standards," said Cindy Bennett, director of K-12 curriculum, instruction, and technology at the state Department of Public Instruction.
The state is in the midst of adopting a new curriculum and standardized tests for all subjects, so the new standards will fold into that process, including the end-of-grade tests. State administrators said the national standards match the curriculum the board has approved and the English curriculum staff is developing.
There's also a fledgling effort to have national standardized tests in English and math, but the tests are at least four years from being finished.
The sponsors stress that the effort is state-led, but Duncan has been applauding vigorously from the sidelines. State Board of Education Chairman Bill Harrison said he wants a vote not because it will coincide with Duncan's visit, but because board members have been talking about the standards for months and it's time to move.
