By David J. Hoff
Congress should set up a process to establish national academic standards and tests that states could adopt as their own or use as a model for improving their current standards, a high-profile bipartisan panel says in a report released today.
Lawmakers also should appropriate $400 million over four years for states to create data systems to track individual students’ academic growth from year to year and determine the effectiveness of individual teachers, the Commission on No Child Left Behind urges in its final report.
… The panel recommends that the federal government convene a group of experts to write model standards and tests using the proficiency definitions for the federally sponsored National Assessment of Educational Progress. States would have the option of either adopting those standards and tests or revising their own assessments to measure the content of the national standards. The states could also keep their own academic standards.
“To keep the public informed about states’ expectations,” the report says, the U.S. Department of Education should issue periodic reports comparing every state’s standards and tests with the ones in the national model.
