Rigorous Standards, At What Price? Or What Will Students Learn When No One Is Looking?
Introduction Over the past two decades, educational reform in the United States and in Canada has been dominated by a burgeoning discoilrse around the concept of standards. Acknowledging that "standards" play a vital role in the achievement of excellence in education, this essay aims to examine the meaning and use of "standards" in the context of contemporary educational reform in the United States. An implicit understanding of standards as fixed criteria, it is argued, has driven such reform and the excessive reliance being placed on standardized tests as the sole determinant of promotion or graduation in many cities across the United States seems to support this claim. Standards as fixed criteria are specific behavioral outcomes on the basis of which what a student knows and can do at a particular time and place is evaluated. Standards as fixed criteria, however, are ill equipped to measure certain habits of mind that may be important educational goals. Thus, it is argued desirable educational attitudes and dispositions may be undervalued or ignored. In addition, standards as fixed criteria, it is contended, encourage an unwarranted confidence in regards to the ends of education and inhibit democratic dialogue on the issue of what those ends should be. As an alternative to standards as fixed criteria, standards as ideals are proposed to direct educational reform. Standards as ideals are general statements about educational aspirations that guide teachers' attempts to get their students closer to the ideal. Although standards as ideals have an assessment function, they are not fixed or rigid measurements, nor are rewards or punishments their purpose. Such a notion of standards encourages an openness towards diverse points of view regarding the ends of education. In addition, the notion of standards as ideals fosters the recognition that education is not only about producing possessors of bits of knowledge but is also about educating persons. As the discourse on educational standards in Canada continues to evolve, Canadian educators, educational administrators and educational theorists are advised to clarify the conception of standards that grounds their platform of reform. This essay hopes to alert Canadian educators to the costs of an implicit reliance on standards as fixed criteria and to recommend that they consider a conception of standards as ideals to guide