text: Schools are rethinking meritocracy, but maybe not in ways you think. This is an interesting time to be an educator in the US because there are at least two different paradigm shifts happening in education right now. Those two changes are happening in opposite directions, which leave teachers twisted into impossible contortions.\n\nIn the universities, teachers are being trained to understand that each student is an individual with different strengths and weaknesses. They are being taught to recognize the different multiple intelligences (interpersonal, intrapersonal, bodily/kinesthetic, musical/rhythmic, naturalistic, visual/spatial, verbal, mathematical/logical) and learning styles of children. Teachers are learning to honor and make use of cultural differences as well in the learning experiences and opportunities to demonstrate knowledge they create in their classroom. \n\nNew educators are learning how important hands-on experiences are for young learners preparing to make the jump from concrete to abstract thinking. They are encouraged to let students run parent-teacher conferences by choosing samples of work to go in a portfolio and explaining to the parent exactly what each piece of the portfolio shows that they have learned. This will help students take ownership of the processes of learning and demonstrating their knowledge, and they will become self-directed learners. \n\nTeacher are working to create a learning community where students feel free to be take risks, be wrong, and tell each other what can make their projects better. Students are learning critical thinking skills by evaluating their own and each others' work. \n\nAll of this is happening along with a growing recognition that students have to build their own knowledge by connecting new facts and ideas to what they already know and what they are interested in. More and more teachers are seeing the value of individual projects that let a student make some creative decisions on their own and lead to a finished product that they themselves judge to be of good quality. \n\nAt the same time, politicians have gotten involved in education. There is a growing movement some call the Cult of Accountabilism. This means that politicians want to hold schools accountable for what they are teaching. The methods of accountability states have devised are not very creative--chiefly fill-in-the-bubble tests of verbal and mathematical skills. \n\nThere are severe punishments for schools that fail to raise test scores under the federal No Child Left Behind law. I've seen reductions in funding and many extra meetings with consultants who are hired to raise test scores. I've also seen a district gradually choke off funding and then fire the principal and all the teachers at schools that fail to perform. The district leadership hires a new staff and pumps extra money into the school, taking credit when test scores go up. \n\nThose pressures mean grades will be around at most schools for a long time to come. At the same time, many states in the US are changing report cards to something that parents will need to learn to understand. It's called a standards-based report card.\n\nUsed to be, you got grades that reflected some kind of weighted percentage of the assignments, questions, problems you successfully completed. Those that were given to you reflected a teacher's idea of what students in that grade and that subject should be able to do. There might be a very complicated letter sent home with the formula that showed how the grades for homework, tests, and other assignments were combined. \n\nNow states have lists of content standards and benchmarks that represent what students in different grades and different subjects should be able to do. \n\n"Students will be able to correctly add numbers of three digits, with regrouping." \n"Students will be able to write a persuasive essay with three supporting arguments." \n"Students will demons