All right. It’s time.

Let’s talk about standards.

I won’t say I appreciate or admire the people who picked the word “standards” to describe their prescription for education in this country. But I will acknowledge an absolute masterstroke of rhetoric, which is what that was. “We have high standards,” they could say. “Don’t you think schools should have standards? Don’t you have any standards for your students?” they could ask teachers who objected.

What can I do but hang my head in shame, and agree to teach THE STANDARDS?

I’ll tell you what I can do: I can, and do, object to the standards as they are written. I object, too, to the very idea of standards: but let’s take one thing at a time. And the less radical, first.

It’s not too far out there to object to the standards, at least in one way: pretty quickly after the Common Core were adopted in most states, they received the approval of the Obama administration – and therefore the whole-hearted hatred of the Republican side of the country, particularly during the Tea Party boondoggle. So if I say I hate the Common Core, I at least have allies – though they’re not necessarily the allies I want to have. But I’ll take them, because they are correct in essence, if not in attribution of causation.

Backing up. First, what are the standards? According to the Arizona Department of Education, they are this:

These standards define the knowledge and skills students should have within their K-12 education careers so that they will graduate high school able to succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing academic college courses and in workforce training programs. The standards:

• Are aligned with college and work expectations;
• Are clear, understandable and consistent;
• Include rigorous content and application of knowledge through high-order skills;
• Build upon strengths and lessons of current state standards;
• Are informed by other top performing countries, so that all students are prepared to succeed in our global economy and society; and
• Are evidence-based.

Standards are a list of skills and knowledges that students should have when they graduate high school. Jim dandy. Seems useful to know what a student should know.

Quick question: who decides what a student “should” know? And how do we decide that? What is the basis for picking a specific skill and saying a student “should” know that before graduating high school? That knowledge of X, Y, and Z is necessary to “earn” a high school diploma?

Hang on: first let’s look at the sales pitch for the standards.

Critical Message about Arizona’s College and Career Ready Standards – English Language Arts/Literacy and Mathematics

· The purpose of the new standards is to provide a consistent set of English Language Arts (ELA)/Literacy and Mathematics expectations that prepare all students for college and career options.

· The standards are designed to ensure that our students remain competitive in the global market of the 21st century.

· Arizona’s College and Career Ready Standards – English Language Arts/Literacy and Mathematics standards include Arizona additions. Arizona’s adoption of these standards ensures a more seamless education for high mobility students since grade level standards and expectations are consistent across 46 participating states.

· The creation of the English Language Arts/Literacy and Mathematics standards was a state-led effort coordinated by the National Governor’s Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).

Okay: a consistent set of expectations that prepare all students for college and career options. Cool. Equity of access and opportunity is important, it is a fundamental promise of this country, and it is also one of the best ways to assure the general welfare of our people; so yes, all students should have access to the same preparation for college and career options.

I mean: they don’t. There are several other factors involved in educational outcomes, primarily the students’ socioeconomic status and family educational levels (which are also, of course, socioeconomically influenced if not determined). And because education funding in this country is primarily a factor of local district tax base, it ensures that students in the richest schools have access to the best educational opportunities and resources, and students in the poorest schools do not, and that system will survive that way as long as we keep the same archaic, institutionally-racist and classist funding structure.

But yes, surely all students should meet a certain minimum set of expectations. I’m with that. Standards, right? We have standards, and students have to live up to our standards, or we won’t accept them.

Umm…not sure what that means. I mean, if someone I go on a blind date with doesn’t meet my standards, then they go off to find someone else whose standards they do meet, and I go home alone, But what does it mean when a child – when a fellow citizen – doesn’t meet our standard? Does it mean they don’t get to live in this country? Don’t get to be citizens? Does it mean they have to struggle for the rest of their lives, because they weren’t good enough according to our standard?

You ever think about what it says about a student – a child, that is, since I’m talking about K-12 education, and the majority of students are still under 18 when they graduate high school – when we say that student doesn’t deserve a diploma? Hasn’t earned an education? Didn’t prove themselves to be good enough? If all education meant was the achievement of a specific set of skills and knowledges, then it would be appropriate to say those things (though the implication of merit in words like “deserve” and “good enough” is questionable if not outright wrong); but it doesn’t just mean that. We attach quite a number of value judgments to people who “earn” a diploma, and withhold them from people who “fail” to “earn” one. Those who don’t meet our standards, that is. Those children, we determine and decree, will suffer and struggle, because they’re not good enough. Never mind that there are countless ways to live, and live successfully, without ever mastering the skills and knowledges that “earn” one a high school diploma. Never mind that high school diplomas don’t necessarily show that one has or has not mastered the skills and knowledges: a diploma shows that one was able to prove one’s mastery of skills and knowledges to the satisfaction of those who decide who earns that diploma – me, in other words, as a teacher who gives grades, who determines who passes and who fails my classes. Me and all of my fellow educators. We decide who gets a diploma, who has shown to our satisfaction that they have mastered the skills and knowledges we chose for them to master, to our standard, on our assessments.

I think about my wife, who is one of the smartest and most capable people I have ever known (And I’ve known a hell of a lot of smart people), who was not allowed to earn a diploma because she called her principal an asshole. After he told her that she wasn’t good enough to graduate from his school, because he thought she was lazy and disrespectful. She was expelled from the school. She got a GED, a Graduation Equivalency Diploma – hang on; that’s not it. I just looked it up, and it actually stands for General Educational Development test. Huh. Did you know that’s what it was? Maybe I’m the only one who didn’t. Anyway, she earned her GED certificate, and also a high school proficiency certificate, by acing those two tests (because she is incredibly intelligent, if I didn’t already make that clear – they wanted to skip her two grades in elementary school. TWO GRADES. Nobody ever suggested I skip any grades. I’m not jealous, though.) and then went to work: but she couldn’t get a job, because she wasn’t yet 18 and so wasn’t allowed to work in most places in California during the regular school day. She was also told that the GED wasn’t as good as a diploma because she hadn’t shown she had the work ethic to complete the normal schooling program.

So I guess it isn’t just about showing mastery of the skills and knowledges required for college and career readiness. Huh? It’s also about showing oneself to be the kind of person our society approves of. It’s about winning the good regard of teachers, who are by nature and training judgmental. I mean, I’m a swell guy, and surely all of my judgments of my students’ characters are right on the money, and totally should have a significant impact on the lives of all of the students who pass through my classes. Some of those other teachers, though… pretty sketchy.

My wife’s story – this point I’m making about teachers and our generally subjective judgments of students – is one of the arguments behind standards, of course. Because CHUDs like the guy who told her she wasn’t “Aptos High material,” and she’d never amount to anything in her life, shouldn’t be the ones keeping the gates and refusing entry to our citizens. If students can show that they possess the skills and knowledges we expect them to have, then that should be enough: and no individual with their own biases and prejudices should be able to torpedo any person’s progress into productive citizenship.

I agree with that. It’s the one argument for standards, and for standardized testing, which I agree with and support whole-heartedly. My wife got the shit end of this stick because she was what this guy saw as a “troublemaker;” maybe because she is a woman, maybe because she was not in the same socioeconomic class as many students at that school (Though not all the students at the school were wealthy, not by any means), maybe for any of several other reasons. But there are millions of kids who suffer this same sort of fate, being prevented from achieving not because they lack the skills, but because someone in charge doesn’t think they’re good enough: and the most common reason, of course, is racism. I have heard people who know better than me point out that standardized tests, while imperfectly anti-racist themselves, are at least objective and colorblind in their allocation of success or failure: which means a student with racist teachers can still pass the test, can still prove they have met the standards, and therefore should be able to earn a diploma no matter what their racist teachers think. I appreciate that argument, and I therefore wouldn’t want to argue that all standardized tests and grades and so on should be removed, at least not until we can ensure no bias in the people acting as gatekeepers.

I will argue that we should remove the idea of gates, and specific standards of achievement.

But hold on: before I argue against standards entirely – before I show that I do not, in fact, have any standards – I want to finish my point about the standards we all have right now. They are no longer the Common Core standards, which became politically tainted during the 2010’s; though if you think they are appreciably different from those Common Core standards, you don’t know education: we don’t like changing things, we like keeping the old things – or even better, resurrecting the older things – and giving them a new name. The Common Core State Standards look like this: “By the end of grade 10, read and comprehend literature [informational texts, history/social studies texts, science/technical texts] at the high end of the grades 9–10 text complexity band independently and proficiently.” And the all-new, all-improved Arizona College and Career Readiness Standards look like this: “By the end of grade 10, read and comprehend informational and functional text, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, at the high end of the grades 9–10 text complexity band independently and proficiently. (AZ.9‐10.RI.10)” You can see for yourself how Arizona is independent, and not still following along with that whole socialist Common Core mandate. WOO! States’ rights!

So my question is, still: who decided what were the skills and knowledges required to graduate high school? Who determined what students “should” know?

It’s not actually a simple question to answer – neither the one about what students should know, nor the one about who decided it. The issue with deciding what students should know is deciding what we think students should be ready to do. Do we think they should be ready to go to work? Do we think they should be ready to go to college? Do we think they should be capable of teaching themselves? Or do we think they should already know everything they will ever need to know? What mixture of those four things is correct, job/college/already know/can learn? But then there are more questions: what should students know to be ready to go to work? What kinds of jobs are we talking about? And what does “ready” mean? I haven’t ever been “ready” for any job, if “ready” means “already capable of every aspect of the job required.” I have always had to learn on the job. Do we want them ready for entry level, or ready to move up to the top echelons of management? Do we want them ready for local jobs, or do we want them to be ready for any jobs? Please note that if we decide to make our students ready for any jobs, then they’re going to be learning a whole lot of things that seem like they aren’t important, because those students will look around their part of the world, look at the people they know, and they will think, “Nobody in my town knows physics, or needs to know physics. Why do I need to know physics?” If our only answer is, “You might find a job somewhere else that requires a knowledge of physics,” we’re not going to convince a lot of students to try very hard in physics class. But also, if we decide that nobody who goes to school in this town needs to know physics, then we are sentencing those students to live only in places and have only careers that do not require any knowledge of physics. Maybe that’s fine: we decided, pretty unanimously, that none of the students in American schools need to be familiar with Mongolian folk dancing; we therefore cut them all off from careers involving Mongolian folk dancing.

Pretty fucked up, guys. Denying our children that avenue in life? Who were we to decide that for them?

But also: how much time and energy do we want to dedicate to teaching Mongolian folk dancing, on the expectation that some number of our students will pursue a life that involves Mongolian folk dancing?

And before you scoff too hard at that: recognize that almost all American students were, at some point in the last several decades, taught how to square dance. We thought that was a valuable use of time and resources. And I, for one, would rather know Mongolian folk dancing than how to do-si-do.

(Let me also point out, though this is off topic and too large a subject, THAT WE SHOULD NOT FOCUS EDUCATION ENTIRELY ON THE ABILITY TO MAKE STUDENTS PRODUCTIVE AND CAREER-READY. LIFE IS NOT JUST ABOUT YOUR JOB. STOP TELLING STUDENTS THAT EVERYTHING THEY LEARN AND EVERYTHING THEY DO IS GETTING THEM READY FOR “THE REAL WORLD OF WORK.”)

But okay, we’re really only talking about English/Language Arts and Mathematics. (Hey: who decided those two were the most fundamental skills? I agree that communication is vital in essentially everything; but is English the only way to learn to communicate? What if we decided instead to teach every student to be fluent conversationally in three different languages other than English? Or what if we decided that proper communication required an understanding of our context, including our cultural context and the context of our interlocutors, and therefore all students must master 12 years of social studies including sociology and psychology? AND DON’T GET ME STARTED ON MATH.) So surely the expectations of what should be mastered in those subjects is more straightforward. Right?

It may be. I object to a number of the standards – for instance, I am supposed to dedicate considerable time and energy to this one: “Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums (e.g., a person’s life story in both print and multimedia), determining which details are emphasized in each account.” (AZELA Standard 9-10.RI.7) – but I can’t argue against the ones which say students should be able to read proficiently and independently, or that students should cite evidence for their claims, or that students should know how to analyze complex characters. And all of the different sets of standards were all written with input from various teachers and teacher groups and other educators.

But not only teachers.

Common Core, for one example (And there are lots of examples, of course. Education is a very profitable business. Lots of companies get involved in trying to create educational resources, and then trying to sell them to the very large market of schools and teachers flush with all that gummint porkbarrel money), was written by the Council of Chief State School Officers, which is essentially all of the various Superintendents of Instruction from each of the 50 states. They took input from the National Council of Teachers of English, the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators, the NEA and the AFT (the two largest national teachers’ unions), and various other teachers and educators. I suppose I should point out that most of the chief state school officers have education backgrounds, though not all of them; but more importantly, I think, is that the CCSSO was not the only organization involved: it was also the National Governors’ Association, which certainly has a stake in education at the state level, but generally includes a whole lot fewer educators; and also, a certain non-profit group founded in 1996 called Achieve. (Don’t be too impressed, by the way, by this group being non-profit; the College Board is non-profit, and they’re the ones who make all of the AP tests, and the ACT, and the SAT. And then charge millions of students hundreds of millions of dollars every year to take their tests. But they’re not profiting from it.)

That last one is the interesting one. Because you figure the CCSSO and the teachers’ unions are going to represent what the educational establishment wants: what is best for the current school structure, and for the teachers. And the Governors’ association will represent the will of, if not the people, at least the constituents who have the ear of the governors; which surely includes parents’ groups and the larger constituency special interests. I think it’s safe to say that both groups, the CCSSO and the NGA, of politicians would represent the interests of the monied class in this country: since that is who commands the attention if not the obedience of politicians.

So who did Achieve represent? Maybe the students? The ones who have the most skin in this game, so to speak, the ones most affected by all of this wrangling, and the ones who, as lacking votes and money in general, do not have the attention and obedience of the politicians?

Of course not.

Achieve’s website tells us this: “Achieve is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit education reform organization dedicated to working with states to raise academic standards and graduation requirements, improve assessments, and strengthen accountability.”

Very nice! That sounds great. But…who are you?

I couldn’t actually find a list of the board of directors on their website (I admit I didn’t look too hard, as I expected to have to go outside of the organization to find what I wanted to know), but I found one on Ballotpedia, interestingly enough; seems like Achieve has some involvement in politics, as well as in education. Well, they said they work with the states, right?

Here are their directors, according to Ballotpedia (Which got the list from the Achieve website, accessed in 2016; unfortunately when you follow the same link to the current list of the board of directors, you get this:

Achieve is led by governors, business leaders, and influential national leaders committed to improving K-12 educational outcomes for all students.

Created in 1996 by a bipartisan group of governors and business leaders, Achieve is leading the effort to make college and career readiness a priority across the country so that students graduating from high school are academically prepared for postsecondary success.

Cool, thanks.)

Here’s the list from 2016:

• Mark B. Grier, Vice chair
• Michael Cohen, President
• Craig R. Barrett, Chair
• S. James Gates Jr.
• Governor Bill Haslam (R-Tenn.)
• Governor Jay Nixon (D-Mo.)
• Governor Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.)
• Former Governor John McKernan Jr. (R-Maine)
• Louis V. Gerstner Jr., Chairman Emeritus

Sorry to use out of date information, but also: Mark B. Grier is listed by Ballotpedia as the current top executive at Achieve, and while he has also moved on to a director position at Freddie Mac, his profile there still lists him as a board member at Achieve, so I’ll take this list as representative if not current.

Who are these people? Glad you asked.

Dr. Sylvester James Gates, Jr., is a badass. An award-winning and influential theoretical physicist, professor, author, and documentarian, his involvement with Achieve could only improve their work. Not sure how much sway he actually has, but his presence on the board is the best thing I found. (He’s also the only African-American on the board, but surely that’s neither here nor there.)

Michael Cohen, president (Not THAT Michael Cohen) is actually an educator (Though he worked for Bill Clinton, so he’s a neoliberal educator). He is also the only one with a page readily available on the Achieve website – though to be fair, their Search function is not currently available, and the website hasn’t been updated since 2021. Craig R. Barrett, chairman, is the former CEO of Intel. Mark B. Grier, vice chair (and maybe current chair) is the former CFO at Prudential. (Also: “Grier’s leadership on the board continues Prudential Financial’s longstanding commitment to improving education outcomes.  Former Prudential Chairman Art Ryan served on the Achieve board from 1999 to 2008, and as the chairman from 2005 to 2008.” So again, if the list isn’t current, it’s at least representative. Mark Grier to Lead Achieve Board | Achieve) Louis V. Gerstner Jr., Chairman Emeritus, is the former CEO of IBM, and the former chairman of the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm. Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee  is also the former president of Pilot Corp, a petroleum company that owns the Flying J rest stops. Former Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri is one of the Democrats on the “nonpartisan” board, and is a lawyer turned politician rather than a corporate overlord, so he wasn’t too bad – but did hand control of Ferguson over to the state highway patrol and later called in the National Guard to put down riots after Michael Brown was shot and killed. Maggie Hassan (The only woman on the board, but surely that’s neither here nor there) and Jock McKernan are also former lawyers turned politicians, Hassan the current embattled Democratic senator from New Hampshire, McKernan the Republican governor of Maine in the late 80s and early 90s (And the husband of Senator Olympia Snowe, if that matters), and are generally not offensive.

So that’s who wrote the Common Core. Teachers – but also politicians, and business executives. And who do we think had the most influence, the final say? Probably not the teachers. And definitely not the students.

But is that so terrible? I think I hear you ask. What’s wrong with business executives promoting the standards? Well, inasmuch as they were simply people who understood complicated systems and processes, and who live in this society and therefore may have a stake in its success, nothing. But that’s not all they are. Businessmen, especially executives of these sorts of large, international corporations, are not particularly loyal to any one society; they are loyal to the bottom line: shareholder value. I cannot believe that these men created Achieve, and pushed for the Common Core standards to be accepted nationwide, for any reason other than they knew it would be good for business.

From what I can see of the standards, and the intent of those who wrote them, they are very good at producing exactly what businesspeople seem to want: conformist rule-followers who don’t think very originally, and who don’t question authority, but who are very good at mindless, repetitive tedium, and who seek simple entertainment and satisfaction at the end of the very long work week. Good workers (Remember how the work ethic is as important if not more important than mastery of the skills?) who are also good consumers. Good employees, and good customers.

How do standards do that? In a number of ways. Partly because they are standard: the goal is to make every student the same as every other student, capable of all the same things. If we see those things as a baseline, and give schools room and resources to reach beyond that, then there’s no problem; but that’s not how the school system works – and again, that is because of the same people wielding the same influences. Because the other part of the push for common standards is – the push for accountability. It’s right there in the Achieve mission statement. “Achieve is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit education reform organization dedicated to working with states to raise academic standards and graduation requirements, improve assessments, and strengthen accountability.” (Emphasis added)

See, we can’t have universal standards unless we can be sure they are adhered to. Right? We have to make sure these schools, and those wacky tree-huggin’ hippie teachers, are doing what they’ve been told to do. So in addition to creating new standards that will define what is taught, we will create and implement test after test after test after test, to make sure that the teaching is – well, meeting the standard.

Do you know what happens when you create an entirely new system of curriculum, and a new set of assessments? Particularly during a global recession, when state education budgets are being slashed and burned like virgin forests in logging country? (By the way, Jay Nixon of Missouri was also called the “cutter-in-chief” for all the cuts he imposed on the Missouri state budget. But he did also support investment in education when things started turning around, so. Good and bad, I suppose.)

The schools fail, that’s what. New curriculum takes time to figure out and make functional. New assessments take time for students to get used to them. Even in the ideal testing situation, the whole idea is that you take the results of the test and use it to inform the next year’s instruction in order to raise the scores: which pretty much requires that the first year’s scores are going to suck.

And so they did. And do.

Which opens up a lot of options for those who want to control the education system in this country, say, in order to produce better worker drones and more consumers to buy products.

Any time the school does not meet the standard, any assessment that shows the students are not showing the specific evidence asked for which proves they have mastered the chosen skills and knowledges to the extent and in the manner determined by the people in charge, then the school is failing, the teachers are failing, the students are failing. And when a school is failing, we will sanction it in some way, and follow one of a number of alternative courses: we could use that  failing school as evidence that a current politician has failed their constituents, and thus push for the candidates we like; we could use that failing school to argue that the school system in general is failing and therefore we should promote vouchers for private schools; or to argue that the school system is failing and therefore the state needs to loosen the requirements for charter schools; or to argue that the school system is failing and it is the fault of those damn teachers’ unions. So many options!

We could also argue that the school system is failing, so there needs to be greater emphasis on achieving the standards. Now that we have these lovely standards written, we can push to have them adopted across the country (Maybe in conjunction with a huge federal mandate, which rhymes with Moe Wild Heft Refined, which also mandates accountability…), and then use that to impose more expectations that schools will adhere to the standards, so that every child in every state can have the same results! Won’t that be wonderful? If … Moe wild is heft refined?

(Sorry.)

Once we decide that the school is failing and the most important thing is to make sure that students MEET THE STANDARD, the stage is set for the process we have watched play out across this country: we start teaching to the test; and more devastating, we eliminate everything that is not teaching to the test. Electives are cut, because the students need more remedial instruction in math and English. Which frustrates the students, and makes them feel like the system is not helping them but is instead out to crush their spirits (because it is), and of course they resent it, and so of course they rebel against it: they don’t try as hard as they could on the tests, because fuck the tests, man!

Which means the school does not meet the standard: and so we can go through another round of whatever-flavor-of-damage-we-want-to-inflict-on-the-system.

My school knows that I’m a good teacher. It’s hard not to: my students generally like me, their parents generally like me; the surveys the school does of parents and students always reward me with sterling reviews. I was even named in a Google review of the whole school as one of the reasons why my school is worth going to. And, if I may presume, I think that anybody who comes and watches me teach will see that I am good at it. (I mean, I’m not always sure I’m good at it, but that’s because I have imposter syndrome and a certain amount of anxiety over my abilities. Never mind. It’s not important.)

But what the school tells me, every single time they evaluate me, (Which in this environment of hyper assessment, is every goddamn year; also I live in a “Right to Work” state, for a charter school, which means there is no teacher’s union to represent me, and therefore no tenure. Can’t let them lazy goddamn teachers just relax and teach! They need to worry about losing their jobs all the time! That’ll keep ‘em in line!) is that I need to provide documentation that I am teaching the standards. I need to write objectives on the board. I need to review those objectives with my students, every class. I need to align my instruction and my assessments, and now my grades, with those standards. I need to write daily lesson plans that show I’m focusing on the standards. I need to give common formative assessments, five times a quarter, to show that my students are progressing in their mastery of the standards.

That’s what my job has become. Standards-based instruction, with (eventually) standards-based grading. Everything standardized. Which makes the businesspeople happy: and since my charter school is run by a corporation, and therefore by businesspeople, they will be happy, too. They’re pretty dang sure that creating a laser focus on the standards will achieve the results they want: proof that all of our students are meeting and exceeding all the standards, because all our teachers do all day long is try to get them to learn and master the standards. Because, we are told, that is how the school is assessed and graded by the state: according to our ability to make our students meet the standard of mastering the standards on standardized tests.

Yeah, it stopped meaning anything to me, too. Quite a while ago now.

You know what might be the most insidious part? There’s still an argument to be made for standards. As I said, there is nothing wrong with a baseline of ability that all students should be provided an opportunity to reach. I still think we should not tell a child that they are “failing” just because they can’t pass fucking Algebra or whatever, but I do think that a general education is a good idea, and that there are things that should be included in everyone’s education. Yes to that. Assessment of student achievement and ability is an important part of education (Though there are YEARS worth of caveats and qualifications in that. Most of which I’ve already written about, and I’ll get to the rest.), so assessment of a student’s mastery of a standard is a valid pursuit.

Here’s the thing that kills me about standards-based education: you get what you measure. You find what you are looking for. If what you want is to see if students have mastered a standard, and you teach to the standard and then assess the standard, then students will show that they achieved mastery. If you focus harder on the standard and teach it more, they will generally do better. If you point out to the students, by writing it on the board and going over it with them every day, exactly what they are supposed to learn and which standard they have to master, then they will do as they are told: they will focus on that idea, that knowledge, that skill, and they will master it. Which means the student data in that class will improve when you do things like write the objectives on the board and go over them in class every day. It works. And, as I have also written about for years, teachers are so hungry for proof that what we spend our lives doing is worth something, when we see those results, see those data points march upwards, know that students are passing the assessments: we like it. We want more of it.

So we do it. We teach to the standards. We use standards-based curriculum, and standards-based grading. It works, after all; and it’s what’s expected of us.

We stop questioning where the standards came from: they’re just the standards, and we have to teach them, so we do. We stop thinking about how dumb those standards are. We forget about the things we used to teach that weren’t measured by the standards – those things are long gone, and after all, they’re not part of the test, not part of the assessment of the students or the teachers or the school. They can’t be that important.

But they are important. All the things that aren’t in the standards are the things that matter most. The things that inspire people, that make them love learning, that make them grow and change. Things like real literature, poetry and novels and plays. Things like learning, for the first time, the history of the oppressed people and the non-dominant cultures – especially important if you happen to be part of one of those cultures, one of those people. Things like relating to and empathizing with other people. Things like school spirit, and community service, and even sports, goddamn it. These things still exist: but they are fading. Students are losing access to sports because they have to spend their after-school time in tutoring, because they haven’t mastered all the standards. Clubs and service organizations are less active, less involved, because there’s not enough time for all of that: students have to study for tests. Teachers can’t give the lessons and assign the projects that become part of a student’s life and personality, because we have to focus on the standards. All of that gets lost by the focus on the standards. Not least because the standards are, by design, simple, measurable nuggets of information. There’s no standard for the intangibles.

You get what you measure. And you lose everything that can’t be measured.

There’s a guy I used to teach with who I think is wrong about almost everything he’s ever said: but there was one thing he said which I thought was 100% accurate. He said that there should only be one standard, one expectation, one guiding goal that drove all of education: Students will learn to think critically. I would actually add to that something more human, like “Students will learn to love their world and themselves,” but I don’t know that schools should consider that a definite and intentional goal, so I’m willing to keep mine as an unspoken purpose, and focus only on the one.

What else is there? There are a dozen ways to learn to think critically, and all of them are valuable. Every subject, every class, can help students to do that. That one skill, with all of the myriad aspects that contribute to it, is the most important thing that people today should have – and that too many of us today can’t do.

And the best part of all? It can’t be measured. And it can’t be standardized.

That’s something that meets my standards.