What Melony Learned
February 1997
Excerpts from an essay by an inner-city honor student paint a vivid picture of the high cost of low standards.

Marking Time
December 8, 1996
The national goals will never be achieved if we just continue to do what we have always done.

A Commonsense Approach
December 1, 1996
The TIMSS report calls into question a number of fashionable remedies for mediocre student achievement.

National (not Federal) Standards
April 28, 1996
Should children in Alabama learn a different kind of math from children in New York?

What Standards?
April 7, 1996
Students are unlikely to take learning seriously if we present them with English courses based on standards like these.

Moving Right Along
March 31, 1996
Higher standards are the foundation for improving the achievement of all our students.

Passing on Failure
March 24, 1996
"How is it that some students enter high school...without being able to read or do simple math?" Social promotion is alive and well in schools across the country.

Will CBEST Survive?
March 17, 1996
California's minimum competency test for new teachers has drawn fire. Opponents argue that, since a disproportionate number of minorities have failed the test, students of color are being deprived of the role models they need in school. Perhaps. But can we really close the achievement gap by assigning students of color to teachers who don't meet even a minimum standard?

Knowledge Still Counts
January 14, 1996
Does the information superhighway make the learning of knowledge obsolete? Not if you want a better job with a higher salary.

An 'Average' Standard
October 29, 1995
For years, we've told ourselves that U.S. schools offer broad opportunity while other systems focus only on the elite. Yet,consistent evidence from the AFT's "Defining World Class Standards" series shows that students of average ability in other industrialized nations—not just university-bound achievers—meet much higher standards than the average American student.

A Baltimore Success Story
August 20, 1995
Faced with a struggling inner-city school full of poor, minority students, one Baltimore principal decided that the curriculum of an elite private academy was just what was needed. Within four years, the school's language arts and writing scores, which had been consistently below the 30th percentile, soared to above the 60th percentile.

Work in Progress
July 30, 1995
The AFT offers the first national survey of what states are doing about standards. The good news is that 49 out of the 50 states are trying to revise their standards upward.

A Reform that Works
July 16, 1995
A look at U.S. educational data shows that, when we expect more of students, they rise to our standards.

Raising the Ceiling—and the Floor
June 4, 1995
The system we have now only challenges a small group of top students. Instead, one high school principal gambled on the idea that raising the academic bar for all students would raise their achievement. He was right.

Less is More
May 28, 1995
American teachers are working longer and harder than teachers anywhere else in the developed world. So why don't we outscore these nations in international comparisons? It's not about how much time is spent in the classroom, but how that time is spent.

Raising the Bar
May 14, 1995
Do tougher high school graduation requirements encourage learning or just discourage those students who are already struggling? Data on graduation and drop-out rates indicate that higher educational standards can help to raise the floor as well as the ceiling.

Too Many Facts?
April 16, 1995
We should teach history by asking students to think about and use important facts they are learning. In doing so, we eliminate the false dichotomy between the thoughts of E.D. Hirsch and the teachings of John Dewey.

Feeding and Weighing
April 9, 1995
Do externally administered exams distort instruction or help raise student achievement? New research indicates that, without curriculum-based exams, our system does not send signals that encourage effort and learning.

A Citizen's Guide
March 12, 1995
Diane Ravitch puts the movement for standards squarely in the context of American education.

Disciplinary Learning
February 5, 1995
Interdisciplinary learning is an attractive idea. But a discipline is not an arbitrary set of restrictions that keep us from seeing the whole picture. It is an essential body of information, built up over the centuries, about how to explore a particular area of knowledge.

Debating the Standards
January 29, 1995
The history standards are not an argument against Goals 2000 and its standards-setting process; they are a vindication.

Testing Teachers
January 8, 1995
If states instituted serious pre-employment tests for new teachers, they would undoubtedly face some tough challenges. But if we expect standards-based reform to go anywhere, teachers will need to have a good grasp of the subject matter they are charged with teaching.

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