The movement gained support recently when it was initiated by the states rather than the federal government. "This is a different kind of effort. It won't be a top-down initiative but a collective effort," said Linda Valli, a professor in the department of curriculum and instruction at the College of Education at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Still, the idea of a national standard does not necessarily mean there will be agreement among the states. Jennings and Valli said they expect some fierce debate once the standards are made public late this year.
In July, the National Governors Association will release a document with general goals of what students need to achieve to be ready for college or the work force by the time they graduate.
States will be able to comment on those and then a review panel of experts in the field will have to validate them. Once they are validated, the standards for each grade from kindergarten to 12th grade will be written, probably by the end of the year.
If a national test was adopted, the state would do away with the Maryland School Assessments in grades three through eight, but probably not the Maryland High School Assessment, Grasmick said.
Grasmick said the move toward a more national approach would mean substantial savings for states if they adopted a national test. Currently, Maryland spends about $2 million per grade and subject to develop one Maryland State Assessment, and there are continuing costs after the test is being used. In addition, under No Child Left Behind, every state has a different test and there is no national test that every student is given that allows student scores to be compared across state boundaries.
The inconsistencies between states, reports that American students did not perform as well as their peers in countries with national standards and the current recession may have spurred the governors to take action.
"This has been an evolution over decades, but I think [the recession] has underscored that the U.S. is not keeping up economically or in education," said Jennings.
