National Standards

WASHINGTON -- In a major departure for American education, a federal advisory panel is calling for voluntary national curriculum standards and national tests for American schoolchildren.Such standards would spell out, for the first time on a national level, what children should be expected to learn and what level of achievement is good enough at different stages, according to the National Council on Education Standards and Testing, an advisory group of major political and educational leaders whose approval is crucial to the success of any such effort.

WASHINGTON -- In a study it says reinforces President Clinton's call for national education standards, the American Federation of Teachers reported yesterday that mathematics instruction and testing of U.S. students lags far behind that done in Japan, Germany and France.Sandra Feldman, the new president of the teachers union, said the United States should respond to the report not just by increasing math standards and expectations for students, but by expecting more from teachers as well.

WASHINGTON -- Until now it has seemed both paradoxical and axiomatic that a nation that needs national standards for the teaching of its history should not seek such standards. This is because those who are apt to be called upon to write such standards will be teachers of history, the shortcomings of whose teaching have occasioned the call for standards.A profession riven by intellectual disputes arising from political differences cannot be counted on to come to an acceptable consensus concerning what and how students should learn.

The good Bill Clinton crusades - in Gambrills and across the country - for voluntary national standards and tests in public education. And his efforts could pay off: In spite of rejection last week in the House, the Senate has approved them, giving the president a fighting chance to prevail.Meanwhile, the bad Clinton grossly inflates what national standards and tests by themselves can do to elevate student achievement. Worse, the president flinches when it comes to staking out a bolder national role in reforming American schools, particularly in inner cities.

A year ago, President Clinton signed into law his administration's ambitious Goals 2000: Educate America Act. "Today will be remembered as the day the United States got serious about education," the Secretary of Education, Richard W. Riley said within hours of its passage.The high-minded ideals of Goals 2000 seem universal. Who could dispute the importance of sending children to school "ready to learn" or the need for schools "free of drugs and violence," -- two of the eight National Education Goals.

Just about everyone agrees raising the standards of American schools is a good idea. But educators don't have a firm fix on what that means.In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the emphasis was on making sure no one got through high school without mastering fundamental reading and math skills. Maryland's Project Basic, for example, established "functional" tests in writing and citizenship as well as math and reading. About three-quarters of the states also adopted minimum competency tests. And there were signs of improvement, notably a closing of the gap in achievement between black and white students.

PRESIDENT-ELECT Bill Clinton is right to make education a top priority.He is wrong in his understanding of what needs fixing.Not one of his main educational policies -- increased loan assistance for college students, national educational standards linked to federal aid and more job retraining -- addresses the problems we are facing.Here are some propositions that Mr. Clinton and Richard W. Riley, his nominee for secretary of education, should look into:* Giving qualified students a chance at college is something we already do well.

I SPENT THE FIRST 12 years of my working life teaching fifth grade in the Baltimore City schools. I have seen about as much educational breakdown as anyone needs to see in one lifetime.You would think, then, that I would be mightily cheered by President Clinton's new focus on "higher educational standards" - and, yes, I have been and remain an avid Clinton supporter, who cheered his re-election last fall.But in my view, the president's State of the Union address on educational standards was an empty, worthless ball of fluff.

WASHINGTON -- Every school in America will be safe, disciplined and drug-free. U.S. students will be first in the world in science and math achievement. Every adult will be able to compete in a global economy.Who can argue with a vision like that?Under the Goals 2000 program signed into law by President Clinton last week, that is the government's grand hope forAmerica on the verge of the 21st century.The program, hailed as the federal government's first effort to create standards for what all students should know, emerged from the education summit that President George Bush held with governors in 1989.

Never has the nation been safer from foreign menaces, and never before has the nation been graduating students less well-educated than those of the immediately preceding generation. These facts warrant this conclusion: Today the principal threat to America is America's public-education establishment.It tenaciously opposes national testing of primary and secondary school students. As Chester Finn of Vanderbilt says in his indispensable new book, ''We Must Take Charge,'' the education establishment knows that testing would shatter the public's complacency and bring demands for accountability.