What would help Jim Shelton--at the Education Department's Office of Innovation and Improvement--do his job better? Clearer standards in this country. Shelton spoke this morning at the conference we're hosting, entitled: International Lessons About National Standards.
Clear, rigorous standards actually encourage more innovation in education, Shelton said, because ???by being clear about end goals, you free people,??? to try many different ways to get there. He said ???while we argued??? as a nation about whether fewer, clearer standards were needed, other countries moved ahead. You can read about other countries' experiences with education standards in the new policy brief released today. Bill Schmidt, Michigan State University professor and author of that brief, also spoke earlier. He said we cannot improve education standards in this country without some sort of national center to direct the process. That doesn't mean federal standards, he stressed. Focused, coherent, rigorous standards can and should be built from the bottom up, by states and others on the ground, he said, and they should be voluntary . But ???we need a national institutional center to pull this off,??? he said.
The day continues as experts from South Korea, Germany and Australia discuss the topic, followed by U.S. leaders from the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers, among others.