Ohio Governor Ted Strickland's bold education plan to overhaul the state's K-12 education system seems devoid of knowledge of some of the good things happening around the country, or even in Ohio. My colleague Emmy pointed this out in regard to the plan's teacher recruitment initiative (it seeks no help from Teach for America or the New Teacher Project), and it seems the governor is doing the same when it comes to revising the state's academic content standards.
The plan proposes to overhaul the current academic standards to make them "vertically articulated," "rigorous," "focused," and "coherent." The governor has thrown into the hopper just about every trendy education notion that he and his advisers have ever encountered. He yearns for standards that incorporate both solid academic content and the development of trendy skills (e.g., media savvy and interpersonal skills) that are essentially devoid of content: revisions to the standards would emphasize "21st Century Skills" and, somehow, also incorporate Core Knowledge.???? As our friends at Common Core put it, "No one who knows a lick about curriculum would put these two ideas together."
The governor's plan embarks on a redesign of the state's standards--a complex and time-consuming process--without much regard to other good work happening around the country. For example, the plan makes no mention of work Ohio has already done through the American Diploma Project. It ignores the increasing calls for common national standards. And its timeline denies the reality of major changes to No Child Left Behind Act that are surely coming down the pike.
Where would Ohio be if we overhauled our standards only to need to change them soon thereafter to be in compliance with federal law? We'd be watching our state's money (of which we have none to spare), time, and energy go down the drain.???? Strickland's plan is nothing if not bold, with its promise to fix school funding, increase school accountability, improve teacher quality, and revise the academic standards. Perhaps Ohio should focus on the first several of those tasks now, and see what plays out on the national scene before redesigning the state's academic standards.