Paying for the National Standards with Federal Dollars

Recent developments around the formation of national standards have been really interesting. They got even more so today as Secretary Duncan has announced that the federal government will spend $350 million developing tests off whatever standards are eventually developed by the collection of 46 states.

Scott has written eloquently about this movement here and I agree with all of his points, even though my instinct is more toward state control (I don't think I trust the federal government). Anyway, one of the questions he raised in that post was concerning enforcement and specifically concerning the millions (or billions) needed to develop new tests to actually make these standards mean something.

Well, here is a 350 million dollar down payment and the DOE clearly sees its role as bankrolling this whole enterprise.

Asked to explain the money's focus on developing more tests, Duncan said developing the standards themselves would be relatively inexpensive.

Developing assessments, by contrast, is a "very heavy lift financially," he said, expressing concern that the project could stall without federal backing.

"Having real high standards is important, but behind that, I think in this country we have too many bad tests," Duncan said. "If we're going to have world-class international standards, we need to have world-class evaluations behind them."

So, we have national standards developed by states and paid for, and enforced, by the federal government. This is getting messy already and we don't even have a single standard developed yet. 

This is a constitutional end-run if I have ever seen one.

So, the federal government is going to pony up the money but not contribute at all to the formation of the standards? When was the last time the federal government was that gratuitous? They are not, that's the answer. There are standards and then there are tests. Ask any teacher, any single one, whether for the sake of curriculum development the standard or the test is the most important aspect. What gets tested, gets taught. If the federal government dictates the test ... the federal government dictates curriculum - and federalism as we know it in education is over.