Comment

Chester E. Finn Jr. and Marci Kanstoroom examine the states' academic standards, which have been the progeny of the standards-based reform movement in the United States. According to them, the essential trinity of this reform is the adoption of specific curriculum and performance standards, assessment of how many students meet the standards, and then adoption of either negative (takeovers) or positive (school or teacher bonuses) consequences. The assumption underlying this reform strategy is that assessments will reflect the standards and signal success or failure and that consequences will drive schools and districts to increase performance.

Finn and Kanstoroom correctly point out that for this trinity to work, standards have to be not only consistent with the best thinking about that particular discipline but also detailed enough to drive instruction in the right way. They found few states had drafted standards with this kind of specificity.

An example of the level of specificity and accuracy Finn and Kanstoroom admire is California's reading and language arts standards that delineate as its first standard for first grade that students should be able to look at an unencountered simple word in print, generate the sounds from all the letters and letter combinations, and blend those sounds into a recognizable word (assuming that the word is in the student's oral vocabulary). This skill is called decoding, and an overwhelming body of research and best practice find that the ability to decode is an essential tool in becoming automatic with words and thus learning to read. Weak decoding skills are implicated in 85 percent of reading failure. Yet, few of the current state reading and language arts standards mention the ability to decode.

The failure to include this instructional objective renders a set of reading standards fatally flawed. Finn and Kanstoroom are justified in bemoaning the fact that so few of the standards meet their criteria. The trinity loses its coherence and power if, initially, vague standards confuse implementation.

Unfortunately, evidence shows that the steps Finn and Kanstoroom recommend--the adoption of detailed and accurate standards, conducting assessment geared to those standards, and providing consequences--will by themselves produce only limited improvements in student performance.

First, even in the California standards, giving each child the ability to decode is only one among a welter of standards. The standards do not necessarily make decoding a priority for instruction. Second, while the result of decoding--higher comprehension--is assessed, a specific decoding test is usually not part of the assessment and must be left for local diagnostics. Third, and most important, the triad--standards, assessment, and consequences--may not be the most important set of reform components. The assumption seems to be that lack of motivation is the culprit in preventing improvement. Thus, with powerful rewards or sanctions, teachers and administrators will figure out what to do and produce results, or, more likely, alternative forms of schooling (such as charter schools) will spring up and be responsive to quality concerns. This assumption is valid for some. Educators will strive harder for rewards or fear of sanctions. Their careers are at risk if they fail to do so.

However, most teachers and administrators passionately desire that their students read and compute better. The major impediment to improvement in their schools is the lack of capacity to improve instruction. Most schools do not know enough about the specifics of reading or math instruction--what are the key components, why students have difficulty mastering these components, and the focus and leadership--to assure that instructional practice reflects these specifics. Even though newly created charter schools are freed from most bureaucratic restraints, on the whole they do not offer instruction that is much different from existing public schools. Charter schools also need more intelligent attention to effective instruction.

Thus, while standards, assessment, and consequences are important, even more important to improving achievement is an implementation triad--teacher knowledge, quality instructional materials, and site and district leadership. When these three components are done well, achievement...