(Vol. 1, No. 1 - Fall 1996 / Web Edition)
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IDEAS:
Creating Respect for High Standards
By Anne C. Lewis
For two exciting weeks this summer, people in Long Beach and around the
world watched and listened, often with awe, to standards in action. The
Olympics enthralled us because it was a bald display of excellence, of personal
feat, and of celebration with the best.
Even before Atlanta, these great athletes needed to be the best, meeting
qualifying standards to be able to compete. They knew what they had to do
to get to Atlanta and what they had to do at the Olympics to stand on the
winners' platform.
It is this same respect for meeting standards that describes school reform
in Long Beach. Gradually, teachers, students, and parents are beginning
to understand that the bar has been set high and everyone is expected to
get over it. Some may set records, but everyone is expected to qualify.
Long Beach adopted new content standards last year, goals for what students
should learn.
Performance standards - -which will say what "good enough" is
- -will be tried out this year. New tests also are being matched to the
content standards. And the growing resources available to teachers to study
their subjects more deeply and sharpen their teaching skills are evidence
that the school district recognizes it cannot expect more students unless
it expects more of educators.
All of these activities in Long Beach represent hard work, consensus-building
and only beginnings.
At one level, the task is simple to Superintendent Carl Cohn: "Change
what's going on in classrooms and get parents to support it." Beyond
this minimal message, however, are layers and layers of changes that must
be made -- in the preparation and support of teachers, in the expectations
that teachers and parents have of students, and in the depth of knowledge
among teachers about how to make a "thinking curriculum" accessible
to all students.
Those who helped LBUSD draw up the new standards learned what such a curriculum
requires. To be successful in the almost-here 21st century -- in a career
or in personal and civic life -- students who graduate from Long Beach schools
must have more skills and knowledge than ever before and the ability to
apply what they know to real life.
Even those who know little about standards-based reform or who have not
yet bought into the idea (let's be candid -- many teachers, not just parents,
are not yet on board) ought to be proud of Long Beach's efforts.
Long Beach is one of the few urban districts in the country that is "walking,"
not just "talking," the standards reform agenda. So far, the national
consensus about higher student learning standards tends to be loud on rhetoric
and soft on the details and hard work required.
Long Beach decided several years ago to make the only viable choice possible
-- to fully educate all of its students, no matter how different their nature
and needs were from generations past.
Hopefully, in the future students and their families will know how much
they have achieved as they cross the finish line. The Long Beach community
will have reason to celebrate the benefits that will come its way from having
a well-prepared citizenry. And the coaches who made it possible should be
very pleased.
Anne C. Lewis is the author of Believing in Ourselves: Progress
and Struggle in Urban Middle School Reform. She is a member of the
Focused Reporting Project writing team and authors a monthly Washington
column for Phi Delta KAPPAN.