National standards: a step in the right direction?


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In an _Education Week_ Commentary, Rudy Crew, the superintendent of the Miami-Dade County, Fla., public schools; Paul Vallas, the chief executive officer of the Philadelphia schools; and


Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, argue that national standards would improve American education, especially in urban schools. They write


that urban school administrators and teachers are convinced that the most effective way to overcome challenges posed by poverty and other factors is not to lower expectations, but to raise


them. Ultimately, national standards and tests, they say, could help ask and answer questions that could never be posed using state tests alone. Eventually, they believe, such standards and


tests would help raise the quality of public education in the nation’s cities and build a foundation for economic progress. What do you think? Would national standards help or hurt U.S.


education?