Sarah Brezinsky Standards NCAS supports setting high standards for what schools should be expected to teach students and the need to ensure equal access to high standards for all students. Enormous challenges accompany any large-scale school improvement effort. Complex implementation problems arise from the profound differences in quality between well-resourced schools and poorer schools serving disadvantaged urban and rural communities, which are often characterized by crumbling facilities, a lack of books and basic supplies, and poorly trained teachers.
High standards are a double-edged sword for children already at risk for academic failure.
While high standards provide the hope that all children will be granted full access to a high-quality education, they also present the danger that children in many schools will be expected to master subject material they may never have the opportunity to learn. But school equity advocates are concerned that the move to high standards will simply create larger gaps in academic performance between students attending well-resourced schools and those attending poor schools struggling to survive. So far, the standards movements has failed to acknowledge the troublesome fact that U.S. public schools present students and parents with a very uneven playing field. Some schools have modern facilities, well-trained teachers, sufficient supplies and materials, and supportive communities. If the same set of high standards is imposed on well-resourced schools and poorer schools alike, children from poor schools may be unable to meet the standards, will be blamed for their failure, and abandoned to languish at the bottom of the economic pile.