Before the Clinton-era Improving America’s Schools Act and the Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act we relied heavily on thousands of local school systems to set standards of promote excellence and equity on public education. Not surprisingly, they did so with widely varying degrees of commitment and success. In response, the Clinton law required states receiving federal funding to establish statewide standards and tests for their students. NCLB added student performance targets and sanctions for underperforming schools.

And rightly so. Our educational challenges are national, not local. Our pursuit of educational equity is far from fulfilled and workers are increasingly competing for jobs with their counterparts around the world. National problems require national solutions. As commentator Matt Miller wrote in The Atlantic in 2008 of relying on local school boards to meet today’s educational challenges: “It’s as if after Pearl Harbor, FDR had suggested we prepare for war through the uncoordinated efforts of thousands of small factories.”

With NCLB and rest of the policy infrastructure constructed over the past two decades to promote a national vision of public education in danger of being swept away by a torrent of criticism from the Left and the Right, the Common Core State Standards are rapidly becoming critical components of the campaign to ensure that local educators hold high expectations for all students.

The standards are rigorous, as they should be. Student and teacher performance aligns with our expectations of them; the higher the bar, the more students and teachers achieve. It’s surprising that George Miller and Margaret Spellings would suggest that the Common Core standards are too rigorous. They’re worry that many students will fail the tougher tests is misplaced. It’s true that more students are likely to struggle with the tests, but there’s a workable solution: keep standards high (as the National Assessment of Educational Progress has done) and rate schools on how much their students learn each year, not merely on the basis of whether enough of their students hit a state standard (a strategy that encourages states to lower their achievement bars to reduce failure rates, as many did under NCLB).

But it’s far from clear whether states will implement the Common Core standards with fidelity. A lot will depend on new voluntary national tests now under development. Schools tend to teach what’s tested and while a majority of states have signed up with one or both of the consortia building the new tests and the tests are supposed to be aligned with the standards, there’s no way of knowing at this point whether states will actually administer the tests (which are likely to be more expensive than current standardized tests) or where they’ll set passing scores.

If the tests do end up being more rigorous and states adopt them, the only way to avoid a repeat of the NCLB debacle of vast numbers of schools labeled failures is to rate schools to a significant degree on the basis of students’ annual academic growth. That way schools get credit for educating their students, regardless of where students start on the achievement curve.

As for those who say that the Common Core standards are evidence that we can have a national vision of educational excellence without the participation of the federal government, keep in mind that the standards are the product of two decades of work involving Republican and Democratic administrations dating back to the presidency of George H.W. Bush. The Obama administration gave states a powerful incentive to embrace the Common Core standards, developed under the auspices of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, by making adoption of the standards a prerequisite for receiving federal Race to the Top monies. And the administration is also funding the development of the voluntary national tests that are critical to the Common Core standards’ success.

The common core standards do set a higher bar – something desperately needed – but it’s only a first step. Now states have to implement them effectively. (And the few states that haven’t adopted the standards will need to prove that they measure up.) Without proper implementation they will likely have little effect on academic achievement.

What does proper implementation look like? Current teachers need training on the new set of standards. Teacher preparation programs need to align their courses to ensure prospective teachers are prepared to teach the common core. Districts and schools need to make sure that classrooms are equipped with texts and resources that support and align with the common core. This will take time, coordination and funding. What’s more, states and districts cannot forget about other important factors like staffing schools with the effective teachers, supporting and developing teachers, improving struggling schools, etc.

This means the federal government still has a role to play. Through the next ESEA reauthorization, Congress should set broad education goals for student achievement, ask states to develop or adopt high-quality standards pre-K (yes, pre-K, not just kindergarten) through high school and provide incentives to states with plans for meeting those goals. The federal government should also play a role in encouraging states to provide a more comprehensive education that includes science, history, geography, foreign languages and the arts. These important subject areas continue to be squeezed out of the school day. Standards for students’ social and emotional development – their ability to work with others, follow through on tasks and resist acting out – are worth considering as well.

Lastly, to ensure that kids are starting at a point that will enable them to master the standards in reading and math, states need to take stock of how they handle kindergarten. The common core standards begin with kindergarten, but many children in this country do not have equal access to kindergarten. It is not fair to hold those children to the same standards without ensuring that they have the same amount of time in the classroom. For example, some states require districts to offer a half-day only. Some districts offer both half-day and full-day but require parents to pay for the second half of the day if they want their child to attend. And some states don’t require their districts to offer kindergarten at all. States that only provide funding for half-day should fund kindergarten at the same levels as first grade. This will help to give young learners the start they need to meet the challenges of the common core and become proficient readers by the end of third grade.

NCLB or Common Core? NCLB and Common Core? If you look at the evidence, the answer to both questions is “no.” There’s precious little evidence that NCLB has worked, and just as little that national standards will do any better.

Despite all the fine sounding talk about the federal government demanding “accountability” and forcing states to improve, NAEP data for long-struggling groups reveals many periods before NCLB with equal or faster score gains than under No Child. In other words, the federal government’s own measure of academic achievement provides no support for the idea that accountability – or anything else under No Child – has translated into better performance.

But hasn’t the problem been the lack of a common measure of “proficiency,” which has allowed states to dodge the hard work of getting all kids up to speed? And isn’t that precisely what the Common Core will fix?

No again. What we’ve learned from not just NCLB, but decades of failed federal education intervention, is that politicians and administrators at all levels will find ways to take federal money while avoiding meaningful consequences for poor performance. And there’s little reason to believe that the Common Core will change that.

For one thing, if the Common Core truly is controlled by states – which, given the Race to the Top, waivers, and federal funding of national tests it clearly isn’t – then states will ignore the standards whenever they’re inconvenient. And if the federal government tries to put the screws to states that underperform? All the teachers’ unions, administrators’ associations, and other groups representing those who would be held accountable will mobilize and have the system gutted. It’s the clear lesson of history.

But isn’t the Common Core so good, and having national standards so important, that we must adopt them?

Yet again, no.

There’s essentially no meaningful evidence that, other things being equal, countries with national standards perform better than those without. And there is serious disagreement over the quality of the Common Core, including powerful critiques from well known English language arts expert Sandra Stotsky, and the only mathematician on the Common Core Validation Committee, R. James Milgram.

Common Core, No Child Left Behind – both are cut from the same, moth-devoured cloth: top-down government control. In light of decades of costly failure, it is well past time we stop entertaining such fixes and move on to something different. It’s time to focus on fundamentally changing the system so that educators have the freedom to tailor teaching to the needs of unique children, while parents are empowered to hold educators truly accountable. It is time for school choice, which, unlike NCLB and national standards, the evidence very much supports.

So the federal policy choice is limited to 1) trust the states to implement rigorous standards for all students or, 2) continue test-based “accountability” to identify performance gaps, label more “failing” schools, and mandate school “turnarounds?”

Frankly, our nation's students, especially low income students and students of color, need an entirely new federal - state relationship in education.

It has to start with increased incentives for states to adopt and implement rigorous common standards in the core areas, with complimentary state standards in other critical areas such as social studies, visual and performing arts, so all students are exposed to a full range of rich curriculum.

Then we need a new set of federal policies designed to move the 50 states to build strong public education systems, and leave behind the narrow NCLB accountability measures that largely bypass the states who are responsible for delivering quality education for their school children. The foundational elements for building these systems must include, at a minimum, the following: 1) finance reform to deliver sufficient school funding distributed to address for concentrated student need; 2) well-planned, high quality pre-k, unifying existing Head Start, child care and public school classrooms, to provide access to every low income three- and four-year old; 3) comprehensive workforce development designed to attract, support and retain the next generation of effective teachers and school leaders; 4) accountability measures build upon enhanced SEA capacity to provide meaningful support, assistance and evaluation to high need schools and districts; and 5) state capital support to rebuild facilities infrastructure to ensure safe and educationally adequate learning environments and working conditions.

The current debate ignores the clear evidence that school and district, and even teacher, centric strategies will fail to bring about the high performing systems of public schools our nation’s children so urgently need, and are entitled to.

Let's go bold. It's time for a new federalism in public education.

In a recent survey of school counselors, 89% said that a top mission of U.S. schools is to ensure all high school seniors graduate prepared for a career or college. But only 30% said this was the actual mission of the schools where they work. This mismatch between goals and reality is why education accountability is important. And it’s why the federal government should not retreat from its historic and vital role of ensuring all students get an excellent education, especially if they attend schools that don’t live up to their mission.

The Common Core initiative is a giant step forward, but it is not sufficient on its own to get students across the finish line. In sum, the Common Core sets higher standards that, if followed, will provide students with the advanced knowledge and skills they need to succeed, rather than the lower-level skills that many state standards currently focus on. That said, what will states do with the large numbers of students and schools who already struggle on the basic standards and will surely struggle on the higher standards? Will states take the tough actions needed to turn them around, like reallocating resources, re-staffing chronically low-performing schools, or revamping curriculum and programs?

History tells us that many will not, absent positive pressure from outside their system. For example, in the 1990s federal education law required states to set standards but failed to ask them to set concrete goals for meeting those standards. The result? A vast majority of states did the least amount possible. Yes, some states will lead, as some always do. But federal policy rightly worries about all states, not just those at the head of the class.

A new report from Education Sector surveyed every state to determine if high schools track their students’ progress in college. Encouragingly, 44 states have the ability to do so. Unfortunately, only 8 actually provide that information to high schools so they can improve. Those eight states deserve commendation because that kind of effort is needed to make Common Core work well. But that does not mean the remaining 42 are off the hook. The inimical mismatch between idea and reality is exactly why federal law should hold states’ feet to the fire—not just for setting standards but also for meeting them.

In other words, federal law should maintain strong accountability, albeit in an updated form. Congress would be wise, as it reauthorizes federal education law, to follow the lead of the Common Core initiative and ask states to set college and career ready standards. But it would also be wise to ensure those states set goals for reaching those standards.

NCLB-as-we-know-it has few defenders nowadays--Fawn spoke with two of the most prominent--not least because the center of education-reform gravity has swiftly moved from Washington to the state capitals. Secretary Spellings and Congressman Miller usefully remind us not to neglect low-achieving kids, and we know that there are scads of them, even judging by the weak expectations and flabby standards that most states have set. But a bunch of kids are well above proficient, too--around thirty percent when gauged even by NAEP's demanding norms. NCLB essentially ignored them, despite the plain fact that the United States can never strengthen its competitive position or boost its economy and job creation only by lifting the bottom of the achievement distribution. Common Core challenges us to raise our expectations. Remarkably, the states have pulled it off so far with almost no federal involvement. (This alarms some folks with a Potomacentric view of the world.) To be sure, we cannot yet know whether the twin consortia now designing new assessments will be able to reach consensus on "cut scores" worthy of those raised expectations, and it remains to be seen whether participating states will have the fortitude to take such cut scores seriously. But the overdue effort to reboot America's approach to standards-based reform is now well underway and it would be a big pity to let NCLB nostalgia slow it down. The good news is that such nostalgia is not exactly contagious.

There is no either-or in considering both NCLB and the Common Core standards. Let's explore why setting high standards and insisting on accountability for results, especially for disadvantaged students, are hardly mutually exclusive. They actually fit together and are both desirable.

NCLB and its predecessor, the IASA, called for high content standards in the states. NCLB then pushed states to implement consequential accountability systems to promote greater proficiency with respect to their separate, but aligned performance standards.

Some policy players persist in confusing problems with content standards with those of performance standards. Whether intended or accidental, this confusion is not helpful to making or implementing sound policy.

As to performance standards, virtually all studies show the level of rigor of these standards has been weak for quite some time. But their rigor today is comparable to, or slightly greater than, that of ten years ago. Some states got tougher; a few, such as Illinois ("helping" Chicago), got weaker. In any event, the assertion that standards have been generally "dummied down" in recent years is false as well as distracting in the work of setting better content standards and holding schools accountable.

Content standards across the country have long been vague, poorly structured, and low level. The purpose of the Common Core initiative is to provide states with model reading and math standards that address these deficiencies. Virtually all states have adopted the new standards, and objective evaluations confirm that most of the states have improved their standards by making the change.

It remains to be seen how well the states will implement the new content standards. What curricula will they use? What instructional materials will they adopt? What professional development will be utilized to align teaching to them? What tests will be selected? And what performance standards will be set for those tests and for accountability purposes?

The new content standards show real promise. But, until key decisions concerning these issues are made and implemented, it is impossible to judge the impact these standards will make.

The key point here is that the mere adoption of the Common Core standards has nothing to do with "moving beyond NCLB." Again, let's recall that NCLB addresses a specific, discreet need: at whatever level the states set their standards and however they define proficiency, the schools should be held accountable for getting their disadvantaged students to proficiency.

I think this is essentially what Margaret Spellings and George Miller are saying. Get the kids to proficiency! And, until they at least reach the current lower levels of proficiency, it's pie-in-the-sky or, to paraphrase Secretary Duncan, fraudulent to pretend they will get to much higher levels of proficiency merely upon the adoption of different standards. In fact, if accountability is diminished or goes away as part of the deal, it's hard to see how we'll make any of the hoped-for gains. Indeed we'll be lucky if we don't lose ground.

In this respect, it's quite worrisome that, without any specific commitment by the states to match its accountability features, Gene Wilhoit says that NCLB has now "run its course." Until the states either give up their expectation of federal dollars or else clearly and firmly commit IN THEIR OWN POLICIES that schools will continue to face serious consequences when disadvantaged students are left behind, a federal insistence on accountability should and must have more course to run.

So, let's move to higher and clearer standards, but, at the same time, let's also hold ourselves accountable for all subgroups of students learning effectively to the standards we set.