Steven Weinberg, a recently retired Oakland middle school teacher, critiques California’s content standards.

Having written previously about ways education has improved in the 40 years since I began teaching, I would like to address one change that I do not believe has been beneficial: the attempt to make “content standards” the basis for everything in education.

The standards movement, which began about 20 years ago, is an effort to improve K-12 education by creating a list of content standards for each course and grade level, telling teachers exactly what needs to be taught and measuring what students have learned using tests built around those standards. California started generating these standards about 12 years ago, and now has content standards and tests for English, Math, Science, and History. These standards list between 40 and 70 things that need to be taught in each subject, each year. With 180 days in a school year, it is clear that this allows only two to four days per standard.

These standards are based on a misconception of what education is. Read the rest of this entry »