I should begin with the disclaimer that I was an initial supporter of and advocate for the current high school mathematics standards, and there are probably still situations in which I would defend them. But I have come to realize that the current standards are more a source of harm than good. In fact, the same can probably be said about standards movement in general. And yet I also feel resigned to the fact that academic standards have become for many, if not most, an unquestionable facet of modern schooling.
Some profane and inexorable authoritarian vortex formed at intersection of right-wing behaviorism and left-wing bureaucracy has left us lurched and immovable, wrenched with equal and opposite force by the unacknowledged presuppositions of either side. Though some researched and well-formed criticisms attempt to tear at this bond, they seem unable to rend the odd stasis that somehow satisfies the testing and compliance mongers while simultaneously allowing the progressive-in-name educators to believe their ideals are enshrined in policy.
So, I write this with a dual mind: recognizing the threat that standards pose to a truly progressive view of education while also acknowledging the likelihood of their perpetual existence. There is hope in individual educators and groups of educators who design and implement truly learner-centered experiences in their classrooms. And, yet there is the reality that they too often do this in opposition or outside of the expectations of their school systems.
We constantly see elevated innovative schools and classrooms whose core ideology diverges greatly from standardization. And yet, those examples are still often required to justify their work using the devices and language of standardization. In fact, the system commonly elevates its exceptions because it relies on people believing it is something that it is not. Ultimately though, the political power of standards and the ideology of standardization will always prevent such exceptions from becoming the norm.
Standards, as most often conceived, are about the reproduction of a single set of knowledge and ideas. That set of ideas and knowledge is not necessarily representative of the vast diversity of human experience, and it is certainly not encompassing of the immense possibilities of the future. As standards constrain schools to a replicate a restricted version of the past, schools risk becoming merely a vestigial bulge on society, ripe only for infection, and more easily excised than an appendix.
Given that standards seem both indefinitely wedged in our system and at odds with our most ambitious aspirations for school, the only possible recourse is to develop standards that are intentionally designed to mitigate any harm, to in some way be a self-enforcing check on their own power. In future posts, I offer a short rationale with a more specific focus on high school mathematics. I will then try to lay out guiding principles for what new, less harmful high school mathematics standards might look like. In all likelihood, the vision for new high school mathematics standards makes a better case for their development than any theoretical argument could.
