Letter: Columnist should not worry about fuzzy ideas

Thursday, June 26, 1997 | 11:49 a.m.

Opportunity-to-learn standards have been around for over a decade. These standards were required by the federal government and are controversial because of the high cost to implement them. These standards are not in place in most school jurisdictions in this country because we have rarely put sufficient resources into opportunities for all children to learn, especially the disadvantaged or disenfranchised children of our society.

Content standards are defined as what we expect children to know and to be able to do in specific academic subjects. They should be common across the country. They are not. Performance standards are defined as "how good is good enough," with explicit academic performance skills identified, examples of student work which meets the performance standard described, and teacher commentary explaining why the student work meets the performance standard. The only thing common about performance standards is that they should be empirically referenced to academic content. We still do not yet have rigorous enough academic content standards nor do we have the specific performance standards for Nevada children to meet.

According to most national and international test results, our children are already quite proficient in arithmetic facts and functions. We apparently do lots of drill and practice. Where they fall short is in problem solving, higher order thinking, and the application of mathematical, scientific, language and arts ideas. Hanlon should focus his attention on how we get all children to meet these rigorous content and performance standards and worry less about his straw men and his demonic reformers.

Eugene T. Paslov