November, 1997
No. 3, Vol. 78; Pg. 207

   A national Basic Skills Certificate is "a place to stand" that conflicting political factions can agree on and that can leverage many other reforms that have been proposed, Mr. Berkson maintains.

Alluding to the principle of the lever, Archimedes said: "Give me where to stand, and I will move the Earth." Reformers of American education during the past century have been frustrated repeatedly in their efforts to find the Archimedean fulcrum that could give them the leverage to move the education system forward. The latest wave of reform has been the effort to establish national standards that could be used to shift the education system to a higher level of student achievement.

Goals 2000 is intended to provide such national standards, but it, like past efforts, has been thwarted by pressures from conflicting political viewpoints. In particular, the National education Standards and Improvement Council (NESIC), created by Congress in 1994, was attacked in the next Congress as a "national school board" that violated traditions of local control. It was disbanded. A second blow to national standards came from the education Summit held in the spring of 1996, which was spearheaded by Gov. Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin and Louis Gerstner, Jr., the CEO of IBM. The Summit abandoned the pursuit of national standards, concluding that standards should be developed only on the state and local levels.

These steps away from the idea of nationwide standards have threatened to render ineffectual this latest effort at reform, which began in 1983 with A Nation at Risk. President Clinton, who as governor of Arkansas had been a leader in the movement for national standards, has responded with a proposal for piecemeal reforms: namely, a plan for a voluntary national reading test for fourth-graders and a voluntary national math test for eighth-graders. This proposal has not yet been placed within any new overall strategy to improve the achievement level of students, and it has serious weaknesses, as I will explain below.

In the face of this turning away from national standards after nearly 15 years of effort, we must ask ourselves, Are national standards in fact needed?

Are National Standards Needed?

If we look carefully at the educational and social problems that the national standards are intended to solve, we will see that national standards are not needed for the top quarter of students - those who will go on to complete a four-year college degree. However, a national basic examination covering marketable skills in language and mathematics is crucial to improving the education system for all other students.

The top quarter. Currently, approximately half of American students attend college, but only half of those students go on to graduate from a four-year college. For this top quarter, effective national standards are already in place: the achievement tests (now known as SAT II) and the Advanced Placement exams given by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey. Thus we have in place a system that, though flawed, works moderately well from an economic point of view. While we can improve the education of our top students, a lack of standards is not the problem.

The middle 50%. These are the students who either don't graduate from college with a four-year degree or who don't attend college at all. And they are in quite a different situation, a situation that calls for new national standards. These students learn little in their last two years of high school and find their education during those years to be tedious and irrelevant.(1)

The key social problem for this middle group is a slow, demoralizing transition from school to work. Many go on to community colleges, where a large portion of their education is remedial (a tremendously costly duplication). Otherwise, our system does not consider this middle 50% seriously for career-track jobs until they reach the age of 22 or 23, as Stephen Hamilton pointed out in his book Apprenticeship to Adulthood.(2) Today this group of students faces not only a demoralizing transition to work but also the prospect of stagnant or declining wages if the students do not improve their skills. The key problem for educators is how to give students in this middle group the academic skills they need as the foundation for skilled and financially rewarding careers, even without a four-year college education. For this middle group, effective standards are not in place, and the system fails them.

The bottom quarter. The final group of students are those in the bottom quarter, many of whom would be labeled "at risk." This group of students is frequently so demoralized by the time they are in sixth or seventh grade that they see no hope of acquiring the skills they will need to assume a dignified place in adult life - the skills to enable them to earn a decent wage that will support a family. Among this group we face national crises of youth crime and births to parents who cannot take care of their babies.

The single most important long-term cure for the social ills of this bottom quarter of students is to give them the hope of acquiring skills that will earn them a living wage. These students need to know, as early as elementary school, just what academic skills they will have to master in order to be on track for good jobs as adults, and they need to have the full support of the school system to achieve these goals. Thus for the bottom quarter the need is even greater for standards identifying the academic skills necessary to succeed in the world of work.

A National Basic Skills Certificate

Is it possible to come up with a plan that the great majority of Americans can support and that will actually work for our young people? I believe that there are three keys to a successful national plan. First, the plan must be narrowly focused, including only those standards on which there is consensus; only then will political success be possible. Second, the plan must be national in scope; only a national standard can link elementary and secondary education to the national labor market. This critical link is necessary to motivate students and to activate the private sector resources essential for success. And third, the plan must motivate and support student effort. Without student motivation and adequate support, the plan will fail educationally.

A national Basic Skills Certificate (BSC) is at the heart of such a plan. It is "a place to stand" that conflicting political factions can agree on and that can leverage many other reforms that have been proposed. The idea of a BSC is simple: at age 15 (grade 10), test whether students have the mathematical and language skills necessary to achieve good jobs in the American economy. The BSC would be awarded to any student who passes one of several exams that have been accredited to test accurately for the math and language skills that would enable a working person to support a family. The exams would be given several times a year and could be retaken until passed. Those who pass will have demonstrated their mastery of basic academic skills to future employers and to institutions of higher education.

How can we have confidence that the BSC will provide a sound basis for improved education of students, especially the lower three-quarters of the class? And how can the BSC break the political stalemate that has long sabotaged effective reform? Briefly, here is how a national standard based on the BSC would work and how it could meet the educational and political challenges.

Narrow focus. The BSC must be restricted to testing for mathematical and language skills; it must not test subject-matter content, such as in history or biology. The link between the certificate and the high school degree would depend on local decisions. For example, passing a BSC exam could be a prerequisite for receiving a high school diploma, a measure that would go a long way toward restoring the value of a diploma in the eyes of employers. While the schools should absolutely not have a narrowly vocational focus, they should at the very least provide all students by age 18 (excepting those who are severely mentally disabled) with the academic skills necessary to hold a decent-paying job.

National scope. Congress could create the Basic Skills Certificate by establishing and funding a Governors' Basic Skills Council to accredit BSC exams developed by private, state, or university groups. Those applying to have their exams accredited would have to make the case to the board that their exams measure the academic skills needed to succeed in the American workplace. The currently operating National Skill Standards Board (discussed below) is in fact identifying levels of basic skills demanded by the current labor market, so the needed effort has already begun.

The Governors' Basic Skills Council would include one representative appointed by the governor of each state. Funding for the exam itself would, in an initial three-year pilot program, be federal. But funding would eventually come from the states. For example, states could charge students a fee for each time the exam is taken, with students on subsidized lunches exempted from the fee. The nationally approved BSC exams would become a de facto national standard without being mandated, just as the achievement tests and Advanced Placement exams have become national without any mandate.

Exams. A bare statement of standards, without a mechanism for holding people responsible for meeting them, will fail to move the system upward. Institutional inertia will defeat any effort at reform that fails to clearly assign responsibilities to all parties involved. The BSC would assign a clear responsibility to the student: pass an accredited BSC exam. In turn, this implies the responsibility of the school systems: adopt a program of instruction that will lead students, step by step, to the goal of passing a BSC exam. Similarly, teachers would be held responsible for moving their students one step nearer that goal, and parents would be responsible for helping in ways clearly defined by the schools. The taxpayers and voters would have a clear national standard by which to judge their local education systems and by which to hold them accountable.

Motivation and support. In order to work effectively, any educational program needs to motivate students and support their efforts. The BSC would motivate students because they would know that it represents an honest standard that employers respect. Students would know from first grade on that the BSC is the basic ticket to a respected place in the adult world.

We must also recognize that only a national program can provide this motivation. The labor market is national and mobile. Consequently, local or even state standards cannot have the desired effect on the labor market. Students from other communities or states could not be expected to have taken a locally mandated exam, and so employers would not be able to use a local test as a basic standard. The BSC would provide the critical and now missing linchpin connecting elementary and secondary education to the national labor market. This critical linkage is why the BSC will powerfully motivate students.

Support for student effort and achievement would come most effectively from good mastery learning programs. These can bring all but the most seriously mentally handicapped students up to the level of skills required by the exams by age 18. Thus, in addition to funding the Governors' Basic Skills Council, Congress should fund initial grants for the development of effective programs of mastery learning that extend from first grade to the BSC. (The Council would not judge curricular materials; that would be left solely to the marketplace.)

Over the years mastery learning has meant different things to different people. As I have written elsewhere, the school system in Johnson City, New York, has used mastery learning methods for more than 20 years and has succeeded in bringing its students - more than half of whom qualify for subsidized lunches - up to the same standards as suburban schools with poverty levels half as high.(3)

In the case of Johnson City, the key has been having the whole system coordinated to lead students step by step to the final academic goals. The coordination involves having standards that rise yearly, step by step, to the desired level. Each year, in turn, is broken down into two- to three-week units that lead to each yearly goal. Each unit ends with a mastery test, which may be retaken without penalty. This mastery test serves as a diagnostic tool for those who need to retake it. To ensure that no student falls disastrously behind, there is after-school tutoring, as well as vacation and summer schools. Whatever name one gives it, the step-by-step approach with regular feedback on mastery has proved successful in teaching skills in everything from the violin to mathematics.

Once a national BSC program has been authorized by Congress, the coordinated efforts of school administrators, teachers, academics, and the private sector will be able quickly to produce a variety of step-by-step mastery programs for local schools to choose from. National tests will create a national demand, and the money to be made will motivate a massive effort by both public and private sectors to develop effective curricular materials.

Post-certificate programs and schools. The BSC would make it much easier for our education system to become more diverse and specialized after age 16, in order to make use of the different talents and serve the various goals and interests of our students. While those who earn a BSC might simply go on to obtain a high school diploma, they might also enter a variety of new programs or schools that could be created by state and local authorities: general college prep, technical programs (with or without apprenticeships), specialized arts schools, and so forth. Such programs could provide two- or four-year degrees, all of which would be at least on the level of the current high school diploma.

The resources of the current community colleges and high schools could be coordinated and combined to produce these new programs and schools. Some of the schools would have competitive admissions tests or auditions, as do magnet schools in science and the performing arts today. Students who reach age 16 without having earned a BSC could go into somewhat less academically challenging programs: apprenticeships; technical, business, or arts training courses; and so on. During the time they spend in these programs they would continue working toward earning the BSC by age 18 as part of their further two- or four-year degrees.

Breaking the Political Deadlock

Today, both conservatives and liberals have serious reservations about any plan for national standards, particularly one involving a testing program. Many conservatives are concerned that any national program will amount to a federal "big brother" forcing wrongheaded standards, written by the education establishment, down the throats of local school districts. Many liberals are concerned that any program that involves testing will unfairly discriminate against large numbers of blacks and Latinos and further demoralize the very students we most need to help.

Both sets of concerns seem to me quite legitimate. The federal government and experienced educators certainly could produce standards and programs that unintentionally make local education systems worse, and it is quite possible that national exams will simply punish and demoralize weak students without yielding any educational benefits. However, the BSC successfully meets both conservative and liberal concerns. Moreover, the BSC will actually make real both the conservative idea of having higher standards for students and the long-time liberal goal of helping minorities achieve on a more equal level with the rest of society.

Conservative concerns. The new Republican majority in Congress in 1995 abolished the National Education Standards and Improvement Council (NESIC), which had been created by the previous Congress. However, the Republican majority continued to support the National Skill Standards Board, which had also been established in 1994. A comparison of the two programs makes clear the conservative principles at work in education policy and why the BSC conforms to those principles.

The abortive NESIC was to have certified voluntary state and local standards in all subjects. Established educational experts were to have a strong presence on the board. Conservatives felt that NESIC amounted to a "national school board," through which the education establishment would have a finger in every state and local pie. They saw a real danger that NESIC would dominate and interfere with local decisions.

The National Skill Standards Board, which Republicans chose to leave in place, is now at work fulfilling the following responsibilities: 1) identifying clusters of front-line (nonsupervisory) occupations with similar skills, 2) identifying the skill standards in each area needed to "compete for high-wage jobs," and 3) developing a voluntary system of "assessment and certification of the attainment of the skill standards." It is charged with developing "objective criteria" to determine skill standards. In other words, it cannot (as NESIC could) dream up its own standards but can only identify the objective standards that exist in the labor market. The National Skill Standards Board is also composed mainly of representatives from business and labor, rather than from the education professions.

In contrast to NESIC, the National Skill Standards Board conforms to two key conservative principles. First, local governments should deal with an issue unless there is a demonstrable, compelling need for federal involvement. Even in the presence of such a compelling need, the federal government should seek to form partnerships with the private sector and with state and local governments. The business community has been strongly behind the National Skill Standards Board, and there is an obvious reason: the labor market is national, and the current education system has not met the needs of that market. The BSC, like the Skill Board to which it is closely related, would be an effective response to the need to serve this national labor market.

The second conservative principle that the BSC adheres to is that federal intervention in the marketplace should be reduced to a minimum. NESIC was to set standards that it had generated, and this would have influenced the whole education market. But the National Skill Standards Board and the BSC would simply codify market-generated, objective standards. By setting up the BSC program, the federal government would be making the demands of the labor market integral to the schools. The BSC is thus a market-oriented program that is fully consistent with conservative principles and that would further the goal of a more effective and productive education market.

Would the BSC undermine the authority of state and local systems? No. First, state and local systems would be free not to participate. Second, if local systems decided to offer BSC exams, they would be able to choose among competing exams. Third, they would be totally in control of their choice of curricular materials, mastery learning or not. Finally, by providing a clear public standard by which schools could be judged, the BSC would facilitate, rather than hinder, the creation of alternative schools, such as those established through vouchers or charters.

Admittedly, the existence of BSC exams would limit the power of local boards in one important way. It would make it easier for citizens to put strong political pressure on local school boards to fulfill their basic responsibilities. Citizens would be able to ask, "Why won't you offer the BSC so that our children can show employers that they have mastered basic academic skills?" And if the schools are failing to bring all but the seriously handicapped up to the BSC level by age 18, then business leaders can ask them why, and parents and voters can hold both public school boards and private schools accountable. Thus the demands of the labor market would be felt by the schools through the political pressure of parents.

Liberal concerns. Liberals are concerned about whether a national testing program will stigmatize those members of minority groups who are now doing poorly in school and so hinder their opportunity to take an honored place in our society. Now it is certainly possible to design a system of national tests that do serious injustice to weak students. For example, you could give a tough, "skimming the cream" test at age 11 that would allow only the top quarter to continue academic studies. Such an exam would do grievous harm to many children. However, an exam that tests for basic academic skills - supported by adequate instruction and given at the right age - is the key to helping minorities.

An exam is essential to establish motivation for even weak students and to establish accountability for the school system. Motivation would certainly come from an exam that is tied to the realities of the labor market. Accountability would come from a clear standard that the public could understand and keep track of. As it is now, responsibility in the education system is so diffuse that nobody is held responsible for the failure of schools to help weaker students achieve the basic academic skills needed for our labor market. Only when the basic standard for students is clear will the standards for teachers, schools, and school boards be clear.

The biggest challenge a certification program such as the BSC would face in helping the poor revolves around the adequacy of instruction. The BSC program would engender a national focus on improving basic instruction. The mastery learning programs that are funded initially and the ongoing incentives to publishers would result in clear goals, methods, and materials for teachers. The increased pressure from parents and the business community should ensure that school systems give top priority to making basic instruction work. Given 10 years of coordinated effort, competent teachers can bring children up to the level of the BSC. While the BSC program would be no guarantee that instruction in basic skills would improve, it would exert a powerful force for success.

The appropriate age for giving such an exam would be when students have the right to leave school and enter the labor market. I know that some may accuse the diverse post-BSC programs and schools of being examples of improper "tracking" - a violation of equal opportunity. But the truth is that the legitimacy of tracking is largely a matter of age. Tracking students at a young age seriously harms many students, and the mastery learning approach in fact avoids this harm. However, a society committed to the principle of promotion based on merit must at some age begin to discriminate on the basis of acquired skills and knowledge. Discrimination on the basis of qualification begins in earnest when students are old enough to enter the labor market, for the market is indeed competitive both nationally and internationally. And not only is the labor market seriously competitive, but so is higher education. Colleges look most at student performance in grade 11 and the first half of grade 12, and they start relying on national exams to help sort applicants. Putting the BSC exam at age 16 simply makes the reality of the market clear to students.

The tragedy of the American education system has been its defensive responses to the conflicting demands for excellence and for equity, for the system has failed in both areas. The BSC would break this political logjam by providing a clear and realistic standard for what constitutes equal opportunity in elementary and secondary education. With the BSC in place, the system should be able to bring all students (except for those with serious mental handicaps) to the level of passing the BSC exam by the final year of free public education. Moreover, the national basic standard liberates the system to create diverse post-BSC programs and schools that can make the most of the diverse talents of students.

President Clinton's Testing Program

In his State of the Union address in February 1997, President Clinton proposed national testing of fourth-graders in reading and of eighth-graders in math. While the President's proposal could be made compatible with the BSC, standing alone it has serious political and educational weaknesses. The leading issue with conservatives is that (as with NESIC) the tests are again being developed under federal control by the education establishment, and the results could be used to exert pressure on local decision makers. The main problem for liberals is that the tests seem punitive and could simply stigmatize weaker students.

Both of these concerns strike me as legitimate. Why, conservatives wonder, should the standards developed by a national group be better than local standards? Perhaps they would even be worse. The liberals worry that, while the President has claimed that the tests are not punitive, he has also urged localities to hold back students who do not pass. The President's proposal in fact relies on punishment.

The BSC proposal is much stronger. First, its standards are tied to an objective reality: the demands of the marketplace. It does not rely on what the federal government or the education establishment decides should be a standard. Second, the BSC is not punitive. The only thing that happens if a student doesn't pass the exam is that he or she doesn't get the certificate; there is no additional whack on the head from the education system. What's more, a student can take it again, like the driver's test. Mastery learning programs work the same way. You don't progress to the next stage until you have mastered the earlier stage. But you don't have to be separated from your agemates, and there is no stamp of failure.

The BSC program offers positive incentives and support, both of which are missing from the President's proposal. The positive incentive comes from the tie to the labor market, and the positive support comes from the mastery learning and other curricular programs that will be operative. Thus, regardless of whether the President's proposal is accepted or rejected (and the result is uncertain at this writing), the BSC remains a viable option.

With the BSC in place, teachers could say to students, from first grade on, "I know you can master this month's material. I have seen others with your abilities do it, and office you do it you will make progress and get the math and language skills you need to get a decently paid adult job. You will be able to earn a BSC and take your place proudly in the adult world."

The bottom line is that the BSC will work. Conservatives, don't shield public and private schools from being held accountable for teaching all children the basic academic skills they need for a decently paid job. Liberals, don't shield students from realistic demands, so that they come through school without learning essential skills. Unite behind the B SC plan.

1. See the analysis of the High School and Beyond Study in John Chubb and Terry Moe, Politics, Markets, and America's Schools (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1990). Their analysis of this issue is not controverted by their critics. See, for example, David Berliner and Bruce J. Biddie, The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools (New York: Addison Wesley-Longman, 1995).

2. Stephen F. Hamilton, Apprenticeship to Adulthood: Preparing Youth for the Future (New York: Free Press, 1990).

3. William Berkson, "Mastery Learning and 'Total Quality,'" Education Week, 24 March 1993, p. 46.

WILLIAM BERKSON is executive director of the Jewish Institute for Youth and Family, Silver Spring, Md.

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