Divergent Views on SCHOOL STANDARDS.

• Author: JOHNSON, JEAN

"The question is whether change can take pLace when the key players see the problems--and the solutions--so differently."

OF ALL THE IDEAS about improving public schools to have emerged over the past 15 years, few have as much popular appeal as the standards movement. Simply put, this is the idea that, if you expect more from a student, he or she will learn more. In many school districts across the nation, this has led to the decline of social promotion and the rise of statewide tests that determine which students can graduate or move on to the next grade.

Every state, with the exception of Iowa, has instituted some sort of initiative to raise academic standards. Governors and corporate executives alike have come together three times over the past 11 years at national education summits to agree on the concept.

Yet, many in the education world would say that the degree to which the standards movement has caught on makes it all the more important to determine whether these ideas are actually being put into place. For this reason, Public Agenda and Education Week newspaper have collaborated in each of the past three years on a survey of the different constituencies of public education--not just students, teachers, and parents, but also the employers and college professors who encounter the graduates of public schools in the workplace or on campus. The current survey, "Reality Check 2000," finds that the standards movement has a significant way to go before truly changing certain aspects of public education, such as the expectations that teachers have of students or the practice of promoting kids to the next grade even when they have not actually learned what was expected.

"Reality Check 2000" is based on telephone interviews conducted in October and November, 1999, with the following groups, randomly selected from across the country: 604 public school teachers; 615 parents with children in public schools; 605 middle and high school students; 260 employers who interview and hire recent high school or college graduates; and 251 college professors who teach freshmen or sophomores.

To gauge just how strongly Americans believe in standards, consider how they answered questions on some of the movement's key principles:

* Majorities of all the groups--employers (73%), professors (82%), teachers (81%), parents (78%), and even students (57%)--agree that it is much worse for a child to be promoted to the next grade without having learned needed skills...