As far as national standards - I'm all for them simply because I doubt my kids will be educated only in one state/district. The lack of common standards can be terrible for kids whose families have to move, for instance those in the military.
The problem with national standards is that they will almost invariably end up being those of California. That's what everything standardizes to in this country, otherwise known as "lowest common denominator". My folks moved away from California 39 years ago because the schools had gotten so bad. By the time I finished high school, twenty-odd years ago, the California standards had caught up with Colorado (which is twenty years behind in most things). Now we start talking about national standards, and you can bet that will be the ones we get.
{W. Stephen Wilson is a Johns Hopkins math professor who teaches freshman calculus and is a former senior advisor for mathematics in the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. He also reviewed the states' K-12 math standards for the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and he has strong opinions about which offer the best guidance. He called California's math standards "the gold standard." Wilson recommends that parents who want to make sure their students are getting prepared for high school and college compare the topics in their students' textbooks to the California standards.
"Odds are, if you can't do that easily then there is something very wrong," he says.
Why Is Algebra a Big Deal? By Linda Strean}
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....Why_Is_Algebra_a_Big_Deal.html#Post41325My understanding is that CA really does have the top math curriculum but rather low reading proficiency benchmarks.
CA math standards and MA reading standards might combine well to change the educational tide in the U.S.
