Signatures For Students

We believe in and support the necessity for educational standards and accountability. However, we also believe that many of the standards and most of the accountability measures currently in use are simplistic. They suffer from one or more of the following problems, any one of which is sufficiently serious to render them counterproductive:.

• Fail to lead students to engage in higher-order thinking skills
• Reinforce a false, fragmented view of the nature of knowledge
• Impede the instructional flexibility demanded by differing teacher and learner characteristics
• Inadequately track the constantly evolving nature of fields of study
• Discourage curricular adaptation to social change
• Emphasize minimum achievement rather than maximum performance