Interesting conversation. Personally, I don’t see any conflicts between standards and the top-line goalsetting of the community. The community isn’t going to be able to offer expertise on the specifics, so it’s up to the teaching profession to fill in the details, and standards are just one tool they can use, as professionals to follow national benchmarks and/or best practices, just like most other professionals do.

To use an example, the community could say that they want students to be financially literate when they graduate: they’ll say that strong money skills increases the ability of their children to live independently, and strengthens the community through reduced bankruptcies and the like. But I don’t think they should be the ones to list out specific classroom requirements: that’s the role of education, to take community mandates, define them, and execute them. Standards are just a tool for the educators to go to the community and be able to say “professional consensus in this field on what’s important can be found in the JumpStart personal financial education standards, so here are the things that will comprise this personal financial education class. By teaching these things, students will know x, y, and z before graduating. Does that fulfill your interest in having financially literate graduates?”

And I completely understand that teachers are not in a position to independently seek out the latest research, studies, resources, and so on. But as you say, it is possible to institute this, and in fact I think the infrastructure already exists in the form of PD requirements and district-level curriculum coordinators. These two channels should be used to disseminate this kind of information, and it’s a shame that they’re not being used that way now. (And that’s a generalization - I’m sure it’s happening some, and more in some places than in others.)

A great commentary on the lack of reseach usage in education comes from Ronald Wolk, founder of Education Week - read http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2005/10/01/02pers.h17.html for great additional perspective.

I like your idea of the difference between “what” and “how,” though. I like the level of professionalism it creates and the level of community involvement it encourages. Now, how about the logistics of getting the community in on creating that “what” to be taught in a timely fashion so teachers and school sites can prepare to offer such curriculum? And the local universities with teacher training programs need to be in on that, too. Of course, those programs are controlled by state credentialling departments and they might have a problem with community-specific education.

Further, as far as your discussion of justifying the course of action, you’re assuming that teachers are up on the latest research. I can say that, honestly, I am not because I am spending all my time teaching (grading, planning, observing, etc.), not reading research. I don’t know any teachers who are prepared to offer that level of justification and I don’t know many parents or community members who want that level of discourse. I don’t even know principals who want to get that specific.

If teachers want to use method XYZ, that falls into the “how” of material taught and there needs to be a line for the community, kind of like that line in the auto shop: you cannot cross this line to observe everything (you know, don’t cross this line into the auto shop because insurance forbids it). Community members micro-managing how things are taught and demanding an explanation for why it’s done that way is a bit much, even in the face of percieved failure due to poor performance on standardized tests, something that community-specific education may make moot. Expecting teachers to stay current on best methods, textbooks, etc. is a bit much, too.

There’s a way that could happen, though. If there was a person or persons responsible for spreading that kind of information out to teachers, we could have the latest and greatest. A friend of mine did just such a thing in Texas for a while; he’d read research and present ideas to teachers about how they could do what they do better. It’s my understanding that the term “principal” comes from “principal teacher” and that role used to be filled by someone who did much the same thing. This was before the principal was saddled with so many other responsibilities and the “principal teacher” aspect fell to the side and “principal administrator” became the order of the day.

When I hire a marketing consultant, I set the objectives for the engagement: I want to drive sales, build awareness, whatever. But I don’t tell him how to do his job: he knows marketing better than I do, so if I’m smart I’ll defer to his expertise on methodology. Seems that education should be the same way: community sets the objectives, schools determine how to make it happen.

To follow that analogy, I’m going to be engaged in the consultant’s work, since I’m invested in the goals and I’m paying the bills. The consultant is held against the clear objectives I’ve set.

What’s more, once he determines a course of action, he needs to be able to justify that course of action, which means he needs to be able to provide evidence, best practices, etc. Same with teachers: if they want to use method XYZ, they need to be able to justify its use to the customer - as with any other profession (marketing, medicine, accounting, etc.), this ensures that practitioners stay current on the best methods, best textbooks, and so on. And that focus on best practices and research-based decisions is also critical, in education or any other field.