Abstract

With American students lagging behind their counterparts abroad in reading, math and science, taxpayers and policymakers are engaged in divisive debates over school choice, academic standards and equality of access to quality education. Historically, reformers have pushed two key approaches: enforcing accountability in meeting academic standards through high-stakes testing and expanding “school choice” by opening more public charter schools and providing government vouchers to help pay private school tuition. Now, 45 states are taking another approach: voluntarily adopting new, rigorous academic standards that some say could overhaul how math and reading are taught. But the movement has run into resistance from both the right, which fears the loss of local control of curriculum, and the left, which worries that children will be tested on materials dictated by the new standards before they’ve had time to learn them.

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