Testing standards will change soon

As this newspaper has long predicted, the State Board of Education next month will change the testing standards in Missouri on how students are ranked. The move - according to education officials - will simply place Missouri's standards more in line with national achievement standards. They are being truthful. But as a practical matter, the change will lower the bar for Missouri students.

It was really just a matter of time.

Education officials throughout the country are all focusing on the No Child Left Behind law which requires all students to reach proficiency in reading and math by 2014. But the interesting aspect of this law is that states are allowed to establish their own standards. Some are obviously higher than others.

Missouri's was among the toughest in the nation. And thusfar, Missouri students are having difficulty reaching those standards. At this pace, it's highly doubtful that the 2014 goal would be reached. That could have financial consequences.

So the Missouri Board of Education next month will lower the standards for Missouri students to match most of the national standards. Even with that change however, current testing shows that students here would still fall short of the national requirement. We are far from alone.

Here's what I think will happen. I believe that a new federal administration will take office in 2008 and the No Child Left Behind law will vanish. It will be replaced with great fanfare by yet another lofty goal but one that has a greater chance of success and less negative consequences for schools that fail. And fail they will.

Some schools will never achieve the level of testing success mandated by the federal government. No amount of funding or monitoring or mentoring or tutoring will raise them to an "acceptable" level of achievement. But that won't stop us from throwing tax dollars after a problem that can't be solved by dollars and cents alone.

America is founded on a host of laws designed to improve life for all of us. But that doesn't mean that everyone follows those laws or is even capable of reaching the objectives established by those laws.

In the meantime, we'll worry about our students reaching learning goals. And we'll give them all the tools possible to make those dreams possible. But in the end, some will still fail. You would think that the learned members of the education community would understand that simple premise of life.