Archived: The Educational System in the United States: Case Study Findings

Teacher Preparation and Teachers’ Lives
This chapter looks at the conditions that influence the effectiveness of teachers.
The first section describes two aspects of teacher’s lives that were of special inter-
est: the personal characteristics of teachers, and teacher training and professional
development, including student teaching, past and current efforts at professional
development, salaries, benefits, and union involvement. The second section dis-
cusses working conditions in terms of physical environments, cultures of expecta-
tions, sources of instructional support, and locus of instructional decisionmaking
and planning.
These chapters provide an overview of four important facets of the United States
education system and offer descriptive information from the sites where we ob-
served and interviewed.

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15
Chapter 2
The Development and
Implementation of Education
Standards in the United States
By: Roberta Nerison-Low and Mark Ashwill
When you get on an airplane, you want a pilot who has been held to the high-
est standards of flight training. When you need an operation, you want a sur-
geon who has been held to the highest standards of medical education. And
when you root for American athletes in the Olympics, you know they won’t
win the gold unless they have trained to meet the highest standards of inter-
national comparison.
In many areas of our life, we expect—and demand—high standards. We know
their great value. They help bring out the best in us. When we do not hold
all students to high academic standards, the result can be low achievement and
the tragedy of children leaving school without ever having been challenged to
fulfill their potential.
But a historic change is now taking place in American education: the develop-
ment of voluntary national standards that will clearly identify what all students
should know and be able to do to live and work in the 21st century. These
standards will be designed to be internationally competitive.
‘‘High Standards for All Students,’’ (U.S. Department of Education brochure
1994)