Standards for Noah's Ark?

More than any other nation, the U.S. has made local control the key fact of its school system. The result is what James B. Conant calls a "Noah's Ark" of edu cation -- a happy confusion of 35,300 in dependent school systems, in which stand ards vary so widely that an A grade in one school may be worth a D in another.

At their worst, the schools are mired in graft, patronage and political pressure. At best, the system is magnificently tuned to local needs, producing some of the best schools in the world.

What makes the question of local control a current subject of U.S. debate is a growing gap between the have and have-not schools, widened by the financial dis parity between school systems and com pounded by a national shortage of skilled manpower. To some critics, the situation cries out for a "national curriculum" to equalize schools. Loud among them is Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, who calls local control "the greatest obstacle to school reform." Says Rickover in a tendentiously titled new book, Swiss Schools and Ours: Why Theirs Are Better (Atlantic-Little, Brown; $3.95): "I know of no country that has brought off successfully a really thorough reform of the school system without making use of some na tional standard that sets scholastic objectives." Rickover's idea is anathema to those who feel that national standards would lead straight to crippling "federal con trol" and kill the freedom of U.S. schools to compete and experiment as they please.

The fear of federal control over the schools is one reason -- aside from the parochial-school controversy -- that the President's general aid-to-education bill has met with heavy resistance. Asks one prominent dean of education: "Do you want the national exam on the Mexican War to be written by a U.S. Senator from Texas?" Faith v. Facts. Yet the defenders of local option often ignore the fact that U.S. schools are now controlled or influenced by many forces far beyond the local level. "However strongly we may believe that public education in America is still entirely a local matter," says Pres ident John H. Fischer of Columbia Uni versity's Teachers College, "the facts will not support our faith. Nor is there any likelihood that a nation whose regional differences diminish every year can meet its educational problems by ignoring com mon national needs." Statewide needs already take precedence over local option -- from the dissolution of inefficient school districts to the statewide exams of the New York Board of Regents.

The forces that influence school boards include regional accrediting agencies, teach ers colleges, textbook publishers and the National Education Association. Specific regulations accompany present federal aid, such as those long set for vocational edu cation under the Smith-Hughes Act. The great foundations pour millions into educational TV and radical school designs, prodding schools to improve. Even that stout defender of local control, James B.

Conant (TIME cover, Sept. 14, 1959), has in part "nationalized" education with his prescriptions for ailing high schools.

Joining Conant are university scholars, who once disdained professional educators but are now more than willing to add their voices to the task of modernizing the school curriculum. Reforms are under way in almost every subject: biology, chemistry, economics. English, math and physics -- and all of the reforms are creating new national yardsticks. Stirring the schools equally is a flood of new knowl edge about learning itself, the work of scholars who now look on the process of education as an untapped gold mine.

Free or Freeze? Some school boards are so confused about the reforms that they simply ignore them. Many are too broke to try them. Others fiercely resent outside "dictation." A prime tar get is the national testing programs (more than 20 so far), for everything from college admissions to science scholarships. Protesting that schools are being forced to teach just for the tests, a committee of top school administrators last month called for a nationwide revolt: "Local school systems should refuse to participate in nationally sponsored tests unless those tests can be demon strated to have value commensurate with the effort, money, time and emotional strain involved." The controversy illustrates a key U.S.

problem: how to raise scholastic stand ards without freezing profitable academic ferment in a rigid mold. One idea is a national advisory body for education. Columbia's Fischer, for example, proposes an organization like the American Red Cross, without federal funds or power, "to pass ammunition to local school boards," but not ''to lay down the law." Education Professor Paul R. Hanna of Stanford Uni versity advocates a national "commission for curriculum research and development" that would guide school boards but also shun fixed standards.

Tell 'Em in Medicine Hat. Yet even this approach look's tricky to President John Gardner of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, who wants to see reforms developed through "a great variety of channels." such as universities and learned societies. "A central body," he says, "could be a target." To solve the problem of "making it uncomfortable for people to be slovenly" or "telling the Medicine Hat school board what's going on in math teaching," Gardner suggests increased publicity by state education agencies: "One 30-page booklet could lay out everything new in math teaching." Vice President Alvin C. Eurich of the Ford Foundation's Fund for the Advancement of Education suggests that every state set up a research commission, financed by one-half of 1% of the state education budget. New York already has a similar system, in which State Com missioner of Education James E. Allen Jr. is working hard to inform school boards on reforms. But no state yet has a full-time research commission. "If 50 states had them," says Eurich, "we'd see a fast improvement in national education." In theory, the top goader could be the U.S. Office of Education, which has recently awakened under articulate Com missioner Sterling McMurrin and is next month due for "reorganization." But the agency is likely to remain in essence a dispenser of statistics -- even if a more efficient one. U.S. education has nothing comparable at the national level to the FBI, for example, which by research and training has sharply improved local police departments while avoiding the onus of "federal control." Aid Without Strings. The opponents of federal direction have good reason for their wariness. Control in some form --intentional or otherwise -- has long ac companied federal aid, largely because Congress traditionally grants such aid only for specific purposes. The National Defense Education Act, for example, gave a huge financial boost to science and foreign language study, but as a result many schools simply skimped on history and English--a clear case of "federal control'' to critics. The only answer, says Executive Secretary William G. Carr of the National Education Association, is for Congress to give aid without strings, and "trust the integrity, patriotism and good judgment of local and state school boards and administrators." Pending that happy day. others now believe that the best safeguard might be a really strong federal education agency, similar to the lively, independent National Science Foundation. Sooner or later, the pressure of population on poor school districts will force Congress to pass a hefty education bill. A strong education agency could then act as a referee between Congress and the schools. "The day when we have federal aid will lead to a Cabinet officer for education," says James Conant. "and his staff will be the buffer.'' Clearly, that day will also herald the arrival of national standards for U.S. education--hopefully the kind that will renew the freedom and vitality of local schools.

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