This I Believe

I believe that standards are necessary. Having standards on all levels local, state and national provides a base level from where every school can achieve different levels. Although I think most people do not look at standards as a goal that is what they are. Standards give school districts goals to strive for and vision on where they need to concentrate. If there weren't any standards than education would vary so greatly that there wouldn't be any common base of knowledge among population. The standards are the minimun level of knowledge that societies or governments sya that their citizens need in order to lead a successful life. Without this knowledge citizens would be destined for poverty and other hardships.
Of course I do not believe that the standards are what we as teachers should expect from our students. We need to push our students (and as administrators, our teachers) to constantly strive for excellence and exceed the standards as much as possible. Then again, as many say... 'if the minimum wasn't good enough it wouldn't be the standard'... lol

I believe that the standards are only as effective as the effort that a school district or teacher puts into working to meet those standards. In physics, there are equations for determining the amount of work done by machines. Which ever one is used it basically comes down to this Work input = Work output. Except for some energy loss due to the transfer to heat the work that goes into making a machine work is equal to work that the machine does.
So like anything, students will only get out of their education experience the knowledge that is equal to the amount of work they put into their education.
Of course as teachers sometime we have to push some students before they start working anywhere near their potential.