Rekenproject: Referentiekader rekenen

Many curricula, including Saxon, have evolved their language toward the NCTM standards, talking of “strands” and “concepts” and “understanding” while retaining what appear to be more traditional lesson formats and content. Professional developers, likewise, argue that their product is “aligned” with the national standards, yet often offer a slightly different version of those standards than its authors might find preferable. Although these are not overt political challenges to reform like those that have occurred in California and other states, they are still political challenges, and are in some ways more deadly. Teachers and administrators adopt curricula or use professional development that employ national reformers’ language, and as a result feel assured their local work lines up well with external standards. Yet where similar words obscure differences in practice, this agreement in symbol thwarts any possibility of coming to agreement on meaning, for people seldom question what they think they understand.

In this article, we critically examine the nature of the “consensus” reflected in educational standards used to orient high-stakes assessment programs. We analyze two complementary cases of practice in the assessment of teaching. One focuses on the discourse of standards creation and one examines how standards like these are typically used to orient assessment development and judgments about individual performance.

The ways that children are talked about in research and policy literature do not vary significantly across school subjects. This is obvious in the curriculum standards of current school reforms (see Popkewitz & Gustafson, 2002). For instance, the national music curriculum standards are fundamentally about the child’s ability to participate through informed decision making or problem solving, develop skill in communication (defending an argument, working effectively in a group), produce high-quality work (acquiring and using information), and make connections with a community (acting as a responsible citizen). The national mathematics standards deploy a similar terminology, prescribing a path of cognitive development for children whereby they become autonomous and responsible for their own learning, problem solving, and thinking processes.

This article focuses on mathematics education as an exemplar of the alchemy that takes place in the school curriculum. It textually analyzes the inscription devices related to constructivist4 and social linguistic research traditions that are cited nationally and internationally in efforts for standardsbased reforms. My aim in the first section of the argument is to consider the standards of the standards-based reform (to play on a key term of contemporary school discourse) in its broader historical context of governing, that is, making the child legible and administrable for producing the future citizen.