The policy angles are clear to Luther Williams, who heads education and human resources programs at the National Science Foundation. He told an opening panel at the annual Education Commission of the States meeting that implementation requires a set of coherent policies that cover appropriate curriculum materials, professional development, the use of technology and assessment. The goal, he said, is to have "a minimum difference between what is stipulated in the standards and what is done in the classroom."

That's all well and good, but down at the classroom level the implementation is not all that simple, other panelists said. "You can have all the policies in place but without a visual understanding of what standards is in the classrooom, the policies won't work," said Kate Nolan, who helped develop New Standards assessments and has been working with instructional issues in Philadelphia. The solution in Philadelphia, she said, was to use selections of student work to give teachers an idea of what standards should look like. The selections "may stink," she said, "but you have to get principals and teachers to the point where they know that and will say the student work stinks."

One reason why teachers need to grapple with standards in the context of classroom work is that few feel "ownership" over standards, Nolan said. Only a handful of teachers in a building or even a district actually help develop them. By deciding if student work comes up to standards, teachers see that they are teaching parts of them and they begin to share and discuss with other teachers. "They're not going to learn this by reading standards books," Nolan said emphatically.

The Cincinnati schools used state standards, then restructured schools to make it possible for students to reach the standards. Kathleen Ware, director of quality improvement for the Cincinnati schools, described that district's newly adopted redesign plan that gives teachers authority to make decisions on resources within the building, including hiring of support staff. It was a struggle to get the plan approved, she said, but it was necessary to empower teachers. They will decide, for example, if they need librarians, counselors and other staff. Teachers also will work in teams with the same group of students, preparing them for key times when assessments will determine if students have met standards--at the end of the 3rd, 5th, and 8th grades.

Nolan acknowledged that "we have huge numbers of people in classrooms who are not lovers of learning," but, she said, "we also don't have people standing in line to replace them. We have to work with what we have." In Cincinnati, the random professional development system is being reined in, according to Ware, and "the district will provide monies only for staff development that we say is focused on content."

Asked to cite places where cohesive implementation of standards is underway, Williams named the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, El Paso as well as state policies in Texas, Colorado's state reference points for standards, and policymaking in Massachusetts that is addressing the problems of tracking and the lack of graduation requirements.

Williams also said that in the last 25 years public education has not come up with anything significantly new, but the movement for standards that all students must meet is new. He also said the country's ambitious goals are doable. "We have no evidence that says the kids can't do the work," he emphasized.