2015 Volume 41 Pages 56-69
The purpose of this article is to analyze the meaning and importance of the policy of professional and cultural standards in the neo-liberal educational reform in the U.S..
The first national professional standards for the teachers were made and published by the NBPTS in 1989. In California, California Standards for the Teaching Profession was established in 2009 by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. As for the standards for principals, ISLLC made the first national standards for principals in 1996. The purposes of these professional standards were:
１．To make clear the content of professional ability of teachers and principals.
２．To reach an agreement among interested parties by involving them in making these standards.
３．To strengthen the professional autonomy of teachers and principals by involving them in making the standards.
４．To improve the academic achievement of children by strengthening the professionalization of teachers and principals.
‘Standards’ are also utilized to guarantee the cultural diversity and democracy by community involvement. This is called a cultural standards. In Alaska, the educational policy for indigenous people was changed from a policy which promotes the assimilation of indigenous people to American culture to the one which respects the culture of indigenous people in the 1990's. Alaska Standards for Culturally Responsive Schools was established in 1998. There is a state educational content standards for all the children in Alaska, but, cultural standards are made for the indigenous people by indigenous people. Cultural standards do not deny but make up the content standards.
Neither professional nor cultural standards reject the neo-liberal education at all, but make up and strengthen the teacher’s professional ability, cultural diversity and democracy which were weakened by neoliberal reform.
In conclusion, the history of educational reform since the 1980's was an effort to unite the neo-liberal reform with anti or revised reform. The professional and cultural standards policy were the typical strategies for these unifying efforts.
However, there is now a big problem with these unifying efforts, because neo-liberal education movements began to enforce the accountability policy which criticizes and weakens the professionalization of teachers and empowerment of teachers. Diane Ravitch who was once at the center of neo-liberal reform and Linda Darling-Hammond who have tried to unify the neo-liberal reform with the professionalization of teachers began to criticize these policies. As for the cultural standards, in Alaska, by the federal NCLB law, cultural diversity of indigenous people began to be ignored in order to improve the academic achievement. In addition, the academic achievement of indigenous children has been lower than the average level of all Alaskan children. The Obama administration recently admitted that there is an achievement gap between indigenous children and another children and announced that the federal administration would begin to guarantee the indigenous children the chance to learn their indigenous language and history and support indigenous children in getting sufficient education including higher education.
A new accountability system would be required to respect the teacher's professionalization and cultural diversity which the two standards policy had pursued to improve the achievement for all children successfully.
