Why is it so hard for some people to see the benefit of national education standards?  It seems like a such a common sense issue — identifying a common standard for all U.S. students and then doing what it takes to get all students to meet it.  Maybe it is just too simple a concept, particularly since it seems to face such disdain or disenchantment from a significant number of people who should know better.

A perfect example of this was on display this past weekend on NBC’s Meet the Press.  For those who missed it, Obama surrogate U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill was asked a throw-away education question following 20 minutes of questions on Iraq, gas, and the economy.  Host Tom Brokaw asked Missouri’s junior senator about No Child Left Behind and the seemingly bipartisan opposition to the law.

McCaskill set her sights on the issue of national standards.  NCLB is too inflexible, expecting too much from too many.  She believes — as many Democrats do — that having one bar for all students to clear is somehow unfair.  We should recognize all schools who demonstrate improvement.  When they improve, she said, “good for you.”  If they don’t improve, then we have a problem.

Where do we start with all of this?  Should we really applaud those schools that increase from 10% to 14% proficiency in 4th grade reading or math?  Is that really worth celebrating?  All that does is tee up the states to reduce their individual “standards” each year to allow for a couple of percentage points increase year on year.  Then all schools can have that “good for you.”  Don’t believe me, take a look at how some states have “readjusted” their standards in recent years.

At the end of the day, standards should be inflexible.  Standards are rigid.  Just today, I was talking with a former urban educator who, without doubt, falls into the “liberal” side of the puzzle.  She was saying that the best thing about NCLB was it held all students to one expectation.  Didn’t matter if they came from a low-income family.  Didn’t matter if their parents were educated.  Didn’t matter if they were an only child or the youngest of eight.  Didn’t matter the language spoken at home or in the neighborhood.  We should expect all students to be proficient.  And we shouldn’t be celebrating anything until they reach that level.

That is the ultimate root of the concept of abolishing the soft bigotry of low expectations that governed the establishment of NCLB.  That bigotry consists of the excuses we make for failure.  The socioeconomic reasons.  The family structure.  The neighborhood strife.  The lack of resources.  We’ve replaced the Horatio Alger story with a “But, if” story.  We celebrate process, without worrying about the end results.  And that’s just a cryin’ shame.

We’d all like to believe that all of the schools in McCaskill’s Show Me State are reading and computing at proficient levels, and all can get that pat on the back and the “good for you” that she wants to hand out along with increased federal appropriation.  But we all know that’s not the case.  We need to set a national standard because we need something for the nation to aspire to.  We need a bar that means something, a common bar that every single student in the United States must clear to demonstrate effective learning.  Is that really asking for too much?