National academic standards proposed

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- U.S. educators, hoping to set common standards for the entire country, have proposed math and English skills needed to graduate from high school, observers say.

Academic standards now vary widely from state to state, and experts brought together Monday in Washington by the nation's governors and state schools moved to establish for the first time a national consensus on core academic goals to help the United States better compete with other countries, The Washington Post reported.

The long U.S. tradition of local control over school curriculum has blocked efforts to set national standards. But the nationwide math and English skills proposed Monday are meant to raise expectations of U.S. students as a whole, the Post said.

The newspaper said that among other requirements, the math proposals demand that students be able to solve systems of equations, while the English standards include analysis of how word choices shape the meaning and tone of a text.

"We have now a public working draft of what could turn out to be the beginnings of national standards for K through 12 education," Chester Finn Jr., a former Reagan administration education official, told the Post. "That's potentially a very big deal."