The politically sensitive idea of increasing the rigor of state standards and tests by linking them to standards set at the national level is getting a push from prominent lawmakers as Congress moves to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act as early as this year.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the second-ranking Democrat on the Senate education committee and a newly announced candidate for president, introduced a bill with Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers, R-Mich., last week that would provide incentives for states to adopt voluntary “American education content standards” in mathematics and science, to be developed by the governing board for the National Assessment of Educational Progress...

The Dodd-Ehlers bill—called the Standards to Provide Educational Achievement for all Kids, or SPEAK, Act—would authorize grants of up to $4 million each for states that adopted the new math and science standards as the core of their own state content standards...

The standards debate is arising in the context of renewing the 5-year-old No Child Left Behind Act, due to happen this year. Whether a standards bill could be considered apart from that reauthorization, which many doubt will happen on time, remains to be seen.

Michael Dannenberg, the director of the education policy program at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank that co-sponsored the event with Sen. Dodd, spoke strongly in favor of voluntary national standards.

“The country is on an inexorable march toward national education standards,” Mr. Dannenberg said. “The question is no longer if, but when and how...”

For the complete article, please visit the Education Week website.