Learning standards

I'm part of a group representing several NYS education groups reviewing standards for recommendations to the state education department. See NYS Standards Review 2010.

What should be standard?

Cultural literacy advocates argue that the standards should include specific requirements of content; for example, all students must read Grapes of Wrath or know that two triangles are congruent if they have the same two sides separated by the same angle. I hope that we might consider a more open but equally rigorous standard; for example, every student must study a book as good and as relevant as Grapes of Wrath.