REQUIREMENT FOR STATES TO WRITE ACADEMIC STANDARDS

BECAUSE our founding fathers provided guidelines for a state’s academic standards in Article 3 of The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, and

BECAUSE teachers and students cannot be held accountable for academic progress unless that progress is defined according to clearly written academic standards, and

BECAUSE educational experts, departments of education, and other educational organizations have resisted providing concrete, written standards under the guise of being unable to agree on a dictionary to define terms such as, mastery, competence, democracy, and

BECAUSE the citizens and parents of children in the schools are willing to find common ground in the definition of the words needed to write these standards,and

THEREFORE each state must write academic standards for every subject at every grade level, and

THEREFORE interested citizens must be allowed and encouraged to participate in the development of that curriculum, and

THEREFORE if agreement on terms and standards cannot be reached regarding a specific standard, that standard must be subjected to a vote of the citizens in that state, and

THEREFORE once the curriculum has been determined, it shall be adopted as a state standard, and

THEREFORE curriculum must be re-evaluated every 10 years unless the electorate wishes to address the issue sooner.