SACRAMENTO, CA - Last month, Republican former governor Pete Wilson and Democratic former governor Gray Davis issued a joint letter urging Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislators not to tinker with California's rigorous K-12 academic content standards. These standards are now under attack by liberal lawmakers, but recent research shows that effectively implementing the state standards in the classroom is a key component in raising student achievement.

The state standards, which have received outstanding marks from national education research organizations, lay out the learning requirements for each grade in core subjects such as English and math. In their letter, Wilson and Davis said that the knowledge-and-skill bar set by the standards is high because students respond to the level of expectation set for them. High expectations will elicit higher performance, and low expectations will ensure failure.

Because the standards apply to every student, say the ex-governors, "no matter which neighborhood or region of the state a child is from, that child should be held to the same high expectations ... Standards also provide a way to measure progress and base decisions on objective evidence, not education fads, [and] they provide a measurable way to show how California's public schools are improving over time."

Wilson and Davis conclude, "The essential ingredients - the core content standards, curriculum frameworks, instructional materials, and tests aligned to the standards - are now all in place and provide solid cornerstones for the work that must take place in schools across our great state." Yet certain legislators are intent on chipping away at this crucial cornerstone.

Democratic lawmakers recently eliminated funding for the pro-standards state Board of Education after the agency refused to weaken the standards by approving a Democratic plan that would allow schools to use a watered-down core curriculum for limited-English-speaking students. This watered-down curriculum would have to be aligned with the less-demanding state English Language Development (ELD) guidelines.

The Democrats' plan gave lip service to the state academic content standards. But if it were adopted, too many schools would be tempted to follow only the easier ELD guidelines. Even if schools tried to combine the ELD guidelines and the state standards during class, that would still mean that students would receive less standards-aligned instruction and would have little real chance of mastering the standards.

Hence, though strident Democratic assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, chair of the Assembly Education Committee, claimed that the state standards would be upheld under the plan, Wilson and Davis were correct in admonishing: "To provide those children a lesser academic challenge would be to insult them and might well cheat them out of realizing their full potential. Instead, when children begin school, we should address whatever deficits in academic readiness they may bring to the classroom through early and effective remedial attention - not by creating an educational apartheid of lesser standards."

The Wilson-Davis defense of the state standards is supported by recent research from EdSource, a non-partisan California education research organization. In a recent study for the group conducted by top researchers including teams from Stanford and UC Berkeley, it was found: "Alignment [of the school instructional program] with the state academic standards also appears to be reported more often by teachers in schools that are, on average, higher performing. This includes classroom instruction being guided by state academic standards and schools having identified essential standards. Teachers also report that the school's curriculum materials in math and English are aligned with the state standards and that they frequently map state curriculum standards onto their classroom action plans."

Though there's a lot wrong with education in California, the state standards remain a true bright spot. Wilson and Davis rightly warn, "Undoing California's present high academic standards would be a disastrous step backward."

Lance T. Izumi is Director of Education Studies at the Pacific Research Institute. He can be reached via email at lizumi@pacificresearch.org.