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The Teacher Leaders Network just hosted a fascinating discussion on creativity in the classroom. A number of teachers involved in the discussion zeroed in on a matter that has again been looming large in debates about national standards: The tension between standardization and personalization. They wrote about the challenge of teaching basic information all students need to know "whether they find it creative or not" while engaging students' individual interests.

In other venues, similar discussions have drawn extremists like flies to honey. In the comments section of one top blog, for example, a privatization zealot credited the lack of common standards in private schools with those schools' alleged success: "No one argues that private schools are failing," Of course, we don't exactly have common measures for determining a private school's success or failure. And comparisons of private and public school NAEP scores show essentially no difference between private and public school performance.  By why let data cloud ideology?

On the other side, the most immoderate critics of project-based learning portray calls for greater personalization as the beginning of the end for academic content standards.

Unfortunately, the national discussion of standards and personalization cannot easily escape the vexed history of standards-based reform over the last decade.  Those who equate academic standards with deadening standardization can point to lousy state assessments that have become de-facto standards and turned some schools into test-prep sweatshops. Critics of more individualized project-based instruction can cite many examples of projects that lack clear academic objectives or grounding in strong content standards. Absent clear standards, strong curricular supports and effective professional development, attempts to foster students' creativity and engagement can go off the rails.

Poorly implemented reforms leave a terrible legacy. They make rational discussion of school improvement all but impossible.