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Forty-eight states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands have joined an effort to develop common standards for what American students should learn in English and math each year from kindergarten through 12th grade, a significant step toward national education standards.  Alaska and South Carolina have not yet signed onto the initiative, called the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

A committee of education experts are currently developing the standards, which will be "research and evidence-based, internationally benchmarked, aligned with college and work expectations and include rigorous content and skills," according a press release from the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, who are coordinating the experts' work. 

"Defining standards is only the first step, they must reach all students regardless of the state or community in which they live and the states must commit to implementing them as soon as they are ready," said LCCR Senior Counsel David Goldberg, and a founding partner in the Campaign for High School Equity, a coalition of 10 national civil rights and education organizations that support common standards.

States and territories will have the option of adopting the standards or incorporating them into what they are currently doing.  The first set, focused on making sure high school graduates' reading and math skills prepare them for work and college, will be released in July.  The second set, grade-by-grade benchmarks designed to keep students on track to meet the graduation requirements, will be completed by the end of the year.

"To make the standards meaningful for students, there will have to be new curricula and better assessments aligned to meet them.  The federal government can support the states with funding to make sure they aren't done on the cheap and that there are well-designed versions for English language learners and students with disabilities," said Goldberg.

The Texas House of Representatives is considering a bill that would cap the number of students accepted into state universities under the state's "top 10 percent plan."

In 1997, the Texas legislature passed a law that requires Texas state universities to automatically admit Texas students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school class.

The current bill, which passed in the Senate last week, will still require state universities to admit students under the plan, but it will allow them to cap these admissions at 60 percent of the incoming freshman class.

Some college administrators support the bill because it will give them more flexibility in admissions.  However, if passed, the bill will mostly affect the University of Texas-Austin, which estimates that almost 90 percent of its incoming freshmen class next year will be admitted under the plan. 

Originally intended to address the decline in minority enrollment and create equal opportunity for students from both inner-city and rural schools, the "top 10 percent plan" was enacted after a federal appeals court decision in Hopwood v. Texas banned equal opportunity programs in Texas. However, the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, stated that race can be used as one of many factors in college admissions, invalidating Hopwood.

On Tuesday, President Obama announced his strategy for reforming education in the U.S.

In yesterday's segment of "The Diane Rehm Show", two LCCR coalition members – Dianne Piche, executive director of the Citizen's Commission for Civil Rights, and Lily Eskelsen, vice president of the National Education Association – reacted to Obama's education agenda and discussed some of the issues around reforming education in the U.S., such as teacher layoffs, the high school dropout problem, charter schools, teacher compensation, and removal of ineffective teachers. 

Diane Rehm also interviewed Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, about Obama's education agenda.

Every year, students across the country celebrate Black History Month in a variety of ways, but a few states have passed laws that require public schools to include Black history in their curriculum throughout the year.

New Jersey, Illinois and New York have each created a commission to review how public schools in the state are teaching Black history and make recommendations on how to improve the curriculum. The commissions are called "Amistad Commissions" after the Amistad, a Spanish slave ship that was the site of a famous slave revolt in 1839.

One of the goals of the New Jersey commission is "to infuse the history of Africans and African-Americans into the social studies curriculum in order to provide an accurate, complete and inclusive history." It has developed a set of lesson plans which teachers will incorporate into their classrooms starting this fall.

However, four years after its law passed, New York has not yet appointed all its commissioners and the commission has never met.

California, Mississippi, Florida, Arkansas, Colorado and Michigan have also passed legislation regarding instruction in Black history. Florida's law, passed in 1994, also requires that its public schools teach women's history, Latino history, and the Holocaust.

Civil rights issues were all over the editorial pages this weekend.  Here are just a few highlights:

• On Saturday, The New York Times said that the new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, must use the federal money allocated in the recently enacted economic recovery package to revive education reform and not allow states that take the money to resist making the changes necessary to ensure a quality education for all students.
• The New York Times also said this Saturday that the federal government needs to reform our immigration system by shifting from an enforcement-only system to one that is more comprehensive.
• Today, the Los Angeles Times editorial page restated its opposition to the death penalty, questioning its morality and deterrent effect.