Place-based education in the standards-based reform era—Confl ict or complement

Abstract

In this article we discuss the relationship between place-based education and standards-based reforms. Using an initiative in Vermont to include place-based standards into the state’s curricular frameworks, we examine state policy makers’ and practitioners ’ views of state standards and place-based curriculum. Fur-thermore, we explore the ways in which the practitioners view the impact of both of these curricular efforts on their classroom practices. We challenge the common view of incompatibility between state standards and locally responsive curriculum and offer instead a view of complementarity. Locally responsive or “place-based curriculum ” is, and always has been, a feature of rural schools, in part out of necessity and in part out of desire. Often underfunded and distant from easy bureaucratic oversight, rural schools have traditionally made do, constructing lessons around community assets and local resources. Recently, though, rural school advocates and researchers have touted place-based education as a virtue that needs pre-serving rather than just a practice to be tolerated. In this past year, place-based education has even begun to creep into the attention of the broader educational research community with articles in Educational Researcher, Amer-ican Educational Research Journal, and Phi Delta Kappan. The growing interest in place-based education has hit rural schools at a time when they are being asked to understand and implement standards-based reforms, including state curriculum standards and state-mandated assessments. To many rural school advocates and researchers, these two initiatives either work at cross-purposes or are completely incompatible (e.g., Gruenewald 2003; Williams 2003). Jennings, Swidler, and Kolib