Where Standards Come From

The standards movement arose from the struggle for equal educational opportunity in American public education. Beginning with the seemingly simple task of defining an adequate education in student content standards, reform graduated to setting professional requirements for teachers and paraprofessionals and for professional inservice training. Overcoming the racial and economic inequities embedded in the structure of public schools has resulted in shifting the locus of control and funding from local school systems to states. Federal involvement in standards-based reform has, in some cases, pushed states even further to include once-excluded disabled and limited-English proficient students and to set achievement targets in reading and mathematics. Standards-based reform has brought some coherence to education at the elementary and middle school grades. Systemic reform really hasn't taken hold at the high school level.