Standards-Based Reform in the United States: History, Research, and Future Directions

Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Summary Standards-based reforms (SBR) have become widespread across the United States, particularly in the wake of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Although there is no universally accepted definition of SBR, most discussions of standards-based reform include some or all of the following features: academic expectations for students (the standards are often described as indicating " what students should know and be able to do ") alignment of the key elements of the educational system to promote attainment of these expectations, the use of assessments of student achievement to monitor performance, decentralization of responsibility for decisions relating to curriculum and instruction to schools, support and technical assistance to foster improvement of educational services, and accountability provisions that reward or sanction schools or students on the basis of measured performance. Each instance of SBR emphasizes certain components more than others. The SBR movement reflects a confluence of policy trends—in particular, a growing emphasis on using tests to monitor progress and hold schools accountable and a belief that school reforms are most likely to be effective when all components of the education system are designed to work in alignment toward a common set of goals. Many of the SBR systems that have been adopted in response to the requirements of NCLB had their origins in state and federal initiatives from the 1980s and 1990s and in activities conducted by professional organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Although notions of what constitutes effective SBR have changed over time, the core elements mentioned above have endured; in addition, a few key ideas have emerged in recent years. These ideas include an emphasis on using information produced by the system to guide instructional decision making; an emphasis on using standards to promote instruction that is academically challenging rather than focused on low-level skills; the importance of similarly high expectations for students with different socioeconomic, racial/ethnic and linguistic backgrounds; and, perhaps most significantly, an education system in which policy and practice are driven in large part by the measurement of academic outcomes derived from large-scale assessments. A large body of research has been conducted over the past few decades to assess the quality and impact of various SBR systems. One line of investigation has examined …