Academic Standards

National Standards

U.S. schools have long had “standards,” or expectations for what students should accomplish before graduating from high school. Nearly all states, for example, have spelled out graduation requirements, which usually state the number of courses in each subject area students must pass in order to earn a diploma. Until the late 1980s, however, states and school districts did not specify precisely the content students should learn or the level of achievement they should attain. That changed with the introduction of academic standards.

The National Council on Education Standards and Testing, a panel established by Congress in 1991 to advise the federal government on the desirability and feasibility of national standards and assessments, identified four types of standards:

Mathematics educators led the way in developing content standards. In 1989, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics published Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics, which outlined the consensus view of what should be taught in mathematics at various grade levels (e.g., K–4, 5–8, 9–12). The document was significant in that the standards were expected to be the same for all students.

Subsequently, national organizations and scholarly groups produced similar documents in science, history, geography, civics, the arts, English, and foreign languages. These documents had some influence on the development of standards by states, but several, notably the U.S. history standards, proved to be controversial. Critics charged that the standards downplayed heroic figures and gave too much attention to problems in American history. The U.S. Senate in January 1995 voted 99–1 to denounce the document.

National performance standards were developed by the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal program that tests students periodically in key subjects. Beginning with the 1990 mathematics assessment, the governing board began reporting the proportion of students who performed at “basic,” “proficient,” and “advanced” levels on the assessment.

One national organization produced both content and performance standards. New Standards, a joint effort that involved 17 states and 6 school districts, led by the National Center on Education and the Economy and the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, produced a set of standards in English language arts, mathematics, and applied learning that outlined the content that should be taught in each subject at various grade levels. The project also included examples of student work that met the standards, which served as performance standards, along with commentaries on the work to demonstrate why it met the standard.

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