Education, Academic Performance

Standards

Stemming from anxiety about the conditions of U.S. schools following the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983, the standards-based movement emerged. The report warned that the educational foundations of the nation were being “eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity” and that a primary factor contributing to this condition was the lack of rigorous standards in U.S. schools.

Developing and implementing a set of educational standards was held to be the key to addressing the mediocrity identified in A Nation at Risk. The core idea of educational standards is that there are sets of basic knowledge and skills that students of a particular grade level should master, such mastery to be evaluated using a series of tests. Reform rests on the notion that educational improvement will occur when rigorous academic (content) standards are set, student performance against these standards is assessed, and then students and teachers are held accountable for meeting these standards. The 1990s thus witnessed a substantial investment of energy by educational policymakers in the development and implementation of content and performance standards. Nearly all states have implemented academic standards and all but two states now have academic standards in the core subjects of mathematics, language arts, science, and social studies.

Child Left behind

Following the initiatives of standards-based reforms, particularly the framework of establishment of performance standards, NCLB brought about a number of significant changes in the U.S. education system, particularly in substantially expanding the role of the federal government.

The first of NCLB's four key program elements is stronger accountability for results. The act established a system of requirements for states to fulfill, including the creation of standards for what children in Grades 3 through 8 should know in the subjects of mathematics and reading, as well as a set of assessments to measure how many children have met the state standards. This translated to a substantial expansion of the testing required in school, with students (excluding some exceptions) tested each year in Grades 3 through 8 and at least once during Grades 10 through 12.

The passage of NCLB also served to increase interest in the performance of educational institutions. [Page 283]Schools must submit annual state-, district-, and school-level “report cards” of how many children achieved acceptable scores on the assessment. Under federal law, local districts must make available achievement data for each school through these report cards. As discussed in the next section, the data carry consequences, with rewards and penalties based on performance. Under NCLB, schools are also required to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward improvement in student performance. Although the formulae used to calculate and assess AYP are too complex and opaque to explore here, the central idea of the requirement is that districts must make annual gains in reducing the percentage of students who do not achieve at a proficient level.

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