Get good lift on the mount. Nail the double-twisting Yurchenko. Stick the landing. For Strug, the standards for a 10 were as solid and familiar as the balance beam beneath her feet.
Olympic athletes win by knowing exactly what a gold-medal performance looks like.
Learning goals are fuzzy. State and district standards are buried in policy manuals. Progressive schools teach students to solve problems, work in teams, think creatively, and be innovative. But many of those same schools then line students up in rows, hand them standardized test booklets, give them No. 2 pencils, and tell them to fill in the bubbles. American schoolchildren take 100 million standardized tests a year.