Virginia argued for weeks over just what names students should be familiar with in history. In the end, most states seem to have capitulated to special interests and simply added more and more to the content standards. The result is an ever-thicker curriculum, perhaps too much for teachers to teach or students to learn. So Virginia has developed 'pacing charts,' basically schedules that tell teachers what they should be teaching, and when. But there's more to standards than their content.
Someone has to decide what constitutes 'A' work, and what constitutes failure.
Performance standards' are decidedly unscientific, unfortunately, and when failure rates have proven to be embarrassingly high, the bar has been lowered. A third kind of standard, 'opportunity to learn' standards, has been virtually ignored. In a fair world, all students who have to take high-stakes tests in chemistry, for example, would be in schools equipped with chemistry labs and would be taught by teachers who've studied chemistry. That's not the world our students live in, but politicians have chosen to ignore that harsh fact. Most states seemed to have moved quickly to what should be the last step, testing the kids.