The origins of the standards movement are honorable, aimed at rectifying unequal learning opportunities. Hallmarks of the current proposed legislation include targeting federal resources to promote high academic standards, first-rate teachers with smaller classes and strengthened accountability. A second governement-initiated objective, Goals 2000, created in 1994 by President Clinton and Congress, established the clear expectation that all students would be held to challenging academic standards, along with the corollary that lower expectations for poor or disadvantaged children would not be tolerated. The terminology itself is far from standardized, as suggested above by Jonathan Kozol. Standards are points of measurement used to determine student progress, and dictate much more closely what will take place in the classroom.
Standards are typically more concrete statements on content and processes.
Outcomes, proficiencies and competencies are more or less synonymous with standards. All teachers have a hard-copy booklet of the IGOs to reinforce the goals. Bill Burrall, coordinator of instructional technology for Marshall County Schools in Moundsville, West Virginia, explains that a body of teachers are working to cross reference instructional goals to Web sites so teachers can go on the Internet and extract lessons, resources, and databases that mirror the IGOs. Tests or assessments measure students' mastery of standards, which vary among states and districts, although increasing numbers of states are assessing core competencies at the end of fourth, eighth, and 11th grades. This page is a comprehensive repository of information about educational standards and curriculum frameworks, state by state, from all sources, inclusive of national, state, local and other.