Goals 2000 is not a program, but a vehicle that States may use to assist them in the development of their State standards and assessments. If a State has developed standards, assessments and accountability criteria to measure the performance of all children, these same standards, assessments, and accountability criteria must be used for participating Title I students, schools and LEAs. States are at different stages of progress in the development and implementation of standards and assessments and will likely use different methods to develop and communicate their standards and design and validate appropriate assessments. This guidance sets general principles intended to be interpreted in the context of each State rather than specifying detailed procedures to be followed. Moreover, since there are several approaches that may be taken to develop such systems, flexibility and collaboration between States and LEAs are encouraged.
States also differ in the balance between State control and local control.
I requires that participating States develop or adopt challenging content and performance standards with aligned assessments, but it does not require that there be a single set of content or performance standards and assessments that are applied uniformly to every LEA within the State. A State may choose to develop or adopt model standards or criteria against which locally developed standards and assessments would be measured and approved. It does not impose requirements beyond those in the ESEA and other applicable federal statutes and regulations. While State educational agencies may wish to consider the guidance in this document in developing their own guidelines, they are free to develop alternative approaches that are consistent with applicable federal statutes and regulations. In other words, this document contains acceptable but not exclusive guidance.