Few ideas are more central to the educational reform movement currently underway in America than that of standards. Virtually everyone thinks we need them and that efforts to improve our schools will certainly fail unless standards can be developed and made public. Standards will provide both targets and incentives. Amidst the enthusiasm, nevertheless, an undercurrent suggests that standards may not be the answer and that the concept itself may impede the realization of the vision of education that many educators hold. Standards can refer to those targets at which one aims.
Standards can serve as icons against which student performance is compared.
Standards are sometimes used in relation to a rite of passage that provides access to future opportunities. In addition to these conceptions, standards, as Dewey pointed out in Art as Experience , are units of measurement. We have a standard unit of measurement we call ounces, another we call pounds, and still others called inches, feet, miles, kilometers, and statute miles. All of these standards are socially defined units that quantify qualities. What we experience as height, we can transform into feet and inches.