This report analyzes the evolution and effectiveness of standards-based reforms in U.S. education. Starting from the increased federal involvement with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965 to the Goals 2000 launch of more recent reforms, the document explores the role of state governments in implementing systemic reforms aimed at aligning educational components to enhance student outcomes.
The report examines the evolution of standards-based reforms from the rise of state standards in the early 2000s through the present, tracing the theory of the reforms and iterations through several eras of standards and accountability at both the federal and state levels, with a particular emphasis on California, where the author was President of the State Board of Education at the time the state ushered in a new era of standards-based reform.
A key barrier to the implementation of the new standards during the No Child Left Behind era was a focus on targets and sanctions without attention to educator capacity-building or alignment among all the necessary components of reform. A new approach taken in California developed alignment among standards, curriculum frameworks, instructional materials, assessments, and teacher education, coupled with a new, more equitable funding system, and a multiple measures accountability system. While some investments were made in educator capacity, there was not at that time an infrastructure for delivering high-quality professional development intensively across the state.
The report recommends that to fully achieve the goals of standards-based reforms:
- State systemic academic reform concepts must be enlarged in breadth, depth, duration, governance, and funding. The comprehensive set of California reforms described in the report provides an example of how to begin to build structures and systems that help support standards-aligned instruction. Data systems are especially important in bringing all these structures and systems together and ensuring that they are doing the appropriate work to support teaching and learning. Building these systems is work that must be sustained over time.
- Capacity-building for school leaders and teachers must reach far more than a small minority of the total workforce, with responsibility split between the states and a large network of local and nonprofit entities. The complexity of standards-based reform requires much more robust and strategic support for districts and schools and some from state departments of education, but primarily from a network of state-led local entities and nonprofit organizations. Technology and digital platforms can play an important role in expanding the reach of professional development.
- Systemic reform focused on instruction must extend more directly and deeply into central school district operations. In most districts, school reform has barely touched central school district operations like budgeting and finance, human resources, or facilities. Weak and disconnected local central operations undermine progress in instruction and teacher capacity-building by failing to free up money to help improve instruction. In service of systemic standards-based reform that moves the needle on instruction, local districts should include district operations units in their core reform strategies.
- School boards need to maintain a focus on policy that supports instruction. Of the entities involved with school governance and accountability, the school board is best positioned to ensure the coherent linkage of the various components of standards-based reform. To accomplish this, the school board must regularly send a clear message to the full school system that standards-based reform is a primary objective, rather than simply an experiment.
- K–12 schools must transcend their traditional scope and role by bridging postsecondary boundaries and incorporating whole child education. This objective means better involving and integrating career/technical education and postsecondary systems in support of K–12 education. K–12 and postsecondary education operate in fundamentally different worlds in the United States. Essential structures—governance, funding, accountability and assessment, and pedagogy—are kept separate, while large numbers of students regularly flow across the system divide. This objective also calls for moving beyond the formal K–12 curriculum to incorporate a whole child approach to education that enables student learning and prepares students for life post-graduation.
- States and districts should look to international locations where instructionally focused reforms have taken hold and apply lessons that are germane to their local contexts. At a level analogous to state systems, the Canadian province of Ontario and the Australian state of Victoria have produced strong systems of educator professional learning and instructional leadership, with a focus on student equity. National examples from South Korea, Singapore, and Finland also present useful takeaways. Importantly, these entities have relied on large-scale change, using a context-driven architecture and the corresponding operational building blocks rather than relying on smaller nudges or niches to build educator capacity.
- States should build a constituency to support systemic standards-based reform—including authentic integration of the standards into classroom instruction and student learning—to help ensure sustained progress and patience with the process. Three criteria that help ensure whether a reform will stick include new structures, easily accessible evidence of compliance, and a powerful constituency in support of the reform. Standards-based reform, when implemented fully, builds structures and creates more precise data, but it lacks such a constituency. Garnering support through a combination of educator groups and public advocacy could help keep states and districts moving ahead in building supportive structures and capacity for standards implementation.
These recommendations address the complexities of policy implementation and underscore the need for coherent, supported efforts at all levels of the education system. The goal is to ensure that standards-based reforms lead to genuine improvements in teaching and learning that reach all schools and students.
Standards-Based Education Reforms: Looking Back to Look Forward by Michael W. Kirst is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
This work was supported by the S. D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation. Core operating support for LPI is provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Heising-Simons Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Raikes Foundation, Sandler Foundation, Skyline Foundation, and MacKenzie Scott. The ideas voiced here are those of the author and not those of funders.