News In Brief

The Missouri state school board will heed the warnings of an advisory commission and delay consideration of academic-performance standards until they can be written in plainer language.

The Commission on Performance, chaired by Gov. Mel Carnahan, agreed late last month that the standards, which are being prepared by groups of subject-matter experts across the state, need to have a greater emphasis on academic content and be easier for people to understand.

Work on the standards began in 1993 as part of a school-finance-reform law that carried a...