Push Ahead With Standards, Alternative Assessments, Panel Urges

By Karen Diegmueller

A group of eminent scholars is urging educators to just do it: Get on with trying out rigorous standards and alternative approaches to assessment in the nation's classrooms.

Despite the imperfection of available standards documents and measurement instruments, "this panel advises educators to 'get started,"' writes the National Academy of Education's panel on standards-based education reform.

In a report to be released this month, the panel concludes: "To wait until fully developed standards and assessment instruments are available in all knowledge domains, and capacity to implement them exists in all areas of the country, as opposed to acting on what we do know, would cheat many American students out of beneficial changes standards-based reforms could foster in...