Raising Our Standards for the Standards Movement

By Marc Tucker

Almost every state either has academic standards or is producing them. That might lead the casual observer to decide that the move to use standards to boost student performance is nearly complete. That is hardly the case.

What the states have produced are content standards--statements about what students should know and be able to do. Though these standards have some serious flaws, producing them is an achievement. But the main problem is that these content standards are difficult, if not impossible, to use for any practical purposes because they are not performance standards.

Performance standards enable teachers, students, and parents to judge whether a particular piece of student work actually meets the standard. Performance standards have three parts--a succinct description of what students must know and be able to do (that's the content standard), samples of student work to create a vivid image of what kind of work meets the standards, and commentaries on those samples that explain the features that raise them to the standards. Including examples of student work is the key to making the standards usable by teachers, children, and parents. Any student should be able to look at a performance standard and say, "I understand now. I can learn...