MILESTONES IN THE MOVE TOWARD COMMON STANDARDS

The push toward uniform academic standards spans nearly three decades. Hover your mouse to browse through the years of Education Week's coverage of the issue. Years with a broken circle represent various times when common standards were blocked for political or practical reasons.
1983

A Nation at Risk warns of U.S. education's mediocrity, sparking a focus on academic standards.

Related story
1989

President George H.W. Bush and the nation's governors agree to set national education goals.

Related story
1991

President Bush unveils the America 2000 Act, which proposes voluntary national standards and tests. It fails to win congressional support, but his administration funds development of voluntary national standards.

Related story
1994

President Bill Clinton signs the Goals 2000: Educate America Act, which provides grants to help states develop content standards and sets up a standards-certification panel. The voluntary national standards in arts, civics, geography, social studies, English/language arts, history science, and foreign languages are released.

Related story
1994

Lynne V. Cheney the former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which had subsidized the history standards, attacks a draft, arguing that it presents an overly negative picture of the United States and Western civilization. The U.S. Department of Education withdraws funding for the English standards.

Related story
1995

The Senate passes a nonbinding resolution denouncing the history of standards.

Related story
1996

The Republican-led Congress eliminates the standards-certification panel.

Related story
2002

President George W. Bush signs the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires annual state testing in math and reading in grades 3-8 and once during high school, and mandates states align their tests with their academic standards.

Related story
2008

The National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers and Achieve, in consultation with state leaders, release a report advocating U.S. standards to be equivalent to the expectations of academically successful countries.

Related story
April 2009

CCSSO and NGA launch the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Two months later, all but four states have pledged their support to it.

Related story
July 2009

Development and feedback groups for "career and college readiness" standards—the skills students should have upon graduation—are announced.

Related story
Sept. 2009

The draft college and career readiness standards are made available for public comment.

Related story
Nov. 2009

The development and feedback groups for the grade-by-grade K-12 standards are announced.

Related story

Race to the Top rules are unveiled. States can get points on their applications for adopting the standards by Aug. 2, 2010.

Feb. 2, 2010

Kentucky becomes the first state to adopt the standards conditionally, in draft form.

Related story
March 2010

Draft K-12 grade-by-grade standards are made available for public comment.

Related story
April 2010

The Department of Education invites applications from groups of states to design tests for the standards. To belong to the consortia, states have to adopt the standards by the end of 2011.

Related story
June 2, 2010

Final common standards are issued.

Related story
July 14, 2010

Half the states have adopted the standards.

Related story
Sept. 2010

The Education Department awards $330 million to two consortia to develop tests for the common standards. Four months later, the department awards $30 million more to the two consortia to develop supplemental resources for the standards.

See first related story

See second related story

Sept. 2011

The department announces guidelines for states wishing to apply for waivers of key requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. To qualify, states must adopt college- and career-ready standards.

Related story
Nov. 2011

All but four states have adopted the standards. All but five are participating in one or both assessment consortia.

Related story