There’s lots of good stuff in Elizabeth Weiss Green’s US News story on national standards -- including about the grassroots version of national tests that might be bubbling up from the states via Achieve. Check it out towards the end of the article here.
What’s a national policymaker to do, then? Well, to get us out of the this stalled go/no debate on national standards that we’ve been in for a few months now, some enterprising member of Congress might propose new funds to help states implement these state-developed “national” standards, and encouraging more states to follow.
At the end of day, no one really cares how we get to comparable and rigorous) state-to-state comparisons.