Education standards do not flop spectacularly. Their failure gives rise to nothing like the black-and-white films of early aeronautical experiments: no missiles exploding on launch pads or planes tumbling from the sky. But 10 years after 46 of the 50 states adopted the Common Core standards, the lack of evidence that they have improved student…

The 10th anniversary of Common Core's launch offers the opportunity to take stock of the impact these nearly national standards have had on student learning, as well as their future prospects. In this article, Morgan Polikoff shares his view that the standards movement in general, and Common Core in particular, have achieved all they are going to…

The Common Core State Standards, released in 2010, were rapidly adopted by more than 40 states. Champions maintained that these rigorous standards would transform American education, but the initiative went on to encounter a bumpy path. A decade on, what are we to make of this ambitious effort? What kind of impact, if any, has it had on the…

This Center for American Progress report examines whether states' adoption of standards-based policies predicts low-income students' NAEP achievement trends in fourth and eighth grade math and reading throughout the 2003-2013 decade. The report claims to analyze changes across five separate two-year intervals, but it only reports findings for…

For a decade, at least since the passage of No Child Left Behind, the nation's foremost education goal has been to erase achievement "gaps" in which African American, Latino, and low-income students dramatically lag behind their peers. This emphasis has enjoyed broad support through the Bush and Obama administrations, and from major…

The No Child Left Behind Act requires the states to test their students every year to determine how many of them have achieved proficiency in, among other areas, math, science, and reading. The law also requires that the states participate yearly in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which calls itself "the Nation's…

Discusses the proposed development of voluntary national tests in fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade mathematics. Explains that these tests will be based on the content and performance standards used in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). (DDR)

Describes personal and professional pressures a first-year teacher faced when confronted with mandated standards in student academic achievement for at-risk students. Focuses on the teacher's efforts to: (1) examine student needs, including addressing test anxiety; (2) adapting classroom methods, including uses of practice testing; and (3)…