Over the last several years, state boards of education have become increasingly engaged in the development of content and performance standards and the assessments that will accompany them. This guidebook provides information on the move toward standards-based education. Part 1 provides a brief historical overview that places the standards movement in the context of recent education-reform movements and surveys some of the problems that have arisen in the development of standards at the national level. The standards-based movement arose due to lack of consistent curriculum, variation among current grading practices, lack of attention to educational outputs, and the existence of national curricula among other countries with reputations of academic excellence. Conclusions are that: (1) Setting standards is a very technical process that should not be taken lightly; and (2) approaches must be tailor-made to individual schools and school districts. Part 2 offers a technical review that discusses the nature and technical aspects of standards in more detail and summarizes the Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory (McREL) resource database. The database was derived through an analysis of relevant documents across various content areas and is presented in a common format designed to help schools and districts develop educational standards. Four technical issues are discussed--content versus curriculum standards, types of content standards, content versus performance standards, and the need for levels of standards. Guidelines are also offered for tailoring a standards-based approach to local needs. Four figures and a list of 85 documents used to construct the McREL database are included. (Contains 47 references.) (LMI)