Content Standard

Standards-Based Reform and the Development of Content Standards

During the 1980s and 1990s, widespread concern with the status of U.S. public education relative to other countries ushered in educational reform efforts, with the intent to improve teaching and learning. At the core of these efforts was the standards-based reform movement. According to standards-based reform, student achievement will rise when (a) high expectations for student learning are clearly articulated, (b) assessment programs are designed to measure student progress toward those expectations, and (c) consequences are attached to student achievement, as measured by the assessment programs. The 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, namely, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, correspondingly required states to develop challenging academic content standards in English/language arts, math, and science, along with assessment programs that measured student progress toward those standards. Schools and teachers were offered flexibility in how they taught, but all students were expected to learn, at a minimum, the content articulated in the standards. Various consequences were applied to schools that did not demonstrate appropriate [Page 395]adequate yearly progress. In addition to the federally required content standards, some states and districts developed content standards in disciplines outside of those mentioned in the No Child Left Behind Act, such as health, fine arts, social studies, and citizenship.

Given a growing concern that states had disparate content standards and achievement standards at each grade level, the Council of Chief State School Officers and National Governors Association Center for Best Practices collaborated in 2009 to develop and validate a common set of standards. The Common Core State Standards were designed by a team of teachers, school administrators, and other experts in education from 48 different states. In the 2015reauthorization of Elementary and Secondary Education Act, namely, the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, an emphasis on state approval of content standards was maintained, along with the requirement for assessment programs to be developed and implemented to monitor student progress toward those standards.

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