Standards Based Education
Nikki Weber
What is Standards Based Education?
Standards-based learning provides the foundation for 21st century learning opportunities that prepare students for today, tomorrow and the future.
Provides a fair and objective way to evaluate students based on what they have learned while providing the appropriate level of challenge and rigor.
Gives teachers a powerful system for teaching.
Helps parents be knowledgeable participants in their students’ education.
Positive Aspects of Standard Based Education
- Demands students apply them self to higher standards than the past.
Provide parents, schools, and communities with an unprecedented opportunity to debate and reach agreement on what students should know and be able to do.
Reinforce the best teaching and educational practices already found in classrooms and make them the norm.
Focus the education system on understandable, objective, measurable, and well-defined goals to enable schools to work smarter and more productively.
Provide real accountability by focusing squarely on results and helping the public and local and state educators evaluate which programs work best.
Bottom Line: Sets standards more practical for when students move from school to school
Negative Aspects of Standards Based Education
- Recent reports on the standards-based reform movement in New York suggest that in many schools the careless implementation of standards and assessment may have negative consequences for students.
- Vague and unclear standards in several subject areas in several states complicate matters and do not serve as concrete standards defining what students should know and be able to do.
- Top-down standards imposed by the federal or state government are also problematic. They impose content specifications without taking into account the different needs, opportunities to learn, and skills that may be appropriate for specific districts or regions.
- Bottom Line: Every student and every classroom is different and have different needs