ABSTRACT
In the title of this book, Raising Standards in Literacy, the term ‘standards’ needs clarification, since it has (at least) two meanings which are in tension with each other. The older meaning, still the predominant one in North America, is ‘criteria for judging success’. The newer meaning, perhaps the more frequent now in Britain, is ‘levels of attainment’. The tension between the two meanings is best seen in the virtually annual contradictory reactions to rising pass rates in public examinations in Britain. Some welcome the rise as showing that standards have risen (and so they have, in the sense that levels of attainment have gone up), while others bewail it as showing that standards have fallen – by which they mean that the criteria for success must have been lowered. The truth might of course partake of both.
