ABSTRACT
Our nation is awash in talk about standards. In K-12 education, many different standards have been proposed for students, for teachers, and for specific disciplines, backed up by statewide testing programs and even national standards and exams.1 In postsecondary education, without traditions of external examinations, states have wrestled (mostly unsuccessfully) with how to set standards for their colleges and universities (Dill, Massy, Williams, and Cook, 1996). Employers and policy makers concerned about international competition have embraced “world-class standards” as their grail, and the federal government has begun experimenting with skills standards in occupational areas (Bailey and Merritt, 1995). Critics of education have weighed in with their own laments about declining standards: Those from the right have offered detailed recommendations (e.g., Hirsch, 1987; Adler, 1982), while other advocates have deplored the reduced expectations for low-income and minority students (Hopfenberg and Levin, 1993). No sin is worse than lowering educational standards, nor-it seems-is any more common.
