A policy history of standards-based education in America

Abstract

This dissertation will attempt to answer three primary research questions: 1) Why did policy makers and other interest groups come to embrace standards-based education as the key to recent educational reform efforts? 2) How did standards-based education come to be embedded in the curriculum, assessment, and accountability systems throughout the nation? 3) What has its lasting impact been, not only in education policy, but also on the broader society as a whole? In this dissertation, I will argue that the corporate elite and global competitiveness ideology have been the primary empirical and ideological drivers behind this reform model for decades. After two chapters spent defining these key terms, I will offer a number of historical chapters. The first will examine a decade of reports in the 1980s that provided much of the rhetoric and institutional linkages that led to standards-based education. Then, I will examine the federal political and legal battles that eventually led to the enshrinement of standards-based education in federal law. After a brief aside to look at Hawaiʻi as a case study of these forces in microcosm at the state level, I will arrive at my conclusion. This will examine the national evaluation literature critical of the model, recent moves towards national standards, and the broader implications of standards-based education for society as a whole.