The United States of America’s education reforms since the 1980s were born out of the dire need to set academic standards of what students ought to be taught and be able to effectively perform in the job market. The education standards outlined in the reform map the progress of the components of all other education systems. The standard education system does not comply with norm-based rankings; rather, the system institutes solid criteria for evaluating each student. This constitutes a formulated curriculum that features assessments for professional development harmonized by the reform goals.
These standards evolved from the defunct outcomes-based education, which was thrown aside in the United States in the 1990s. And, the two reforms still share core goals. The goals are rooted in the curriculum frameworks, which define specifically what students must attain; there is an emphasis on criterion-referenced evaluation in tune with the frameworks and imposition of quality graduation examinations ensuring top performance to receive a diploma.
The standard-based reforms enjoy a notable backing by the conservatives than the outcome-based education. They say it fosters a learning program that seeks to raise academic standards. But contrasting views from some conservatives deem it merely a rebranding of an unsuccessful and unrealistic vision. It is therefore viewed as an educational reorganization analogous of a premeditated economy which makes an attempt to coerce student to perform better by raising prospects then imposing sanctions and punishments on schools and students who fall short of the new standards.
The vision therefore has to be brought under scrutiny in order to judge whether the standards-based education has a future. The first requirement is that every teenager will attain a meaningful high school diploma that ensures sufficient literacy at a level that can sustain employment. To eliminate possible surprising failure upon completing high school education, regular assessments through a variety of means are implemented to stump out any possible cause of attaining lower grades.
Equality is stressed to ensure all students from all walks of life are not denied access to education. That implies that by virtue of cultural or ethnic background, poverty, gender, disabilities, age, race, or family situation, no student will be stopped from learning the required material. It is however acknowledged that individual students may learn with different means and at different rates, but the gap is still subject to narrowing.
The standards-based education require job competitiveness rather than learning from a curriculum tailored by education professors, traditions or textbook publishers. The standards are published and distributed freely to professional educators, parents, taxpayers as well as to textbook writers.
The main goal is to use the standards-based education to attain a literate and economically competitive workforce from all schools and all demographic components on the nation.
While the core aspects remain pretty concrete and seemingly viable, the only debate about its future is that it is an offspring on an impractical and abandoned system. Much then has to be left for the time to tell since it remains clear that even great ideas need to be followed to bring anything to fruition.
