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What It Is
Standards are accepted or required bodies of knowledge that students must know and be able to do in every subject, at every grade.  Testing or assessment often -- though not always -- measures how those standards are met. The education world is awash in standards and testing talk. It’s critical to understand.
What We Believe
High standards are essential in ensuring that every student is prepared for and able to move on to each grade, and that tests, developed at the state level and correlated directly to the standards, are critical to gauge progress. We believe that every parent in America and every teacher to whom parents entrust their children deserve to have high, measurable standards against which to gauge the progress of the enterprise for which they share responsibility. We believe in accountability as a consequence of performance measured against stated measures of proficiency. Any school that consistently fails its students, no matter where those schools are or the demographics of its children, should be closed.

Latest Updates

 
NAEP Science Results Nothing to Write Home About
Even though science results on the 2011 Nation's Report card show an increase from 2009, 68 percent of America's eighth graders lack a basic understanding of science.
 
U.S. Education Reform and National Security
The Task Force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations found that with U.S. students lagging behind the rest of the developed countries there is in fact a national security threat. Read a summary of the report and recommendations here.
 
Grad Nation Report Indicates Progress
A 2012 report indicates the United States' graduation rate topped 75% in 2009, and dropout factories are on the decline.
 
We The People
The State Policy Network (SPN) has been working on a project to provide the network and grassroots activists around the country the tools they need to help United States citizens understand their freedom and the founding principles of their country.
 
U.S. Gets an “F” in Nation’s Report Card
Barely 40 percent of the nation’s 4th- and 8th-grade students are proficient in math and reading, an alarming statistic that would be considered failure in any grade, any school, or on any state report card.
 
University of Chicago Study Finds Modest Learning Gains
A University of Chicago study finds that while graduation rates have had significant growth, racial gaps have widened and many students have academic achievement levels below what is necessary to go to college.

Resources

Achieve, Inc. helps states raise academic standards and graduation requirements, improve assessments and strengthen accountability.
http://www.achieve.org/

Common Core promotes programs, policies, and initiatives at the local, state, and federal levels that provide students with challenging, rigorous instruction in the full range of liberal arts and sciences.
http://www.commoncore.org/

Nation’s Report Card, also known as National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/

→ 2011 State-By-State NAEP Math Results
→ 2011 State-By-State NAEP Reading Results
→ Highlights from 2009 NAEP Math Results for 4th and 8th grade students

SAT
http://professionals.collegeboard.com/data-reports-research

→ Press Release: U.S. Students Continue to Stall on SATs
→ SAT Breakdown 2011

ACT
http://www.act.org/newsroom/