If you are in the Education profession, you have been awash in various initiatives about Standards. Whether it’s the Common Core (a set of standards for math and english adopted by many states) or the NECAP’s (a narrowly focused student test being used to judge student, teacher and school performance), the idea of Standards Based teaching and learning is being presented as “this new way of teaching”.
Wikipedia boldly claims:
“Standards are an evolution of the earlier OBE (outcomes-based education) which was largely rejected in the United States as unworkable in the 1990s, and is still being implemented by some and abandoned by other governments”
But in reality, it’s been a staple of education for centuries, it’s schools that have come full circle back to it.
But what exactly is it?