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The Standards Movement:

Trend Analysis Paper

Brooklyn K. Hunt

Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Purdue University

EDCI 52003: Theories and Trends in Curriculum and Instruction

Krista Primrose, PhD

October 17, 2022

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The standards movement in education refers to the increased use of standards to dictate

what is taught and assessed in schools. Standards have existed in education for decades but

may have fallen under the name of content objectives. Objectives and standards are two sides

of the same coin. Both focus on creating a set of criteria on what students will learn within a

course and how they will be able to show proficiency.

Background

The standards movement in education has roots that span more than the last hundred

years. The theoretical framework for the standards movement started with Academic

Scientism which began in the 1980s. This framework led to the division and defining of clear

subjects in education by the Committee of Ten. In 1918, Bobbitt furthered the development of

the scientific movement in education in his work The Curriculum, in which he states:

Education that prepares for life is one that prepares definitely and adequately for these

specific activities…These will be the objectives of the curriculum. They will be

numerous, definite, and particularized. The curriculum will then be that series of

experiences which childhood and youth must have by way of attaining those

objectives. (2017, p.13)

Thus, backwards design was introduced, and curriculum started to be developed based on

objectives. Clear and specific objectives began to be defined for subjects such as English,

math, and social studies (Eisner, 2017).

The expanse of these objectives became overwhelming to teachers and in the 1930s the

trend shifted and there was a focus placed on more student-centered approach. As the

Progressive approach declined, Bloom’s taxonomy was developed and published in 1956,
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“classifying educational objectives according to the kinds of learner behavior they were

attempting to promote” (Popham, 2017, p. 122). Educational objectives became the focus of

curriculum development again and started to be formulated to include the behavior expected

to be performed by the student at the end of instruction. This shifted educational objectives

from simply being goals of instruction to the standard that determined if a student had

demonstrated sufficient proficiency in their learning of that objective (Popham, 2017; Eisner,

2017).

Although Bloom’s taxonomy created a new framework for creating behavior-defined

educational objectives, the civil rights movement, among other equity movements in the

1960s, led to another shift away from standards-based education. Parents and leaders of color

wanted the curriculum taught in the newly integrated schools to be culturally relevant to their

students of color. Multicultural and bilingual curriculums were then created and emphasized

the importance of student- and teacher-driven instruction, rather than following a prescribed

set of content objectives (Sleeter and Stillman, 2017). This trend, however, did not hold off

the standards movement for long.

In 1983, the report A Nation at Risk was published and called for education reform. In

response, states began to create content standards and implement systems of testing based of

the new standards. The standards movement, as we know it today, was in full swing by the

late 1990s and became further encouraged when, in 2001, No Child Left Behind was signed

into law, which mandated states receiving federal funding for implementing annual test in

math and reading. Although, most states were developing and implementing their own state-

standards, the rigor and focus of these standards varied greatly between states (Sleeter and

Stillman, 2017). In 2010, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practice and
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Council of Chief State School Officers, published the Common Core State Standards as a set

of standards that could be adopted by states in lieu of developing their own standards to fit the

criteria necessary to qualify for federal funding points. The adoption of the Common Core

State Standards by most states in the country increased the uniformity of standards between

states.

Discussion

The standards movement in the United States is dominating the current education

system but it is not without its critics. Just as the objectives movement was pushed back in the

1930s, many teachers are feeling that there are too many standards to allow for a flexible

curriculum. I teach 9th grade math in Utah and in the Utah Core State Standards, which were

selected from the Common Core State Standards, there at 58 standards to be taught and

assessed for the class I teach. When the honors standards are added there are a total of 71

standards included. In 180 days of teaching that would require me to teach, review, and assess

a standard every three days, not including honors standards or the consideration for the

standards that are broken down into smaller parts. Although the federal government cannot

mandate a curriculum, the extensiveness of the standards and required annual testing policies

according to the standards has caused the adoption of the Common Core State Standards to be

the equivalent of implementation of a federal curriculum.

I predict that an increase in pushback from teachers will cause the standards movement

to be push-down for a time to make way for curriculums that allow for more flexibility. I do

not believe that standards will be done away with completely, but I hope that the standards

defined for schools will become less extensive and not as frequently assessed through

federally mandated test. The decline of the standards movement would allow teachers to
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create open-ended curriculums that include more interdisciplinary exploration of wider

educational themes, more sophisticated project-based learning, and a student-centered

approach (Noddings, 2017).

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References

Bobbitt, F. (2017). Scientific method in curriculum-making. In D. J. Flinders and S. J.

Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader, (5th ed., pp. 11-18). New York, NY:

Routledge.

Eisner, E. (2017). What does it mean to say a school is doing well? In D. J. Flinders & S. J.

Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader, (5th ed., pp. 313 - 321). New York,

NY: Routledge.

Noddings, N. (2017). The common core standards. In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.)

The curriculum series reader, (5th ed., pp. 449-460). New York, NY: Routledge.

Popham, J. (2017). Objectives. In D. J. Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.) The curriculum series

reader, (5th ed., pp. 279-294). New York, NY: Routledge.

Sleeter, C., & Stillman, J. (2017). Standardizing knowledge in a multicultural society. In D. J.

Flinders & S. J. Thornton (Eds.) The curriculum series reader, (5th ed., pp. 279-294).

New York, NY: Routledge.