[From the article] To avoid curricular chaos, educators must be judicious about the standards they assess.
The standards movement is arguably a major force in education today, and some researchers assert that the significance of the standards campaign will be huge. Undoubtedly, historians will identify the last decade of this century as the time when a concentrated press for national education standards emerged (Glaser & Linn, 1993, p. xiii).
But will the standards movement endure? And if it does, will it contribute significantly to higher achievement? We believe it will--but only if we rein in its most excessive tendencies. Those tendencies can be seen in the nature and length of state and professional standards documents--and in their unintended consequences...
