The Fall of the Standard-Bearers

While I rarely agree with Diane Ravitch, I think she hit the nail on the head on this one. In The Fall of the Standard-Bearers, Ravitch bemoans the fact that the standards movement has disintegrated to the point of being only about skills and not about authentic learning so as to prepare students for continuing or life-long learning.

The problem, as I see it, is that there is no other place for a standards movement to go but to disolve into its lowest common denominator; to reduce to the level of skills and skills alone. This is the obvious consequence of the categorization of what counts as important as skills represent that which is most easily measured in scientific terms.