What's at Stake in the K-12 Standards Wars: A Primer for Educational Policy Makers (Revised)

The «standards wars» are another manifestation of the «culture wars.» Few educational policy makers understand the many disciplinary, pedagogical, and curricular issues occuring at the heart of the conflicts as states develop or revise their K-12 standards and standards-based assessments in the major subjects. The issues differ from subject to subject. This collection of essays addresses the issues that have arisen in the development and implementation of national and state standards in science, mathematics, history, economics, and the English language arts from the perspective of scholars in those disciplines. These scholars are writing not for other scholars in their field but for those who help shape K-12 educational policy legislators, members of boards of education, and those who teach courses in government or education policy making. The purpose of this collection is to clarify what is at stake in the standards wars and in standards-based systemic reform.