Little relationship between tougher standards and higher achievement

On Board Online • November 19, 2012

By Paul Heiser
Senior Research Analyst

Tougher curricular standards appear to have little impact on overall student achievement but may raise achievement of eighth-graders, according to a study by a professor at Harvard University.

Joshua Goodman of Harvard’s School of Government matched up data on state-level student achievement from 1994 through 2011 with measures of the quality of states’ curricular standards as judged by two independent organizations – the American Federation of Teachers and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute – at three different moments in time.

The resulting analysis shows that within states, changes in the quality of standards had little impact on overall student achievement. However, improved math standards did raise the math achievement of eighth graders, particularly for low-scoring students.

Goodman says the lack of an observed relationship between higher standards and improved student achievement may be due to either (a) insufficient measures to detect the relationship in the data, suggesting that policymakers should think more carefully about clearly defining quality when it comes to educational standards; or (b) the inability of high quality standards to translate into the pedagogical changes necessary to influence student achievement, perhaps because teachers are unaware of the standards, because school administrators do not adjust curricula and textbooks to those standards, or for any other number of reasons.