Benchmarking Education Standards
Abstract
Recently, standards have become the currency of education reform efforts in the U.S. However, there is no international consensus on what constitutes “world-class” education. The New Standards Project has designed research to describe standards in other countries by using the case-study approach of ethnography to collect data (e.g., curricula, texts, exams, student work, and professional views). The review/analysis of the data is organized by a set of fundamental questions, the answers to which constitute a contextualized account of what students are expected to know and be able to do.
Article Notes
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↵LAUREN B. RESNICK is Codirector of New Standards and Director of LRDC at the University of Pittsburgh, 3939 O'Hara St. #824, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Her areas of specialization are cognitive psychology, standards, education reform, and assessment.
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↵KATHERINE J. NOLAN is Coordinator for International Benchmarking at LRDC. Her areas of specialization are standards, educational reform, and international comparisons.
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↵DANIEL P. RESNICK is a Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213. His areas of specialization are the history of standards, assessment, education reform, and literacy.
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- Received May 31, 1994.
- Revision received July 2, 1995.
- Accepted July 10, 1995.