Do standards matter?: The role of standards in student achievement

The purpose of this project is to look at the effect of state mathematics and English-language arts standards on student achievement. I used an education-focused nonprofit organization's rigorous grading of state standards to investigate whether student achievement as measured by the NAEP is affected by the quality of standards and the analysis of the efficacy of standards. The National Governor's Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers are leading the movement of developing and adopting a common core of state standards, making this work increasingly important. Previous research suggests that states with more rigorous standards have higher student achievement and that black students may be more affected by standards than other students. I investigated whether my findings are consistent with what other studies have found and whether standards affect subgroups differently.;My hypotheses were that states with higher standards, more positive qualities and fewer negative qualities in the standards, and more difficult state high-stakes tests will have higher levels of student achievement. I also hypothesized that the black and Hispanic student subgroups would have lower scores than the overall population of students. I found that for all students, standards did not tend to have a statistically significant effect on student achievement. Standards -- particularly the negative qualities of standards -- have a larger effect for black students than for all or Hispanic student subgroups. The measure of difficulty of the state test had no statistically significant effect on student achievement on the NAEP. As has been shown with previous research, the largest predictors for student achievement appear to be race/ethnicity and poverty levels. Though standards are important as a foundation for improving student achievement, high standards without addressing other problems in the education system are unlikely to significantly change student achievement.