Can we please stop with student achievement?

For more than half of my career in education (I started in 1989), there has been this on-going focus on standards... curriculum standards, standards-based educations, updating tests to reflect standards, technology standards, sex education standards... you name it and there is a set of standards or a standards-based initiative (along with consultants focusing on the standards). This hyper-focus appears to arise form the assumption that the reason our students are "falling behind" (a claim for which there is dubious evidence) is that there is not an appropriately rigorous curriculum. (By the way rigorous and rigor mortis are derived from the same root.)

Associated with the focus on standards has been the focus on achievement. I have come to the conclusion that achievement is a meaningless term-- it is applied so broadly and with so little attention to the measures of achievement or the assumptions (many of which are based on no evidence) that it is likely two people will have vastly different concepts of achievement, and not even realize they have differences.

The Brookings Institute has released the results of a study that suggests there is no association between the standards that are in place in a state and that state's students performance on NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores.

If we accept that finding, then we must question (seriously question) the leadership of any administrator or politician who expends time, energy, or money on planning for the Common Core.