American Education in 2030: Standards and Competitive Rigor

In 2030, Americans benefit from K-12 academics that are rigorous, but not stultifyingly uniform. This pluralism emerged in the aftermath of President Obama's ill-fated project of creating a monolithic, inflexible set of national standards. A half dozen rivalrous standards soon evolved from the bottom up out of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, Core Knowledge, Common Core, the New Standards Project, state standards from the 1990s and 2000s, and other efforts. States now call on public school districts or schools to adhere to one of these sets of standards.