Standards / Objectives

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Short Answer

“In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.”

  • Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars (1939)

Notice: This chapter is catered more towards teachers.

Standards for learning depend on what, where, and how you teach. There may be many standards or few standards to follow, so decide where to be flexible on topics to enhance learning. You may also need to make concessions on content and time due to unexpected events or to stay within deadlines.

Your main goal here is to meet all standards and go into the appropriate depth on each relevant topic.

  • Despite this goal, sometimes what matters more is not the material in the curriculum, but how you present the curriculum.

Another lesser known reality, which should be common knowledge in my opinion, is teachers have a widely varying range of autonomy when deciding standards and their curriculum. Some teachers have a nonexistent level of autonomy which means they follow a chosen curriculum as is, without significant modification, including dotting all the i’s and crossing the t’s. Other teachers have near 100% professional autonomy and are free to do what they need/want so long as it satisfies established standards. Teacher autonomy goes anywhere from nonexistent to constant.

  • This isn’t to say all standardization is bad, but it does trade off differentiation.

If you’re transitioning or changing into new standards or curriculums, be aware you typically can’t solve every problem. Any change, however, should solve at least some of your major pain points.

  • i.e. Achieve a “net benefit.”
  • This also applies to many things in life where you need to weigh the benefits vs costs.
  • In practice, sometimes the “best method” to teach something may not be a method supported by standards.

Long Answer

Warning: Do not cut corners with standards and objectives for your curriculum!

There are several reasons why:

  • It’s hard to build a good curriculum without them
  • Some teaching materials may not align with standards
  • Not adequately covering standards may risk trouble like non-renewal

Once you firmly establish standards and objectives, then you can be creative in your teaching methodology. Think of these as guardrails for your curriculum preventing overemphasis in one area, defining scope, and ensuring all checks are met. They don’t provide specific teaching methods or materials, but instead explicit goals for students to meet and master.

While standards can limit what is done, strong standards elevate teaching, provide direction, and include clear metrics to evaluate classroom performance. This isn’t part of any legal requirement or political agenda either; it’s what ensures you are effective and efficient with instruction.

Depending on where and what you’re teaching, you might skip most of the curriculum setup and have it dictated by your State and/or District. Other times, you may receive a list of standards to meet and create your curriculum. In both cases, as well as homeschooling, you may still be constrained by a State’s Department of Education standards and objectives.

As for independent teachers and instructors not creating content for public and private schools, they should expect to handle most, if not all, setup by themselves.

For people in the United States, if you’re unsure how to find state education standards, look for and start with your state’s Department of Education website (Colorado Department of Education, 2025a, 2025b, 2025c). For this example, I’ll use Colorado’s DoE website and search for K-12 academic standards.

  1. Go to your State’s DoE website (Colorado = CDE)
  2. Search for “Academic Standards”
  3. If indexed correct, it should be on the first result page.
  4. From there, select a desired subject area or browse all standards.

For colleges and universities, a similar search process may occur in your specialized or institutional accreditation, providing standards you need to follow.

From there, you may find various items, such as grade-level expectations (GLEs), evidence outcomes, connections and contexts, concepts, as well as elaborations.

You may come across other sets of standards (not to be confused with curricula!) such as NGSS and Common Core as well (NextGenScience, n.d.)(Common Core State Standards Initiative, n.d.). They include collaboration with organizations spanning across the nation or some select state(s), but contributing towards school curriculums (National Science Teaching Association, n.d.). Initiatives like these may also receive federal grants, but it is not always the case. States may choose to partially adopt, or adapt, standards rather than fully accepting or rejecting them.

  • One example is the Race to the Top initiative (2012)

Let me emphasize four critical points:

  • States and districts, in the United States, “require” teachers to cover the appropriate standards. Even if everything is done correctly, you may need to shorten or summarize certain standards to stay on schedule. That’s not always a failure on your part, but a reality of teaching and managing high numbers of students.
  • A good set of standards can still make a poor curriculum.
  • The same set of standards and how they’re implemented can vary widely from school to school, district to district, and state to state.
  • Sometimes standards are not solely based on what is best for learning, but as a response to cultural and political environments they’re developed in.
    • See Gamage et al. (2021) for one research example.

How Do I Design Something?

You can make this as complicated or as simple as you want. I’ll opt for a simple process here.

As a caution: if your goal is to make something original and showcase competency, avoid anything AI (or existing automation technology) can easily replicate, because it won’t showcase as well what you, the human, can do.

  • You could still argue utilizing AI is OK, but let’s pretend you’re not allowed to use it.

Let’s say I want to map out a curriculum within an education system or design a system I want students to interact with. Establishing that requires several steps before sorting out details, such as:

  1. Pick a domain
    • e.g. Science, Math, Language Arts, etc.
  2. Pick a topic (or topics) in that domain.
    • e.g. Calculus, Algebra, Nuclear Astrophysics, etc.
  3. Figure out what standards (i.e. requirements) you need to meet.
    • e.g. In Calculus, you need to cover derivatives and integrals.
  4. Design ways for students to interface with the content.
    • e.g. I host the course on an online portal and outline how to navigate it, do a specific room set-up for in-person classrooms, etc.
  5. For any areas you’re still unsure of, you can reference other works as an inspiration. This may include how another company, school, district, etc. does it.

After those steps, ensure you map out methods and deliverables to “solve the problems” you discovered. For education, this may be setting up a syllabus, detailing content delivery in lectures and activites, and finding ways to practice and retain learning through tests and assessments.

The process stays mostly consistent outside education systems too, but may differ in deliverables and how you execute the steps. If this were a software project instead, you may need to figure out core functionality (what it can/should do), tests, deployment, monitoring, ways to improve, and handling changes over time.

What About Standardized Tests?

They’re a necessary evil.

This is especially true on standardized tests hosted by third parties or enforced within your own education system. A test like this loses its importance if students can differentiate, opt out of it, and have no stakes if they fail.

  • Yes, not having any stakes counts as cutting corners.

To give an example that applies, but isn’t related to education for neutral context: Medical tests.

Imagine you go to the doctor’s office for a checkup, and they need to prescribe you a blood test. There might not be anything wrong with you, but they’re making sure and ruling out possibilities. After you take the blood test, you’ll get results and may see items like Albumin, Hemoglobin, MCV, and more (Cleveland Clinic, 2022). Medicall professionals generally know what these metrics mean and how they’re measured. They could be subjective on how they interpret results, which may cause a Type I or II error (i.e. a false positive or false negative) if severe enough, but there’s a known, verified baseline they can reference and confirm results.

Scores and metrics are a thing in about every field, major, study, or area of expertise; a baseline level to determine good vs bad, big vs small, etc. If that isn’t there, or cannot be agreed upon, you get multiple competing standards and increase confusion on which standard(s) actually are valuable.

Put another way, you need a consistent way people can agree on to measure things. Standardized test scores are one of many metrics, which means they’re diagnostic and used as part of an evaluation (more on metrics in a later chapter).

  • E.g. standardized test scores considered alongside school context for university admissions.

The ideal system would prioritize evaluating many different traits from someone, but that may not be feasible due to the testing organization’s own bias, resources, or political/social pressures. It may also not be prioritized simply because society, as a whole, doesn’t value a particular skill or trait, so sees no need to evaluate based on it.

Some people may be against them because it’s a potential case of evaluating a fish on how well it climbs a tree like a monkey.

  • Alternatively, a difference in geographic and socioeconomic backgrounds may negatively affect experience preparing for a test.

Other people may negate those same detractors by stating the student is the monkey and we have to see how well they can climb a tree because that’s what they need to do to survive.

Additionally, standardized tests counters multiple issues with adhering to metrics (more on metrics in later chapters). For example, it would highlight discrepancies and issues such as a student getting padded scores at their local school, but failing horribly on the standard test at the state/national level. It could also bring an investigating into teachers, schools, etc. to ensure the curriculum students were supposed to get is what they’re actually getting.

You can easily set your own standards at a micro level (personal/school), but not as easily at a macro level (organization/coalition). Some consistent way to verify actual ability and is not subject to easy manipulation is, in my opinion, far more trustworthy.

Though standardized tests may force curricula to be more ‘rigid’, they’re also less likely to be taken advantage of. Couple that with an authority that cannot be easily swayed and it still remains a valid measure of a student’s ability to do something.

Grades / Grading System

Grading is essential. It’s how you determine good vs bad and serves distinct functions like feedback for the learner, certification (or proof of learning) towards any third parties, and diagnostics for education systems.

There’s several things you’ll need to create a functional grading system:

  • Consistency
  • Objectivity
  • Validity
  • Feedback
  • Transparency
  • Proportionality

Consistency is similar to idempotence. One student submitting work and getting a bad grade should have a similar effect to if 1000+ students submit that same work and also get that same bad grade. Consistent also includes reliability; if you had someone else grading work using the same standards as you, they should also reach the same conclusion as you.

Objectivity is relatively straightforward. Determining the grade of a student should not involve factors irrelevant to their work, such as the grader’s or student’s disposition towards each other, when reasonable and feasible. There may be leniency in emergencies and other severe circumstances, but it shouldn’t affect how the work is viewed too much. As an example, a famous person you respect should not be graded higher vs a non-famous person you may not respect if they submitted the same work.

  • To put it briefly: standardization mitigates subjectivity.

Validity determines if your grading standards are correct in the first place. You could do everything right and have the correct process, only for the result to be incorrect because you utilized the wrong tool/standards. You also cannot check consistency with validity tests and vice versa.

Feedback provides information leading to actionable insights. Without any feedback loops, you’ll be left in the dark about grades and be unsure if there’s an issue in the curriculum, the students, the grading method, and so on. Think of this as a “health check” for your grading system.

Transparency matters as criteria should be communicated and understood by the students subject to it. There are few exceptions where criteria should be intentionally obscured, such as classified training programs, but the vast majority of systems requiring communicating how results are reached to mitigate conflicts later on. This also includes how to meet the criteria to perform well.

Proportionality is how grades are divided amongst work for students. For example, you may see this as weights on how much quizzes, tests, homework, etc. affect the final grade. As a general advice for systems utilizing weights: the weight of an assessment should scale with the significance towards a particular goal.

With those parts stated earlier, let’s order them. Validity issues should be solved first, followed by proportionality issues second. Consistency should be figured out after those two, followed by transparency. You get the right standard, the right ways to weigh how learning is achieve, how to consistently and fairly grade students, and finally the way to communicate it all towards those same students.

Feedback and objectivity are ongoing measures running parallel to the other aspects. You’ll figure these out near the beginning, but monitor and maintain throughout the entire learning journey. It’s how you figure out if things are going right and wrong from start to finish and what avoids rose-tinted glasses when reviewing all the data and metrics you’re tracking along the way.

Formative & Summative Assessments

Formative assessments track progress during the learning journey, while summative assessments track outcomes at the end of the learning journey.

Both types utilize standards to determine a student’s performance level and the effectiveness of a curriculum for students, but formative are typically less high-stakes compared to summative.

Examples of formative assessments may include:

  • Submitting a rough draft or proposal
  • Drawing a concept out on paper
  • Answering a single question
  • Writing a single sentence to summarize a topic

Examples of summative assessments may include:

  • Tests and Quizzes
  • Exams
  • Thesis Defense
  • Research Paper
  • Interviews

They also have differing goals: formative checks where improvements are needed throughout the learning process whereas summative checks how well students learned something at the end and issue an overall evaluation. The results from summative tests can determine many things, typically more than formative tests, such as whether or not a student passes or fails, whether the curriculum/curricula are appropriately meeting the standards of learning, and finding learning gaps. Summative assessments may also more concretely determine if the student(s) needs intervention or enrichment of some kind and help determine if educators are doing their role well.

These assessments are not things to be completely avoided. It’s expected to find and develop these in just about every curriculum in some way, shape, or form and they are a reliable way to track and affirm progress.

Is Funding Tied to Standards?

Yes.

For a business, if their products and services don’t meet the standards of their users, the company needs to meet these standards, figure out ways to recoup losses, cut costs, or risk going bankrupt and out of business.

You may think it’s harsh, but I’ll ask a question of the reader: Would you knowingly and willingly stick with a brand or product that wasn’t good by your own standards?

  • What about if there were no alternatives?
  • What about if you had to use it despite whatever issues it had?

The same parallel applies to education systems. Investors, donators, and local, state, and federal governments consider how a school performs through its ability to meet, or exceed, standards. Parents, students, and families may support education and schools they feel are valuable, but could be forced to accept whatever education is available regardless of its quality.

If a school is performing well and has a reputable track record, perhaps you’re more likely to contribute toward it because its ROI (Return on Investment) is higher. If a school doesn’t have those qualities, then you’re less likely to invest into it. How this may play out in policy is through two key examples, No Child Left Behind and Every Student Succeeds Act, which I’ll cover more in the Metrics chapter.

Bibliography

  1. Cleveland Clinic. (2022, December 6). Blood Tests: Types, Results & How They Work. Cleveland Clinic. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diagnostics/24508-blood-tests

  2. Colorado Department of Education. (2025, July 3). Colorado Department of Education. https://www.cde.state.co.us/

  3. Colorado Department of Education. (2025). Colorado academic standards. https://www.cde.state.co.us/apps/standards/

  4. Colorado Department of Education. (2025, April 18). Standards and instruction: Standards. https://www.cde.state.co.us/standardsandinstruction/standards

  5. Common Core State Standards Initiative. (n.d.). Common Core State Standards. https://corestandards.org/

  6. Gamage, K. A. A., Dehideniya, D. M. S. C. P. K., & Ekanayake, S. Y. (2021). The role of personal values in learning approaches and student achievements. Behavioral Sciences, 11(7), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs11070102

  7. National Science Teaching Association. (n.d.). Science standards. https://www.nsta.org/science-standards

  8. NextGenScience. (n.d.). Next Generation Science Standards. https://www.nextgenscience.org/

  9. Saint-Exupéry, Antoine. (1939). Wind, Sand and Stars. Translated by Lewis Galantière. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002.
    • Translated by Lewis Galantiere.
  10. The White House. (2012). Race to the Top. The White House. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/issues/education/k-12/race-to-the-top

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