Extracurricular activities, including music and sports, were frequently seen as frills, either taking away from the school's basic mission to educate students or representing an unacceptable burden on the taxpayer. Yet, there was still the demand for improved performance and more effective schools.
One of the ways that educators sought to address this was through the development of national standards. These standards were meant to provide school systems with measuring sticks for their programs. States and local school districts were expected to refer to them in designing their own programs. However, the effort to develop national standards has fallen prey to the ideological battle being waged by liberals and conservatives about the accepted, or canonical, body of knowledge that those standards were supposed to emphasize. Even though the attempt to create national standards in most subjects has been slowed by political infighting about those standards, there has been impetus to create a set of guidelines that provide information about what schools are expected to teach and students expected to learn during the course of their basic education (Raising standards for..., 1992). The focus has been on developing standards for curriculum, teaching, and assessment that challenge students and ensure that by the time they have finished 12th grade they will have learned certain basic principles and facts.
The national standards effort is designed to provide a foundation for the expectations that schools will have of both students and staff. As Crisco et al. (1987) note, effective schools research has shown that having high standards for students and staff is an important aspect of improving performance and creating effective schools. Also important is the establishment of clear goals, and communicating those goals to all members of the school community.
The second step in creating effective schools is evaluation of both studen...