A vocal segment of the adult American population has long complained about the quality of the overall output from public education in the United States. The nation’s professional educators, for somewhat different reasons in most instances, also have tended to express dissatisfaction with the quality of the educational product. One of the responses to this dissatisfaction has been the standards movement, wherein students are expected to demonstrate competence through the attainment of specified learning goals, as opposed to being opposed to a specified time-based curriculum (Proffer, 1994, p. 12). This movement brought about the development of both the outcomes…