States have long bristled at having their education standards dictated by the federal government. An unexpected pushback to No Child Left Behind was states lowering their benchmarks for proficiency, ensuring students would pass muster and federal funding would keep flowing. 

President Bill Clinton previously tried to set up a federal council to rubber-stamp state standards, but it died in Congress. More recently, the Common Core State Standards set out to address the vagaries in state proficiency levels, but that wasn't the magic bullet, either. Still, the news from NCES showing that differences in achievement metrics are smoothing out means more uniform standards may be on the horizon regardless. 

Keep in mind, though, that the NCES has never seen any link between standards and student achievement. Students, typically, are not rising to meet sky-high standards. Many critics say aspirational standards simply don't make sense and are essentially unreachable — except, it seems, in a smattering of predominantly Asian or wealthy jurisdictions. Some note, though, that at least such standards open the door to more rigorous classwork. 

A recent brief from iNACOL also offered recommendations for education leaders seeking to re-imagine their accountability systems to bring them more in line with student achievement. Among the key points is the importance of striving for openness and the capacity for adaptability and continuous improvement. Flexibility, for instance, might come from de-emphasizing grade level and implementing a system whereby teachers would be primed to jump in to help students exactly when and how they need it. Flexibility could also be built in to the system's ability to work with different measures, depending on the needs of the various stakeholders.