Hamilton, Laura S., Stecher, Brian M., Yuan, Kun (December 2008). Standards-Based Reform in the United States: History, Research, and Future Directions.

According to this paper, very generally Standards-Based reform (SBR) is a movement in educational policy and practice that, like Outcomes-based reform, aims to improve public education by emphasizing not what is provided to students, but what they are expected to know and know how to do. Early SBR theorists and practitioners set out to define standards for student achievement and then assess whether or not those standards had been met. The biggest problem these authors cite with SBR is that research clearly shows that it quickly became test-based reform, especially during the No Child Left Behind era.
Some "fixes" for this problem include the authors' recommendations that advances in test creation and administration, especially technological ones, could be used to assess critical thinking skills (both verbal and quantitative) and creative problem-solving skills. These new assessment measures could, according to the authors, make "teaching to the test" both unnecessary and impossible. Furthermore, the authors suggest administrative changes such as limiting testing to only three grades between first and twelfth, and redesigning tests such that not every student takes every part of every test, but instead, large groups of students take only selected portions of the test so as to gain a broader representation of skill levels in each testing subject area.
The authors conclude with specific recommendations for improving our practical application of the six fundamental elements of SBR--academic expectations, alignment of the educational system, assessment of student achievement, decentralization, support and tech. assistance, and accountability. They also include the great importance of assessing the effectiveness of SBR itself throughout its implementation.