America finally has a national education strategy. That strategy is called standards-based reform. Virtually every state in the union has developed, or is in the process of developing, new academic standards that specify what students are expected to know and be able to do in the core academic subjects at key grade levels; assess ments that measure progress against those standards; and accountability systems that, at a minimum, provide annual public reports on school and district performance. Although enormous variation is evident in the qual ity of state standards and assessments and in the sophistication of state thinking about implementation, we believe that a broad enough consensus exists across the states on the core elements of this strategy to warrant our characterization of standards-based reform as America's de facto national education policy. Even within the states that have experimented most boldly with choice, charters, and vouchers, these initiatives are playing out in the context of a broader standards-based strategy. The injection of competition and market pressures may make state standards and account ability even more necessary to track the use of public funds in different settings.