National standards and assessments are being proposed as a strategy for improving schools in the United States. However, proposed federal policies for implementation raise serious concerns about the extent to which national standards and assessments alone will help improve the quality of public education for all or whether it will serve to deepen the already severe educational and economic cleavages that exist in this nation, especially along racial/ethnic lines. We examine the implications of this policy for equity and diversity in terms of antecedent instructional conditions, the proposed test, the testing context, and the diversity of learners to be assessed. Without a strong and serious commitment to opportunity to learn, this policy serves as a symbolic and political fiction rather than an instrumental one in improving schooling outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged urban and racial/ethnic minority students.
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