I sat through an administrator’s “clinic” the other day—one of those gatherings where the coffee is strong, the chairs are unforgiving, and the words learning standards are spoken with near-religious reverence. The agenda was precise. The slides were aligned. Everything, apparently, was measurable.

My mind, however, was not.

This is usually the part where one of my stories detours into a dusty baseball field or a summer afternoon in Calexico. But not this time.
No—this time, I stayed in the room. Physically, at least. I watched adults debate how to standardize something that has always been beautifully, stubbornly human.

So no, this won’t be one of my typical stories. There are no banana balls here. No scraped knees. Just a quiet realization, scribbled in the margins of my notes, that while we were busy defining learning… my mind was off somewhere else, doing its own thing.

Growing up, I wasn’t a typical learner. My mind was a crate full of hyper-caffeinated monkeys, and my teachers paid the price. Honestly, as an adult, I’m still that monkey-brained kid—just with experience, better coping strategies, and a healthy respect for the magical powers of coffee.

Coffee.

Coffee is every educator’s magic elixir. It does nothing, but because we believe it does, we keep it around. Just like standards, come to think of it.

Which brings me back to the point.

As phrases like rigor, vertical articulation, and student outcomes floated through the room, my thoughts wandered—not in protest, but in self-defense. I started wondering when learning became something that needed so many guardrails. When curiosity was given benchmarks. When understanding required a color-coded chart to prove it existed.

Let’s start with learning standards—because nothing livens up a room quite like the phrase learning standards. If you’ve ever watched a faculty meeting deflate in real time, you know exactly what I mean.

In plain terms, learning standards are simply agreed-upon expectations for what students should know and be able to do at certain points in their education.

That’s it.

They’re learning targets meant to answer a basic question: By the end of this grade or course, what should a student reasonably understand or demonstrate? Think of them as the destination, not the route. They tell us where we’re headed—not which road to take, how fast to drive, or whether we’re allowed to stop for snacks along the way.

In theory, standards exist to bring clarity and consistency—to ensure expectations don’t wildly change based on zip code, bell schedule, or which teacher happens to have the stronger coffee that year. They’re meant to be minimum expectations, not ceilings, and certainly not judgments of a student’s intelligence, effort, or worth.

At least, that’s the brochure version.

So… are we doing more harm than good by implementing standards?

The honest answer: sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Standards themselves aren’t villains. They can clarify learning goals, create a shared language, and help new teachers find their footing. The trouble usually starts not with the standards, but with what we do to them.

Somewhere along the way, standards began shape-shifting—turning into ceilings instead of floors, compliance checklists instead of guides, pacing mandates that ignore the inconvenient reality of actual students sitting in actual classrooms.

When that happens, learning gets smaller, safer, and noticeably less human.

Do standards really impact learning?

Indirectly, yes.
Directly? Not nearly as much as we like to believe—or care to admit.

Standards don’t teach kids. Teachers do.

A student doesn’t suddenly grasp metaphor, algebra, or civic reasoning because a standard exists somewhere in a binder, spreadsheet, or shared drive labeled FINAL_FINAL_v7.

What actually impacts learning is teacher clarity and expertise, relationships and trust, relevance and engagement, time to struggle and reflect, and feedback that means more than a checkbox.

Standards can help focus instruction—but they don’t create curiosity, persistence, or joy. In fact, rigid adherence often manages to squeeze those things right out. When learning improves, it’s usually because a good teacher used standards as a reference, not a script.

This is where things get uncomfortable.

Standards often assume equal access to resources, similar prior knowledge, stable home environments, and cultural alignment. Those assumptions are rarely true. So while standards may be designed as neutral benchmarks, their application often isn’t.

They become unfair when context is ignored, when one-size-fits-all assessments dominate, when growth matters less than proficiency, and when students are compared instead of understood.

A student can be learning deeply and still be labeled “below standard.”

A teacher can be doing extraordinary work and still be marked “ineffective.”

That’s not objectivity—it’s false precision.

Maybe the better questions aren’t whether standards “work” or whether they’re good or bad. Maybe the real questions are: Who do standards serve? Who benefits most from how they’re enforced? What do they leave out? And what do we value that can’t be standardized?

Because the most important outcomes of education—curiosity, empathy, resilience, voice, belonging—don’t fit neatly into bullet points or rubrics, no matter how well formatted the document is.

And then there’s teacher autonomy—the quiet casualty in all of this.

The way standards are often implemented can absolutely erode it. When pacing guides, scripted curricula, and benchmark deadlines are tightly tied to standards, teachers are pressured to cover content instead of responding to learners.

Over time, this weakens one of the most important teaching skills: the ability to steer learning in real time. Deep understanding requires flexibility—slowing down, revisiting ideas, following curiosity, and asking better questions when confusion shows up.

Checklist-driven instruction rewards completion over comprehension. Teachers begin trusting pacing charts more than their own judgment, compliance more than curiosity. Teaching becomes box-checking instead of craft.

Sadly, this is where we are—especially in underrepresented communities and less affluent schools, where pressure is highest and margin for flexibility is smallest.

And then there’s grading.

Grading—the inevitable “outcome” that’s rarely discussed with any depth. (The Thanos-Voldemort mash-up educators secretly fear.)

Will we ever agree on it and finally get on the same page? Probably not—and honestly, that may be the most consistent thing about it.

Grading is asked to do far too much heavy lifting. It’s supposed to measure learning, motivate students, communicate progress, enforce accountability, reflect effort, signal rigor, and prepare kids for the “real world”—all using a single letter or number.

No pressure.

An “A” might mean deep understanding in one class, perfect compliance in another, and sheer survival in a third. A “C” can signal average performance, quiet struggle, or a student who understood the material but missed two deadlines and paid for it dearly.

We argue about grading because we’re really arguing about values. Grades aren’t neutral, objective, or magical truth-tellers. They’re a shortcut—a summary, a best guess wrapped in a symbol—and everyone reads them differently.

All of this is unfolding in schools that have fundamentally changed since the pandemic.

You can feel it the moment you walk onto a campus. Students show up differently. Teachers show up differently. The unspoken rules of school feel less solid. Attention spans are shorter, patience thinner, and emotional needs louder.

The old assumptions—that routines will hold, that motivation will be automatic, that learning will simply “resume”—don’t quite work anymore. School is more visibly human now, whether we’re ready for that or not.

What this moment revealed isn’t that the systems broke after the pandemic—they were exposed. Standards, grading, pacing guides, rubrics, benchmarks were built for a version of school that assumed stability, compliance, and predictability.

Today’s students don’t live in that version of the world. Teachers can’t pretend they do. What we’re experiencing isn’t failure—it’s friction between rigid systems and a reality that is far more human, uneven, and complex.

The lesson isn’t that standards are bad, grades are useless, or teachers should do whatever they want. It’s that no system—no matter how carefully designed—can substitute for professional judgment, human connection, and responsiveness to real learners.

When schools rely too heavily on systems to create order, they often do so at the expense of meaning. And when meaning disappears, compliance takes over.

Students notice.

They always do.

And coffee? That’s still the magic elixir. At least it feels like it. And right now, sometimes, that’s enough.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are entirely my own, shaped by decades of learning, teaching, surviving meetings, and consuming questionable amounts of coffee. Any resemblance to actual standards, grading policies, or administrators is purely intentional… or coincidental. You decide.

There’s more waiting at https://xinkblotz.com Telling stories, sharing thoughts, and drinking coffee. A blend of fiction, reflection, and whatever’s brewing – one post at a time.