Parents can easily come down with an acute case of schizophrenia from reading the contradictory reports about the state of the public schools. One sat of experts asserts that the schools are better than they have been for years. Others say that the schools are in terrible shape and are responsible for every national problem from urban poverty to the trade deficit. One group of experts looks primarily at such indicators as test scores, and they cheer what they see: all the indicators—reading scores, minimum competency test results, the Scholastic Aptitude Test scores—are up, some by substantial margins. Students are required to take more academic courses—more mathematics and science, along with greater stress on basic skills, including knowledge of computers. More than 40 state legislatures have mandated such changes. But in the eyes of another set of school reformers such changes are at best superficial and at worst counterproductive. These experts say that merely toughening requirements, without either improving the quality of instruction or, even more important, changing the way schools are organized and children are taught makes the schools worse rather than better. They challenge the nature of the test, mostly multiple choice or true or false, by which children"s progress is measured; they charge that raising the test scores by drilling pupils to come up with the right answers does not improve knowledge, understanding and the capacity to think logically and independently. In addition, these critics fear that the get-tough approach to school reform will cause more of the youngsters at the bottom to give up and drop out. This, they say, may improve national scores but drain even further the nation"s pool of educated people. The way to cut through the confusion is to understand the different yardsticks used by different observers. Compared with what schools used to be like "in the good old days", with lots of drill and uniform requirements, and the expectation that many youngsters who could not make it would drop out and find their way into unskilled jobs—by those yardsticks the schools have measurably improved in recent years. But by the yardsticks of those experts who believe that the old school was deficient in teaching the skills needed in the modern world, today"s schools have not become better. These educators believe that rigid new mandates may actually have made the schools worse.The word "yardstick"(Sentence 2, Paragraph 4) probably means______.