This volume represents the work of the Mid-continent Regional Education Laboratory (McREL) in surveying and consolidating the national and state efforts to identify what students in kindergarten through grade 12 should know and be able to do in a variety of subject areas. McREL researchers consulted 116 national and state documents that address standards and benchmarks in various subject domains. The effort produced the 255 standards and their accompanying 3,968 benchmarks that are detailed in this text. At a practice level, these standards and benchmarks are intended as a resource or reference for schools and school districts that are attempting to develop their own standards and benchmarks. Following an introduction, Section 2 gives an overview of the current state of standards development across subject areas. Section 3 describes the technical and conceptual differences in standards set by various groups, and presents the model of standards and benchmarks used in this study. Section 4 addresses broader issues about the organization and selection of standards, and Section 5 describes the overall process used in this project to identify standards and benchmarks. Section 6 lays out the format and citation strategy used in the standards section. Sections 7 through 20 provide the standards and benchmarks for the following areas: (1) mathematics; (2) science; (3) history; (4) language arts; (5) the arts; (6) civics; (7) economics; (8) foreign language; (9) geography; (10) health; (11) physical education; (12) technology; (13) behavioral studies; and (14) life skills. Appendixes list the 116 documents used in the report and 14 professional subject-area organizations consulted. (Contains 173 references.) (SLD)