Standards-based education is the most important and widely implemented education reform idea of the last several decades in the USA, one supported by the full weight of the mainstream bipartisan educational establishment. Motivated by "global economic competitiveness" as the ideological driver and big business as the empirical driver, it has become a settled and integral part of local, state and federal education policy. In spite of all this, little has been said about its fundamental assumptions and their implications for the future. This is especially concerning because its most notable implicit assumption is that the ever-increasing consumption of the planet's finite natural resources by a seemingly ever-increasing population can continue indefinitely. This is a mathematical impossibility. Therefore, this difficult discussion needs to be more fully engaged and possible solutions explored, which this article strives to do.