In the 1990s, Virginia launched one of the nation's most ambitious standards-based reform efforts. Encouraged by a budding national accountability movement and motivated by conservative distrust of the public school establishment, state officials sought to clarify what students needed to know and to hold students and educators accountable for demonstrated performance. The effort to launch and then implement the state's nationally hailed Standards of Learning (SOLs) program would provide an exemplary case study of the political tensions that imperil any push for high-stakes accountability. By 2001, determining with certainty which program elements were the result of educational considerations and which were a response to political challenges would prove difficult. These developments were particularly illuminating given Virginia's earlier experiences with high-stakes reform. In this paper, the author uses Virginia's extensive experiences with high-stakes accountability to examine the politics and prospects of standards-based reform. He considers the history of Virginia's experiences with standards-based reform, the effect of the Standards of Learning on student performance, and their impact on the broader culture of schooling. Comments by Alan Wurtzel and Iris C. Rotberg are presented. (Contains 116 notes.)