As "Foreign Language Annals" concludes its 50th anniversary, it is fitting to review the past and peer into the future of standards-based education and assessment. Standards are a common yardstick used by educators and researchers as a powerful framework for conceptualizing teaching and measuring learner success. The impact of standards on language assessment, teaching, curricula, course design, and educational policy is indisputable, but can they even be more impactful, more beneficial? In this article, we reflect upon the role of language learning standards on world language practices and assessments and discuss standards' design, implementation, and appropriation issues that will challenge the field over the next few decades. Although predicting the future is risky, forward thinking is critical when examining an issue as large and complex as the teaching and learning of world languages.