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Yep, an "open-ended target."  And point well taken re "assessment mechanisms."  I'd be quite comfortable with the informal ed context of assessment by evolution, ie one is measured by what one has demonstrably achieved, by how far one has gone in any direction from where one started.  What was on my mind was the transition issue.  Given the contemporary preoccupation with assessment and the existing practice of doing so in terms of achieving norm understanding, what could we replace the latter with?  Yes, down the road somewhere I'd favor letting everyone, both teachers and students, evolve in whatever ways the evolve.  In the meanwhile, I don't think we can ignore peoples' wish, not entirely unreasonable, to know what educational processes are designed to achieve and to have a way to evaluate whether they are in fact achieving that.