By the year 2014, all students, including all subgroups, are expected to meet the standards that have been set each state under No Child Left Behind. In an effort to meet this federal goal, states and districts all across America have revised their curriculum and are seeking prove, research-based methods to engage students and encourage high achievement for all students. The purpose of this study was to compare standards-based instruction to traditional instruction and seek to determine if there was a statistical difference in the two instructional deliveries. The Georgia third grade math Criterion Referenced Competency Test scores were analyzed from the 2008-2009 Main Administration session. This was a quantitative study and the design was causal-comparative. This study sought to examine if there was a statistical difference in the mean score on the CRCT of third grade student receiving Standards-based Instruction (Subgroup A) in math and in the mean score of third grade students receiving Traditional Instruction (Subgroup B). An analysis of the CRCT math scores was performed using a t-test with a degrees of freedom of 36 and .05 level of significance. The results of the study did not show a statistically significant difference I the mean score on the CRCT of third grade students receiving Standards-based Instruction (Subgroup A) in math and the mean score on the CRCT of third grade students receiving Traditional Instruction (Subgroup B) in math.