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We live in an era of all-or-nothing curriculum policies:
Should reading be taught through phonics or whole language?
Should social studies focus on social problems or the academic subjects of history and geography? Or, for our purposes here, should K-12 curriculum be mandated by authorities or teacher developed? Such dichotomies mislead and, often, cause harm.

For all the stern rhetoric about standards and accountability, the curriculum enacted in classrooms cannot simply be dictated to teachers. Whether policy-makers recognize (or like) it, teachers are curricular-instructional gatekeepers. While teachers may have to live with high-stakes tests, for instance, they have considerable latitude in how they prepare their students for those tests. Reports that teachers must "teach to the test" may be accurate, but wise educators also realize that there are many ways - some more educationally desirable than others - to prepare students for at least some tests. Although the nation seems to have gone test mad in the name of standards and accountability, the assumption that drill and practice are the inevitable outcome may be unduly pessimistic.

But educating teachers to tend the curricular-instructional gate poses major challenges for teacher education. Many teachers see themselves as essentially implementers of others' ideas rather than creators of the curriculum that counts most: what happens in classrooms. Nor are all the features of high-stakes tests necessarily undesirable. In my own state, New York, for instance, high-stakes tests in social studies extend beyond content memorization to conceptual learning and analysis of primary sources. These emphases present - perhaps demand - opportunities for far more than drill and practice.

How educators can and should be educated to tend the curricular-instructional gate, however, remains scantily researched. In particular, educational practice could be enriched by research and teacher education aligned to how teachers might respond to the pedagogical demands of subject matter under a variety of circumstances such as high-stakes testing, restructuring schools, and urban versus suburban schools.

- Stephen Thornton, Associate Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, is Director of the Program in Social Studies. Professor Thornton advises school districts on social studies curriculum at the national, state and New York metropolitan area levels. sjt14@columbia.edu

The key curricular change in the era of standards and accountability is that teachers, schools, districts, and states will be looking to see what curricular components come together in the best way to make sure students can meet the standards.

Good standards writers prescribe content goals, but not teaching methods or sequence details. For example, in California, the state mathematics standards set forth what all students should know and be able to do by the end of each grade. But they also say that teachers can introduce and teach these topics earlier, if they want to. The standards allow for curriculum that integrates algebra and geometry as well as curriculum that follows the usual course sequence of Algebra I, geometry, and Algebra II.

Likewise, the California mathematics standards do not dictate teaching methods. The California mathematics standards explicitly allow for discovery learning, direct instruction, or other methods.

Teachers, schools, districts, and states will still make decisions on curriculum. As in the past, they will draw on instructional materials provided by textbook publishers, electronic media publishers, and lesson-plan writers. Since effectiveness will increasingly be on the minds of those who provide instructional materials and those who adopt them, they both will look for evidence of effectiveness. Those who make adoption decisions may look for middlemen who can bundle together effective curriculum packages from different publishers and different media.

In sum, although the same people will make the decisions regarding the curriculum as in the past, accountability will encourage them to make different, better choices for the future.

- Bill Evers, is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He served on California's Academic Standards Commission and is currently an adviser to George W. Bush on education policy. Evers@hoover.stanford.edu