Ensuring That Your Curriculum Meets Standards

Educational leaders often grapple with the challenge of distinguishing between standards and curriculum and how to prepare teacher teams to design effective learning experiences for students.

While standards set the expectations for what students should know and be able to do, they don’t provide a road map for how to achieve those outcomes. For school and district leaders, the pressing questions are: What is our curriculum, and how can we empower teachers to deliver it effectively?

The late Richard Elmore’s work on the instructional core offers valuable insights for leaders striving to improve learning outcomes. He emphasized the interconnected roles of three critical elements:

• Standards: Clear benchmarks that define the knowledge and skills that students are expected to achieve.
• Curriculum: The instructional framework that translates these standards into engaging learning experiences, incorporating innovative methods and practices.
• Professional learning: The essential support that teachers need to implement the curriculum effectively and drive student success.

Leaders play a pivotal role in aligning these elements to create cohesive and impactful educational programs. When one element is missing, teachers can become frustrated and less willing to try something new.

What Standards Provide—and What They Don’t

It’s a common misconception to view standards as the curriculum itself, which isn’t the case. For instance, when thinking about the science classroom, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) set the destination, but the curriculum is the road map guiding students there.

A well-designed curriculum connects what students need to know with the most effective ways to learn it. Creating a curriculum that helps students meet the standards means developing innovative ways of teaching, based on current research on how students learn.

Step 1: Strategically plan backward (focusing on evidence-based connections). Effective instructional leadership begins with a clear vision of the desired outcomes. One of the most impactful ways to translate standards into curriculum is to start with the “end in mind” and prioritize the competencies that students should know and be able to do as a result of instruction. Understanding by Design principles do precisely this, and leaders can guide the instructional design process with teachers by prioritizing the evidence-based connections students will make through their classroom experiences. These connections represent a key destination in learning and serve as a measure of success—i.e., a way to measure learning outcomes.

Students achieve this outcome by integrating Science and Engineering Practices and Crosscutting Concepts to construct assertions about conceptual science ideas, also known as Disciplinary Core Ideas. Leaders can help ensure that planning backward aligns instruction with these critical competencies.

Step 2: Activate students’ ideas (driving inquiry through phenomena). To ignite curiosity and engagement, leaders can champion the use of phenomena with teachers to activate student thinking. A phenomenon is a situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially if it causes the observer to question or wonder what happened. Phenomena need not be extraordinary but should be carefully chosen to resonate with students’ lives, inspiring questions and curiosity—e.g., why does my bike rust when it is left out in the rain (chemical change), how does foot traffic on the school grounds shape the land (erosion), what types of materials are attracted to refrigerator doors (magnetism).

By encouraging educators to consider students’ potential evidence-based connections during lesson planning, leaders create a foundation for meaningful exploration and foster an inquiry-driven culture in the classroom.

Step 3: Enhance understanding (guiding growth through sophistication). Leaders can facilitate deeper learning by showing educators how to integrate enhancement activities that challenge students’ initial connections and broaden their understanding. These activities address gaps and misconceptions, offering opportunities for students to refine their thinking.

This is an ideal time to introduce academic vocabulary and sophisticated concepts, enabling students to test and expand the utility of their developing ideas. Instructional leaders can support teachers in selecting activities that advance both content knowledge and critical thinking.

Step 4: Promote reflection (fostering continuous improvement). A hallmark of strong instructional leadership is providing guidance for teachers in how to promote student reflection throughout the learning process. By cultivating a culture of reflection, leaders help educators support students in evaluating progress, celebrating growth, and identifying areas for continued improvement. Reflection strengthens understanding and empowers students to take ownership of their learning journey, setting the stage for future success.

The customization is where innovation happens—when district leadership works with teachers to create a curriculum that exceeds basic expectations, students reach higher levels of achievement.

How to promote curriculum-based professional learning as leaders

Professional development often falls short by focusing solely on understanding standards without equipping teachers with practical, classroom-ready tools. Effective professional learning mirrors the dynamic methods we aim to use with students, fostering engagement and application.

One approach is to create a model lesson that exemplifies the desired curriculum and incorporates key elements of effective teaching and learning. Teachers can act as students, experiencing the lesson firsthand, then reflecting on its alignment with standards, modern learning theories, and their own instructional practices.

These reflections can inform the development of subsequent units. Both short- and long-term planning needs to be grounded in these teacher experiences and guided by key questions drawn from research on effective curriculum-based professional learning:

• Content-focused and standards-aligned: How will professional learning deepen educators’ understanding of what to teach and how to teach it within the context of the standards, local curriculum, and high-quality instructional resources?
• Equity-focused: How will this professional learning empower educators to engage every student, tailoring tasks to meet diverse needs, abilities, and interests?
• Considerate of educator-learners: How does professional learning address participants’ expectations, motivations, and mindsets while building on their prior knowledge and experience? How will it help educators connect their learning to meaningful goals and immediately applicable actions?
• Learner-centric: How will professional learning incorporate inquiry-based, interactive, and collaborative approaches? How will educators experience expert modeling, practice lessons as learners, and collaborate with colleagues to plan, rehearse, observe, and reflect on shared instructional strategies?
• Provides coaching and expert support: How will professional learning offer targeted expertise on curriculum, high-quality instructional resources, and evidence-based practices that address the specific needs of educators and students?
• Offers feedback and reflection: How will educators have job-embedded opportunities to reflect, receive input, and refine their practice? How will professional learning provide sufficient time for participants to learn, rehearse, implement, and adjust new strategies over time for sustained improvement?

The Path Forward

In our quest for higher student achievement, we need to focus not only on setting high standards but also on developing rich, innovative curricula that meet those standards. Equally important is providing teachers with the support they need to teach that curriculum effectively. When we invest in all three elements, we create the conditions for students to thrive and for schools to reach their full potential.

More to explore: Teachers and leaders can observe effective curriculum-based learning in action with an NGSS-aligned thermal energy session, available free online, which is used as a framework for how teachers can promote essential elements of learning while allowing participants to make deep connections to standards and research.