The Substantive and Symbolic Consequences of a District’s Standards-Based Curriculum

This study examines a “critical case” of one school district’s efforts to develop and implement a standards-based curriculum. The study was conducted from two competing perspectives that have dominated organizational analysis in education: the rational and the institutional. The findings demonstrate that the district took an expressly rationalistic approach by using standards and a corresponding criterion-referenced test to focus teachers’ instruction on common sets of outcomes. However, the findings suggest that, lacking a clear instructional philosophy, the district also took an institutional approach, in part. Its approach to development and implementation of the standards-based curriculum resulted in district standards that fell below state standards, a narrowing of curriculum and instructional strategies, and professional development and instructional supervision that lacked an instructional focus.