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ABSTRACT: If used with good judgment and professionalism, curriculum alignment that aligns the written, the taught, and the tested curriculums can be an effective means of helping classroom teachers develop units that will interest students and enable them to perform well on high-stakes tests. An expanded approach to curriculum alignment also can bring into congruence other types of curriculums: the hidden, the recommended, the excluded, the supported, and the learned.
Curriculum alignment is one of those issues about which individual scholars and practitioners express seemingly irreconcilable differences.l Whereas many come out strongly in favor of curriculum alignment, others present forceful views in opposition. William Wraga's article in this issue excellently represents this dissenting perspective and delineates the several flaws in curriculum alignment as it presently is practiced. This article intends to explain how educators can use alignment constructively and expand it beyond its present narrowness.
At the outset, an understanding of teachers' perceptions of curriculum alignment as they know it and use it is helpful. To see through teachers' eyes, for example, assume that you are a 6th grade teacher in one of the 40 or more states with "strong" accountability programs. The state department of education has issued curriculum guides for every subject-guides based on state-developed content standards and their related benchmarks. This state agency has also decreed that examinations will be administered to all 6th graders. Moreover, students' results on those examinations will be used for several purposes: to evaluate your teaching; to judge your school; to reward or punish you and the school; and to determine if students will be retained or promoted. To assist you, state department staff have published "testlets," practice tests that you can use to develop test-wiseness in your students and to prepare them for these highstakes tests.
The prudent response that most teachers make in such situations is a common sense one. They check the content of the state tests by using nonconfidential materials, examine the curriculum guide to remind themselves about what else should be taught, develop plans to accommodate the guide and the test, and teach as best as they can. This process, in essence, is curriculum alignment as most teachers know and understand it.
One step toward the reconciliation of advocacy and...