K-12 Curriculum Development

Fifteen years ago, Allan Glatthorn wrote Developing a Quality Curriculum.  This book provides teachers, administrators and other stakeholders with curriculum development guidelines and tools which support the ongoing work of K-12 Curriculum Development.

Too often, educators develop the ideal curriculum or the written curriculum, but fail to create tools for assessing a school district's curriculum.  In Toward a Coherent Curriculum: The 1985 ASCD Yearbook, Stellar wrote, "The curriculum in numerous schools lacks clarity and, more important, coherence.  Students move from teacher to teacher and subject to subject along a curriculum continuum that may or may not exhibit planned articulation" (p. v).

The attached chart was developed by Glatthorn (1994).  Educators may use this chart or adapt it to meet the needs of your school district.  If school districts are in the process of developing curriculum on an assembly line and then mass producing a new curriculum for a different subject the next year, then educators may never see curriculum alignment or the strengths and weaknesses of the written and taught curriculum.  Questions number 11, 12, and 15 focus on monitoring the curriculum, implementing the curriculum and conducting a curriculum audit.

Following are the organizational components needed to accomplish effective curriculum work.  Using this chart, indicate a need by placing a check in the "Need" column.  Prioritize the checked items with the following scale:

1 - High Priority
2 - Middle Priority
3 - Low Priority

Use the results to plan next steps. 

This book may be purchased for under $10 at Amazon Books.  While 2009 marks the fifteenth anniversary of this book, the advice is still applicable to K-12 Curriculum Developers.