Prior to 1993, the only statewide educational requirements written in law were for history and physical education. The Education Reform Act called for statewide curriculum frameworks and learning standards for all students in all core academic subjects. 

Why are the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks are particularly important to local curriculum developers and educators?

The Frameworks contain the State's expectations of what students must know and be able to do in relation to the content areas. For each learning standard, the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks present key information of what students need to know and performance indicators (statements of what students should do to provide evidence that they understand the key areas). These Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks are the foundation upon which our state assessments (MCAS) are aligned and developed.

Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks are NOT designed as local school district curricula. Rather, these core curricula provide assistance to local schools districts who maintain responsibility to design a school curriculum that meets the needs of their students. The Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks allows local school district educators to select texts, identify products, and use a rich array of instructional strategies and activities to meet student needs.

Federal law requires that all children have access to the general education curriculum, here in Massachusetts our general curriculum is Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks and School district specific curriculum.

Why are Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks are particularly important to parents who students are part of special education?
Your child's curriculum and instruction can be designed to make sure that student with disabilities have meaningful opportunities to achieve the high academic standards establish for all students.  Based on the general education curriculum, the team (including the parents) need to analyze what skills the student needs to learn.  IEP goals and objectives are based on both the general education curriculum for your child's grade and skills student needs to learn.  IEP goals should have skills focus, rather then curriculum focus.  The team need to be able to identify educational goals at varying levels of complexity that are based on learning standards and are challenging and achievable for each student.

Learning Standards with modifications are called "entry points".

Entry Points describe how students with disabilities can access the learning standards at a challenging level, along a continuum from Less Complex to More Complex. 

Curriculum (plural: curricula) - the detailed, description of all of the elements included in our instructional program, including:

• standards
• scope, sequence, and pacing guides: grad level outlines of standards, their sequence during the year, and a timeline for teaching each of them
• instructional materials including those available to all students, those available for students in need of additional assistance, and those available to support teachers' instruction
• teachers' unit and lesson plans
• instructional strategies: the method of instruction promoted by the Boston Public Schools (see "Workshop Approach to Instruction" below)
• assessments
• professional development

Strands - subdivisions of a subject to help organize teaching and learning.   The strands can be found in the following the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks Manuals.  For example, three mathematics strands are: (1) Patterns, Relations and Functions, (2) Probability and Statistics, and (3) Geometry and Measurement. 

Product - a student work or performance that demonstrates what the student knows and can do. Examples: a written report, science project, speech or painting.