According to the Michigan Department of Education's publication Education Yes!—A Yardstick for Excellent Schools, a school will have written curriculum, assessed curriculum, and taught curriculum that should follow (or align with) the standards set forth in The Michigan Curriculum Framework (1996). Schools will measure their work toward curriculum alignment in the school and across the district. Attention will be paid to the local curriculum standards for learning, problem solving, and decision-making to give students the tools necessary to succeed.

A match between the written, taught and tested curriculum.

A practice of joint planning (and occasionally team teaching) between the faculty of one educational institution and another. For example, History teachers from a middle school and high school may work together to determine a six-year sequence of content that covers international themes.

Secondary School

The degree to which a curriculum's scope and sequence matches a testing program's evaluation measures (e.g. a set of state frameworks), thus ensuring that teachers will cover material on the test or that a test is appropriate for the curriculum. (SCASS)

Curriculum alignment means that the tests used in North Carolina have been developed for use as achievement tests to measure students' acquisition of specific subject/ course area content and skills. The state tests in North Carolina are designed to measure the content and skills in the N. C. Standard Course of Study.