Welcome to the Curriculum and Instruction home page. As a team, our department strives to: 

• Collaborate around the needs of all the schools’ stakeholders
• Make decisions based on data
• Commit to quality support to schools in real time
• Be passionate about the success of all students
• Provide authentic learning experiences for all
  
  

Our departments provide instructional leadership, support, and professional development to maximize learning for students in grades K-12.

All public schools in the state of North Carolina adhere to the curriculum standards outlined in the North Carolina Standard Course of Study, which is comprised of the Common Core State Standards for mathematics and literacy and Essential Standards for all other curriculum areas.

The state’s Standard Course of Study defines the appropriate content standards for each grade level and each high school course to provide a uniform set of learning standards for every public school in North Carolina. The goal of these research-based standards is to prepare all students to become career and college-ready.

According to the Common Core website, the standards for English language arts and mathematics have been developed to be:

• Fewer, clearer, and higher
• Aligned with college and work expectations
• Inclusive of rigorous content and applications of knowledge through higher-order skills
• Internationally benchmarked
• Research- and evidence-based
  
  

The standards will set the stage, according to the philosophy of the developers, for U.S. education for the next decade in order to ensure that our students are prepared for the global economic workplace.

The developers of the North Carolina Essential Standards adopted the goals of the architects of the Common Core State Standards and ensured that rigor permeated throughout the entire body of work. A number of educators representing individual systems and institutions of higher learning throughout North Carolina worked to carefully craft a curriculum that would prepare students for 21st-century success. While the focal point of educational thought of the past was limited toward success during the years of K-12 learning, the Common Core/Essential Standards mindset is targeted toward success well beyond the completion of high school or college. Thus, the overall goal is to prepare North Carolina’s children for optimal function on a global scale.

Please take a few moments to use the navigation links on the right to access the standards that your child will be taught as he/she progresses through the public school system. Standards are grouped by grade level in all areas. In mathematics and literacy, grouping is done by domain as well as by grade level. We hope that our reorganization efforts to make our Curriculum and Instruction website as informative and as user-friendly as possible will prove beneficial.