State-Mandated Curriculum
In many states, legislatures are now mandating the curriculum to be taught in all public PK-12 schools. The purpose of the mandated curriculum is to transmit knowledge and skills deemed essential by the state legislature or educational bureaucracy. The required curriculum is often presented as a laundry list of required objectives in each subject area (or at least each basic subject area) at each grade level. Objectives tend to be within the lower categories of Bloom's (1956) taxonomy, at the knowledge or comprehension level (Table 18.1 ).