ideas might move enroute to classrooms, describing ways that elements within each channel may affect teaching and learning.

The Framework is designed to address two overarching questions: How has the system responded to the introduction of nationally developed standards? and What are the consequences for student learning? The overarching questions may be explored by analyzing each Framework component in terms of several more specific queries: How are nationally developed standards being received and interpreted? What actions have been taken? What has changed as a result? Who has been affected and how? Rather than providing answers, this document embeds those questions within an analytical Framework to guide others in seeking answers.

Chapters 4 through 6 examine the three Framework channels identified in Chapter 3. These chapters address: the curriculum— what shapes what is taught to whom (Chapter 4); teacher development—how teachers learn what and how to teach (Chapter 5); and assessment and accountability—what kinds of assessments are used and for what purposes (Chapter 6). Each chapter suggests where the influence of standards may be found within that channel and employs Framework questions to suggest areas of potentially useful investigation.

Chapter 7 addresses public, professional, and political communities, focusing on their possible involvement in standards-based changes. Influence from such external sources might flow into the education system and consequently affect the channels and what happens to teaching and learning in the classroom.

Finally, Chapter 8 suggests how the Framework might be used to situate existing studies within the educational terrain that is relevant to the standards, to critically examine claims and inferences advanced by these studies, and to generate hypotheses to be explored through future investigations.