State Control of the Curriculum and Classroom Instruction

Author(s): David Lee Stevenson and David P. Baker

Source: Sociology of Education, Vol. 64, No. 1, Special Issue on Sociology of the Curriculum
(Jan., 1991), pp. 1-10
Published by: American Sociological Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2112887
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 STATE CONTROL OF THE CURRICULUM AND
CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION

David Lee Stevenson David P. Baker

U.S. Department of Education The Catholic University of America

This article examines the relationship between the level of the state (national or
local) that has control over curricular issues and the content of classroom
instruction of mathematics in over 2,200 classrooms in 15 educational systems. In
educational systems with national control, classroom teachers are more likely to
teach the same mathematics curriculum than are teachers in educational systems
with provincial or local control. Furthermore, when the control of curricular issues
is at the national level, the amount of the mathematics curriculum that teachers
teach is generally not related to the characteristics of the teachers or of the
students, whereas in educational systems with provincial or local control, it is
related to teachers' and students' characteristics.

The renewed interest among sociologists in This article examines the implemented cur-
the study of the school curriculum has pro- riculum-that portion of the curriculum that is
ceeded along two lines of inquiry. The first taught to students in the classroom. The im-
line of inquiry is the changing content of a plemented curriculum has been neglected by
national curriculum and the process by which sociologists, although it is a topic of general
a subject in the curriculum becomes defined interest to curricular and instructional special-
and institutionalized (see, for example, Good- ists (Cohen et al. 1990; Freeman and Porter
son 1988; Goodson and Ball 1984). Studies in 1989). Recent work in this area has focused on
this area emphasize the historical development understanding differences in the content and
of the curriculum and how political factors method of instruction among teachers using
shape its contents and definition (Apple 1979). the same textbooks or following the same cur-
The second line of inquiry has been the chang- ricular guidelines. These studies have been lim-
ing content of official primary and secondary ited to examining differences among teachers
curricula of national educational systems within an educational system.
around the world. Studies of this topic have Our topic, the relationship between state
documented that official curricula of national control of the curriculum and classroom
educational systems have tended to converge instruction, falls in the large middle ground
toward a world standard for curricula topics between analyses of the official curricular
during the past 100 years (Benavot and Ka- categories and detailed studies of classroom
mens 1989; Benavot, Cha, Kamens, Meyer practice. For studies of the official curricu-
and Wong forthcoming). Although these lines lum, it examines whether there is variability
of inquiry differ in their theoretical perspec- in the slippage between the official curricu-
tives, they both focus on the official curricula lum and the implemented curriculum in the
of schooling. However, evidence suggests that classroom. For studies of classroom instruc-
the official curriculum may be only loosely tion, it examines whether institutional fea-
connected to what teachers teach in the class- tures of the educational system constrain
room (Cohen et al. 1990). teachers' classroom practices. The relation-
ship between institutional characteristics and
classroom practice is rarely studied, partly
The views expressed here do not necessarily re- because such analyses require data at the
flect the position or policy of the U.S. Department
classroom level that are comparable across
of Education, and no official endorsement should
educational systems.
be inferred. Earlier versions of this article were
presented at meetings of the Seventh World Con-
gress of Comparative Education and the Compara-
tive International Education Society. This work was STATE CONTROL OF THE CURRICULUM
supported by a grant from the National Science Foun-
dation. Address all correspondence to Dr. David P. The nation-state, through a variety of
Baker, Department of Sociology, The Catholic Uni- political processes, exercises control over the
versity of America, Washington, DC 20064. curriculum. There are, however, considerable

Sociology of Education 1991, Vol. 64 (January):1-10 1

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 2 STEVENSON AND BAKER

differences in how states exercise this control. implementation of the curriculum (Floden et
One important difference is the level of the al. 1988).
state that is responsible for controlling In the United States, the technical activities
education. Ramirez and Rubinson (1979) of schooling, instruction, and learning are
described this feature of state control as the also buffered from inspection and assessment
political incorporation of education. Political by the state. The state seldom attempts to
incorporation is seen as varying along a assess these organizational outputs of school-
dimension with two poles. At one end are ing, in part, because of a lack of market
systems that are centralized at the highest pressures, since neither the survival nor the
levels of the state (federal or national ministryprofitability of the school (particularly in the
offices); at the other end are decentralized public sector) is determined by the quantity or
systems that are controlled at lower levels of quality of instruction. While schools keep
the state (provincial or municipal). ' The elaborate records of certain types of educa-
degree of political incorporation of curricular tional outputs, such as attendance, enroll-
matters affects the methods of political ments in courses, and the number of gradu-
control of the curriculum and, therefore, ates, they seek to avoid inspection of
classroom practice. Consider the differences instruction. Thorough and frequent inspec-
between state control over the curriculum in a tions of instruction can reveal inconsistencies
decentralized system, the United States, and and inefficiencies and thereby challenge
in a centralized system, France. existing organizational arrangements (Meyer,
Scott, and Deal 1983).2
Teachers in the decentralized American
The United States educational system have considerable auton-
omy and discretion in how they handle
In the American educational system, with classroom instruction and learning. They
its local political control of the curriculum, often modify the official or standard curricu-
the sources of influence on the environment lum to meet their needs or those of their
of teaching are more complex, which results students and, therefore, even within a school
in less overall specification of instruction. may differ greatly in the amount of material
The administrative mandates as to what they cover, the type of topics they cover, the
teachers should teach are varied and weaker, amount of time they spend on instruction, and
and there is a greater diversity in the their use of curricular materials for the same
textbooks that are available for teachers to use subject (Cohen et al. 1990). In addition, their
and in the types of training available for work is seldom directly monitored. In a
teachers (Meyer and Rowan 1978; Rowan nationally representative sample of high
1990). Since American schools receive local school teachers, 76 percent of the teachers
funding and rely upon community support, stated that they were observed only once
they are likely to be more responsive to local during the school year (Rowan 1990).
constituencies. All these features can lead to
great variability in the content of the France
implemented curriculum. For example, a
If state control over the curriculum is
study of five U.S. states revealed that 70
percent of the school districts had their own located at the national level, as it is in France,
official curriculum and 55 percent of the
districts had their own timetable for the 2 The development of state accountability sys-
tems and the publication of annual school report
cards that publicize students' scores on standard-
1 Centralization of education is, in many ways, ized tests may have increased the pressure on
a more general notion than is political control. For teachers to teach the "test curriculum." While such
example, before the consolidation of schooling by pressures may reduce instructional differences,
the nation-states during the nineteenth century, the they are coupled with a movement to allow schools
Roman Catholic system in many parts of Europe to develop the measures on which they will be held
approximated a centralized system. Although the accountable and to restructure schools to allow
apparatus of the state adds some degree of teachers to exercise greater professional judgment
efficiency to control at any level, we would expect about their work. For a more detailed discussion of
to find similar effects on instruction in prestate state accountability systems, see Stevenson and
centralized and decentralized systems of schools. Orland (1990).

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STATE CONTROL AND CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION 3

the environment of teaching is less complex
and there is greater specification of instruc- International Association for the Evaluation
tion. Through the ministry of education, there of Educational Achievement (IEA), provides
is an administrative mandate for what the
curriculum should be. Such a mandate is
reflected in the curricular guidelines; the
training of teachers; and the content of
curricular materials and of examinations, such in their size, geographic location, and level of
as the baccalaureate examinations.
The national educational agency also may
institute a set of bureaucratic controls to
ensure that the curriculum is implemented.
For example in France, the Inspecteur general
de l'Education nationale, is officially respon- each educational system.
sible for maintaining standards throughout the The SIMS data were collected in 20
educational system. State inspectors visit
schools, evaluate the performance of teach-
ers, and give marks for each teacher. The
final mark for each teacher is a combination
of the state inspector's evaluation of teaching grade mathematics classrooms was drawn,
and the headmaster's evaluation of the
teacher's administrative efficiency. These
marks have a direct bearing on the teachers'
salaries (Lewis 1985).
Hypotheses
We have two hypotheses about the relation-
ship between the level of state control over
curricular issues and the implementation of
the curriculum in the classroom.
Hypothesis 1: In educational systems with
state control over curricular issues at the
national level, teachers will be more similar
in the content of their instruction than will
teachers in educational systems with state
control over curricular issues at the local or
provincial level.
Hypothesis 2: In educational systems with
state control over curricular issues at the
national level, local factors will have little
influence on how much of the curriculum is
covered in the classroom. In educational
systems with state control over curricular
issues at the local or provincial level, local
factors will influence how much of the
curriculum is covered in the classroom.
DATA AND METHODS
Testing these hypotheses requires detailed
data about classroom instruction in educa-
tional systems that differ according to which
level of the state education is politically
incorporated. The Second International Math-
ematics Study (SIMS), undertaken by the
this type of data. This large data set
represents a powerful analytic resource for the
cross-national study of education. The coun-
tries in which SIMS collected data are diverse
development. The use of a standard sampling
procedure within each country yielded high-
quality samples of classrooms. Extensive
efforts were undertaken to assure that compa-
rable data-collection procedures were used in
educational systems.3 Of these 20 educational
systems, 15 had full classroom-process ques-
tionnaires.4 In each educational system, a
four-step, stratified-random sample of eighth-
yielding over 2,200 classrooms.5 For each
class, detailed information was collected from
the teacher about the amount and type of
instruction in mathematics during the year.
Specifically, teachers in all the educational
systems were asked whether they had taught
the same 157 items in mathematics during the
year.
For each educational system, a board of
educational experts designated which of the
157 items in mathematics were part of the
national curriculum in mathematics for the
eighth grade.6 SIMS did not evaluate how
3We analyze national educational systems,
except for Canada, because data were collected
separately in British Columbia and Ontario.
Because of some minor differences in data
collection in these two provinces, we analyze them
separately.
4 The SIMS data for French Belgium, Hong
Kong, Nigeria, and Scotland did not include
information about the implementation of the
curriculum. The Flemish Belgium sample did, and
we will use it to represent Belgium. Swaziland was
dropped from the analysis because only one-fifth
of the teachers completed this part of the
instrument.
s See Garden (1987) for a detailed description of
the SIMS study.
6 In each country, this board was made up of
representatives from the ministry of education, the
teachers' union, teachers, and school district-level
administrators. The panel was asked to assess
which of the items from the item pool would most
likely be part of the standard eighth-grade
mathematics curriculum in their country. The

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 4 STEVENSON AND BAKER

much this so-called national curriculum over-
lapped with the official curriculum in various
parts of each educational system. At the least,
the measure of national curriculum, which we
used here, represents the largest possible set
of mathematics skills that an eighth-grade
teacher would cover, on average, in the
course of the year.
Description of Measures
Ramirez and Rubinson (1979) defined the
political incorporation of education as the
extent of state control over schooling. They
suggested that a valid measure of political
incorporation is the level of political control the mathematics abilities of students; the level
over education; the more that control occurs
at the national level, the more schooling is
politically incorporated with the state. As an teacher has been teaching per se, as well as
indicator of this construct, we have slightly
modified a scale developed by them. We used
a seven-point scale and ranked each country
in terms of the political level that had the
greatest control over the curriculum: (1) local
control, (2) local and provincial control, (3)
provincial control, (4) local, provincial, and Plan of Analysis
national control, (5) local and national
control, (6) provincial and national control,
and (7) national control. In coding each
system on this scale, we consulted standard
reference sources -the International Encyclo-
pedia of Education (Husen and Postlewaithe
1985) and the International Handbook of
Education Systems (Cameron 1983; Cowen
1983; Holmes 1983)-as well as an IEA
publication with descriptions of the educa-
tional systems (Travers and Westbury 1989).
Three raters independently scored each educa- relationships between institutional character-
tional system on the scale. The level of
agreement among the three raters was above
93 percent.
From the SIMS data, we constructed
several indicators of different dimensions
the implemented curriculum. First, we took
the number of items in the curriculum (as
determined by the panels of educational
experts) as an indicator of the size of a
system's official mathematics curriculum.
Second, for each educational system, we
calculated the percentage of the mathematics
curriculum that a teacher taught during the
year and calculated a mean and standard
deviation as indicators of the amount of the
curriculum covered in the system and the
variation in the amount of the curriculum
covered. Third, we calculated the percentage
of teachers in each educational system who
taught each item in the curriculum. As an in-
dication of agreement among teachers' imple-
mentation of the curriculum, we counted the
number of items that were taught by either 90
percent or more of the teachers or 10 percent
or less of the teachers.
Finally, we have measures of local factors
that may influence the implementation of the
curriculum for each class, such as the range in
of mastery of mathematics; the age and sex of
the teacher; and the number of years the
teaching mathematics. We also have mea-
sures of the number of periods of mathematics
per week and the average length of a
mathematics period.
First, we correlated measures of various
dimensions of the implementation of the
curriculum with the indicator of state control
of the curriculum. Next, we used a model of
teachers' coverage of the curriculum and
estimated this model with each system's data.
There are several advantages to this type of
analysis, which is a standard approach to
analyzing data on students or classrooms and
national factors (Heyneman and Loxley 1982,
1983). Since our hypotheses are about
istics of systems, we required indicators of
the curriculum's coverage at the system level
and, therefore, did not combine all class-
rooms into one sample. This approach allows
our of
analysis to incorporate differences in the
size and nature of the mathematics curriculum
in each system. It also allows us to handle
some of the minor differences in question-
naires and procedures that are almost inevita-
ble in a comparative study of this size and
complexity.

Japanese ministry decided that the items were too
easy for the vast majority of its eighth-grade
students, so seventh-grade classrooms were sam-
pled.
RESULTS
In the first column of Table 1 are measures
of the size of the eighth-grade mathematics
curriculum in each educational system. While

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STATE CONTROL AND CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION 5

Table 1. Coverage of the Mathematics Curriculum

Standard Percentage of
Items in the X Items Deviation of the Curriculum
Educational System Curriculum Taught Items Taught Taught

United States 128 93.6 20.5 73.1

England 146 96.7 26.8 67.6
Netherlands 127 55.2 16.2 43.5
Belgium (Flemish) 95 81.0 15.0 85.3
New Zealand 148 98.9 21.3 66.8
Canada (British Columbia) 127 42.7 16.0 33.6
Canada (Ontario) 118 87.1 16.6 73.8
Finland 124 81.5 15.6 65.7
France 108 84.6 7.9 78.3
Hungary 142 65.9 (86.0)a 35.8 (26.3)a 46.4 (60.6)a
Israel 118 70.0 (620)b 22.5 (19.1)b 59.3 (52.5)b
Japan 146 117.2 10.0 80.3
Luxembourg 97 71.7 10.9 73.9
Sweden 122 60.1 13.9 49.3
Thailand 131 103.2 15.4 78.8

a Classrooms only in the Budap

b Classrooms only in the reform

all the educational systems in the sample had
eighth-grade mathematics, the size of each
curriculum varied. The sample mean was
125.1 items (or 80 percent of the 157 items),
with a standard deviation of over 16 items.
The range in size was substantial. Three
educational systems (Japan, Hungary, and
New Zealand) had a large curriculum that
covered approximately 140 items (or over 90
percent of the 157 items). At the lower end,
Belgium (Flemish) and Luxembourg had
curricula that covered approximately 95 items
(or about 60 percent of the 157 items).
The second column in Table 1 shows the
mean number of items of the curriculum that
were taught during the eighth grade by each
system's teachers. Here there is considerable
variation, with a standard deviation of 20
items and a range of over 70 items. Japanese
teachers taught the most, with a mean of
117.2 items (or 75 percent of the 157-item
pool), while Canadian (British Columbia)
teachers taught the least, with a mean of 42.7
items (or only 27 percent of the 157-item
pool).
The fourth column in Table 1 is the mean
number of items taught as a percentage of the
total number of curricular items. In none of
the educational systems did the "average
teacher" cover the entire eighth-grade curric-
ulum. The sample mean is 65 percent, with a
standard deviation of over 15 percent. There
is also a large range in coverage, with
teachers in Belgium (Flemish) and Japan
providing instruction for over 80 percent of
their curricula and teachers in British Colum-
bia and the Netherlands providing instruction
for under 45 percent of their curricula.
Even though all the educational systems
had eighth-grade mathematics in their curric-
ula, the data in Table 1 indicate that the
content of the mathematics curricula of these
educational systems varied. In addition, the
amount of instruction varied considerably
across educational systems. Although school
curricula may have become institutionalized
at the world level, our data suggest that
systemic variations in content and instruction
still exist.7
The results displayed in Table 2 confirm
our first hypothesis; they indicate that in
educational systems in which state control of
the curriculum is at the national level, there is
a modest tendency for more uniformity in the
number of items that teachers teach. The
correlation between an educational system's
standard deviation in the mean number of
items taught and state control is negative and
significant, but only after we made a minor
correction for the Hungarian and Israeli
samples. There is a stronger association
between the minimum number of items taught
in a classroom in an educational system and
7 Our analyses of these data do not indicate a
ranking of an educational system's overall effi-
ciency in mathematics instruction. We interpret the
ranking only as an indication of variation in the
"size" of and "conformity" to the official
curriculum.

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 6 STEVENSON AND BAKER

Table 2. Correlations of the Level of State Control of the Curriculum with Items Taught in the
Classroom in 15 Educational Systems

Percentage
Standard Least Number of of Curricular
Deviation of Number of Curricular Number of Items Taught
Mean Number of Mean Number Curricular Items Taught Curricular by More than
Items in the of Items in Items in Grades Items Taught 90 Percent
Curriculum Taught the Curriculum Covered 7 and 8a in Grade 8a of the Teachers

-.10 (- 07)b - .27 (-. 48**)b .46** (.58**)b .39** (.58**)b *47** (-49**)b .45** (.45**)b
** p<.05.
a By less than 10 percent or more than 90 percent of the teachers.
b Coefficients in parentheses calculated with partial Israeli and Hungarian samples.

our indicator of state control. Educational
systems with state control of the curriculum at
the national level display less variation in the
amount of instruction and have fewer teachers
who teach little of the curriculum.
We also suggest that teachers in educa-
tional systems with state control of the
curriculum at the national level would be
more likely to teach the same material. To
examine this issue, we constructed three
indicators of the similarity among teachers'
classroom instruction and correlated these
indicators with our measure of state control of
the curriculum. The first two measures are the
number of items that 10 percent or less, or 90
percent or more, of the teachers in an
educational system taught. These two mea-
sures indicate the extent of agreement in
instruction among teachers. The first measure
indicates the extent of agreement in coverage
during the seventh and eighth grades, and the
second measure indicates the extent of
agreement during the eighth grade. Both these
agreement measures are moderately corre-
lated with the level of state control of the
curriculum.
We constructed a third indicator of agree-
ment that takes into account the variation in
the size of the mathematics curriculum. We
divided the number of items that at least 90
percent of the teachers taught in the seventh
or eighth grade by the number of items in the
curriculum. The correlation between this
measure and state control is similar in
local factors. The same equation was esti-
mated for each sample of teachers (see Table
3).
If our description of the effects of state
control are correct, we should find that the
regression equations for educational systems
with state control at the local or provincial
level are significant. All the educational
systems with local curricular control had
significant equations, while only two with
national-level control (Finland and Sweden)
had significant equations. The correlation
between the measure of state control of the
curriculum and the squared multiple correla-
tion coefficients resulting from the equations
is - .67 (p = .03).8
Among the educational systems with state
control of the curriculum at the local or
provincial level, local factors account for
from a low of 9 percent in the variation of
instruction in the Netherlands to a high of 24
percent in England and Wales. In these
educational systems, a range of local factors
predicted instruction. Teachers in these sys-
tems seem to be particularly sensitive to both
the average level of mathematical mastery of
8 Since there is a moderate difference in t
number of classrooms sampled in decentralized
systems (X = 187) versus centralized systems (X
= 133), the slight difference in statistical power
that this might cause could favor our hypothesis.
We note, however, that even the smallest samples
among the decentralized systems yielded signifi-

strength to the item counts. For each
indicator, the analyses suggest that teachers
were more likely to teach the same material if
they taught in educational systems with
national control of the curriculum.
To test our second hypothesis, we re-
gressed the mean percentage of the curricu-
lum covered in eighth grade on indicators of
cant local factors, while the largest samples (larger
than the smallest decentralized samples) among the
centralized systems did not have significant effects
of local factors on the implemented curriculum.
Furthermore, controlling for sample size in the
correlation between the level of state control and
the squared multiple correlation coefficients only
reduces the coefficient by .06 (from - .67 to - .61
[p = .01]).

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 STATE CONTROL AND CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION 7

Table 3. OLS Regression of Local Factors on the Percentage of Mathematics Curricular Items Taught

Significant Local Factors

Teacher Factors Time Factors

Student Factors
Experience Average
Range Mastery Teaching Experi- Periods Length
Educational Inter- of of Mathe- ence per of
System N R2 F cept Class Class Age Sex matics Teaching Week Period
Decentralized'
United States 253 .10 3.1 .61b .0014 .0084
England and
Wales 204 .24 6.7 .17 -.041 .002 -.006 .0051
Netherlands 206 .09 2.5 -.03 .031 .037
Belgium 120 .16 2.3 .47 .065
New Zealand 151 .19 3.8 .27 .0014 .0075 .0074 .0047
Centralizedc
Canada (British
Columbia) 73 NS
Canada (Ontario) 126 NS
Finland 176 .12 2.7 .45 .0008
France 286 NS
Hungary 56 NS
Israel 85 NS
Japan 193 NS
Luxembourg 79 NS
Sweden 172 .09 2.8 .28 .0014
Thailand 80 NS

8 Predominately local or provincial control.

b The regression coefficients are unstandardized and significant at l
c Predominately national control.

the class and the diversity of variation

abilityin local factors. Educational
within the systems
class. Following these factors, the amount of with national control of the curriculum could
instruction depends on the number of mathe- also be the kind that equalize between-
matics sessions and the length of these classroom factors. The between-classroom
sessions. local factors could be so similar that the
In Sweden and Finland, the two educa- nonsignificant equations result from a lack of
tional systems with national state control between-classroom
of variation in local factors.
the curriculum and significant equations, the To examine this possibility, we correlated the
overall level of mathematical mastery is the standard deviations of each of the eight
only significant variable. This finding mayindicators
be of local factors with the measure of
expected, since in both countries, the mastery state control of the curriculum. All but one of
of the class may be related to the ability tracks these correlations are small and not signifi-
in the eighth grade, and classes in these cant. The exception is that educational
tracks, by central administrative definition, systems with national state control of the
should receive different amounts of mathe- curriculum tend to diminish the between-
matical instruction.9 classroom variation in the number of mathe-
We can explore two possible statistical matical instruction sessions per week (-.74,
artifacts within these results. One is that pthe = .001). In general, the between-classroom
lack of significant regression equations for the
variation in local factors does not vary by the
educational systems with state control at the level of state control of the curriculum.
national level could result from a lack of A second consideration is whether there is
a spurious correlation between the level of
state control of the curriculum and our various
9 At this educational level, Finland has three
indicators of instruction. We examined bivari-
ability tracks by classroom in mathematics (the
short course, the long course, and the heteroge- ate associations at the system level, but other
neous course) and Sweden has two ability groups system-level factors could either mediate or
by classroom (general and advanced). negate the correlations we report.

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 8 STEVENSON AND BAKER

We examined four such factors - two curricular issues was located at the national
indicators of the economic development of level, the amount of the mathematics curricu-
the country (1980 gross national product and lum that teachers taught was generally not
gross domestic product) and two indicators of related to characteristics of either the teachers
the size of the educational system (the or the students. In educational systems with
population in 1980 and the gross primary provincial or local control of the curriculum,
enrollment ratio in 1980). We took the natural such "local factors" were related to the
logarithm of each indicator and calculated a amount of the curriculum that teachers taught
partial correlation between the measure of in the classroom.
state control and the various indicators of We argue that institutional characteristics
instruction, controlling for each factor. of educational systems, such as which level of
Neither the level of development nor the the state controls curricular issues, influence
size of the system correlated with the level of the core activities of schooling, classroom
state control of the curriculum. Although instruction, and students' learning. Our find-
there is a slight tendency for the larger ings underline the importance of state control
educational systems to have state control of of the curriculum for the study of national
the curriculum at the local level, the correla- patterns of classroom instruction. We would
posit that other institutional characteristics,
tion is not statistically significant. '0 In each of
such as national entrance examinations, are
the partial correlations, the pattern of correla-
tions between state control and instruction did important for explaining national differences
not change after these other variables were in students' learning.
controlled. Our findings also have implications for
current debates about curricular reform in
countries with different types of educational
DISCUSSION systems. In educational systems with decen-
tralized control of curricular issues, reform of
State control of the curriculum occurs in a
the official curriculum, whether forged at the
variety of ways. In some educational systems,
national, state, or district level, is less likely
there is state regulation of the curriculum at
to be fully implemented in the classroom. The
the national level, often through a ministry of
lack of uniform implementation is not neces-
education, while in other educational sys-
sarily due to active resistance or a lack of
tems, regulation of the curriculum occurs at
concern among teachers, but rather can be
the provincial or local level. Our results
traced to the greater autonomy of teachers in
indicate that which level of the state has
the classroom. Thus, in decentralized sys-
responsibility for curricular issues is related to
tems, one often finds cycles of "institutional
patterns of instruction in the classroom in two
success" or national victory in the creation of
ways. First, in educational systems where
policies and "organizational failure" or local
state control of curricular issues was located
defeat in their implementation (Meyer 1986).
at the national level, teachers were more
In highly centralized systems, curricular
likely to teach the same mathematics curricu-
reforms can be instituted more efficiently
lum in the classroom than were teachers in
and, therefore, policy debates are intensified,
educational systems with provincial or local
narrowed, and take on a partisan character. It
control of curricular issues. Second, in
may also be more difficult to win battles for
educational systems where state control of
reform because the battle lines between large
political interests are more sharply drawn.
10 The correlations between level of economic State control of the curriculum is, however,
development and curricular coverage and the size only one indicator of the environment of
of the educational system and curricular coverage classroom instruction. Classroom instruction
were generally not statistically significant. There is also influenced by many other factors, such
are two implications of these findings. First, the
as the coherence of the curriculum, national
lack of associations raises questions about hypoth-
entrance examinations based on the classroom
eses that suggest that curriculum coverage may be
curriculum, patterns of recruiting and training
sensitive to economic and technical development
(for example, see Benavot and Kamens 1989). teachers, teachers' unions and professional
Second, the lack of associations suggests that some associations, the reward structure for teach-
structural characteristics of educational systems ers, and the degree of collegiality among
may not influence the implementation of curricula. teachers within a school. Such factors can

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STATE CONTROL AND CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION 9
influence the environment of classroom teach-
ing and may not be captured in a single
measure of state control of the curriculum.
While there appear to be emerging official
world curricula (Benavot, Cha, Kamens,
Meyer, and Wong forthcoming), the imple-
mentation of curricula in classrooms varies
significantly, both across and within national
systems of education. Such differences in the
patterns of classroom instruction have impor-
tant implications for the study of curricula, as
well as for cross-national studies of academic
achievement.
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 10 STEVENSON AND BAKER

David Lee Stevenson, Ph.D., is Senior Research Associate, Office of Research, U.S. Department of
Education, Washington, DC. His main fields of interest are comparative education, social organization
of schooling, and educational policy. He is currently working with David P. Baker on cross-national
analyses of instruction and academic achievement. He is also examining the organization of secondary
schools and the current educational reform movement in the United States.

David P. Baker, Ph.D., is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, The Catholic University of
America, Washington, DC. His primary fields of interest are comparative education, stratification, and
immigration. In addition to his current work with David Lee Stevenson, he is examining the expansion of
Catholic schooling in the United States and academic achievement in Japan and the United States.

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