Curriculum Areas
Curriculum Areas
Curriculum Guides
Curriculum revisions in each subject area are made through a collaborative process involving teachers and administrators, with input from parents and board members. All curriculum guides are in alignment with the NJ Student Learning Standards.
Click on each subject/program area for more information.
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New Jersey adopted its first set of standards in 1996. These original standards covered seven academic areas. Revisions were made to the standards in 2009 to increase to nine academic areas that include Visual and Performing Arts, Comprehensive Health & Physical Education, Language Arts Literacy, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, World Languages, Technology, and 21st Century Life and Careers. The standards are updated every five years, with most recent updates adopted in 2020 in seven of the nine areas (ELA & Math are on a separate revision cycle). These updates shifted the previous area of Technology to Computer Science and Design Thinking, as well as 21st Century Life and Careers to Career Readiness, Life Literacies and Key Skills. All districts were required to be aligned to the updated 2020 standards in the seven areas for September of 2022 and in ELA & Math for September of 2024. Each standard is divided into a number of separate strands. The strands contain Cumulative Progress Indicators (CPIs), which establish what students should know and be able to do in a specific academic area by grade level or grade span.
In the area of Comprehensive Health & PE (CHPE), the state requires that all students participate in a comprehensive health and physical education program that emphasizes the natural interdisciplinary connection among wellness, health and physical education. The primary focus of the standards is on the development of knowledge and skills that influence lifelong healthy behaviors within the content of self, family, school and the local and global communities. There may be a topic covered in CHPE, or an alternate curriculum area, that while required to teach in public schools, a parent is able to request, as indicated in N.J.S.A. 18A:35-4.7, that allows for, "Any child whose parent or guardian presents to the school a signed statement that any part of instruction in health, family life education or sex education is in conflict with the conscience or sincerely held moral or religious beliefs shall be excused from that portion of the course." Therefore, the district annually sends home in September a parent letter outlining these rights, along with an overview of the health program/content and steps to review or opt out of particular lessons around specific units of study. All curriculum guides are also posted on this webpage.In June of 2010, NJ adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which are national standards in ELA and Math that were created in an effort to provide more consistency among the various State Departments of Education across the country. The CCSS Standards underwent an additional review in 2015 and 2023, which produced revisions that were adopted by the State Board of Education in May 2016 and readopted in 2023. In addition, Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), also national standards, were adopted in July 2014 and readopted in 2020.