When student achievement lags expectations, explanations are usually sought. One possibility is that the curriculum, as taught, is out of line with what is needed, and many feel that careful descriptions of the implemented curriculum are in short supply. Elementary school mathematics is used as a context for considering what can be learned from careful descriptions of classroom content and in what ways evaluating curricula and setting educational standards require exercising value judgments that extend beyond what is known empirically. Elementary school mathematics can be characterized as instruction, where large numbers of mathematics topics are taught for exposure with no expectation of student mastery, where much of what is taught in one grade is taught again in the next, where skills typically receive ten times the emphasis given to either conceptual understanding or application, and where, depending upon the accidents of school and teacher assignment, the amount of mathematics instruction a student receives may be doubled or halved. While generally consistent with current curriculum policies, these attributes of the curriculum are seen as highly problematic in this document. (PK)