The sequence of the standards is not meant to suggest hierarchical order, or any linear or sequential approach. Rather, the standards are to be construed and applied as integrating aspects of teaching and learning. While New Jersey's core curriculum content standards and related indicators have been developed in terms of separate academic disciplines, this familiar approach was chosen primarily for the sake of organizational convenience and simplicity of communication. The results expected of New Jersey students could also have been described in more integrative terms which would have reflected more accurately how students would someday apply what they have learned in school. To focus on the standards primarily in terms of who teaches which discrete piece of knowledge, or which department or certification area is best equipped to teach a particular skill, is not productive.
Students can now obtain knowledge and skill in a multiplicity of ways.
Therefore, it is most productive to concentrate on how we can best use resources to achieve higher order results across an array of content areas. Educators will need imagination to blend traditional academic perspectives with the exponentially expanding sources of information and talent available to themselves and their students. The challenge to the educational community, therefore, is to think outside the educational box within which most of us have been schooled.