Five years ago Los Angeles Unified School District administrators began efforts to ensure that teachers teach students what they are expected to learn and test them accordingly. The initial stage of this projected curriculum alignment was first of all to define the essential skills to be taught in the elementary grades and provide a list of these skills for each teacher; the second step was to develop a means of assessing student progress; the third was to develop an easy-to-use system for scoring and presenting data. Four years later, 238 schools and more than 7,000 teachers are participating in the instructional planning process, which now includes five stages: (1) establishing teacher consensus on essential skills objectives for each grade, (2) setting specific instructional priorities, (3) planning instruction, (4) checking progress, and (5) acknowledging accomplishments and planning next steps. Beneficiaries of curriculum alignment include not only students but principals and district administrators as well. Curriculum alignment in a large school district is likely to be most successful when an outside agency is brought in to help, when teachers feel the change is their idea, and when change efforts remain relatively flexible. (JBM)