Almost every state is "imposing" academic standards. Helping students to meet those standards is a key task for teachers and school administrators, as well as instructional systems designers. Thus, instructional designers in the K-12 environments are facing the challenge of using appropriately and effectively academic standards in their instructional systems design process. This paper offers some effective ways of handling academic standards in the instructional systems design process, together with examples. This paper is intended to encourage experts in both academic standards and instructional systems design to examine the role and influence of academic standards on instructional systems design processes and the subsequent outcomes. (Author)