To make schools more effective and efficient, many school reforms and changes have been introduced at the national, state, and local levels. Teachers who are making decisions about what and how to teach their students in this new context have more to consider--new policies, new ideas about education, and a multitude of new programs. The new ideas may be unclear, inconsistent, or contradictory. For schooling to improve as a result of these reforms, teachers must be able to make sense of the reform ideas, bring them together in a meaningful way, and construct a coherent practice.

"Instructional coherence" describes the relationship among curriculum, instruction, assessment, external mandates, and community context that teachers create and communicate to their students. In creating a coherent practice, the teacher intentionally brings these together with a focus on student learning to provide educational experiences that are clear, connected to each other, and worthwhile. SEDL is currently researching the problems teachers face in making their practices more coherent. This paper describes the progress of education in Louisiana. The view is that of the author, drawn from documents and interviews.