Music Educators' National Conference. (1994). The School Music Program: A New Vision (Unknown ed.). Lanham, ML: Rowman and Littlefield.
In A New Vision, then-MENC outlines ideas and guidelines for implementation of the national standards that had just been put into place following the Educate America Act. It describes tenets of the new standards differing from a "traditional" music education curriculum, including use of skills and knowledge as objectives, use of different genres, styles, and disciplines of music, and incorporating into music education elements of higher order thinking, technology, and ensuring proper assessment. Also enumerated are assumptions about what a music program would be, generally culminating to describe a comprehensive, accessible, challenging, and involved music program. It describes and gives examples of the 9 Content Standards, Singing, Playing, Improvising, Composing, Evaluating, Reading and Notating Listening (and analyzing and describing), and Music in relation to other arts, in relation to history and culture, in the context of 5th-8th grade music and high school music.
The phrase in this reading that stood out most to me was: "This publication does not constitute a music curriculum, but it provides the foundation for one." Each music teacher has a unique opportunity to build and develop a currriculum for their music program based on the needs and characteristics of their students, school, and community, and drawing from the standards and other musical content. Another important thing to note is that the standards are not meant to be minimum competency thresholds, as is the case in many other academic disciplines. In general, the music standards function as a framework and guidelines through which to build a curriculum, as it's ultimately up to the teacher to determine how the students should learn.
Questions for the standards' authors:
What are some strategies for developing non-ensemble components of a secondary music program with classes like Music Appreciation, technology, emerging music, etc.?
Are there recommended method books that adhere most comprehensively to the standards?