Scholars have long recognized that local factors dominate the policy implementation process (McLaughlin, 1987, 1990). Despite the ever-increasing presence of state and federal agencies in educational policymaking, local conditions still appear critical to policy implementation (Cohen, 1990; Coburn, 2001; Fullan, 1991; Hill, 2001; Elmore & Fuhrman, 1995; Firestone, Fitz, & Broadfoot, 1999; Spillane, 2004). This is to be expected, especially considering that state and federal policy makers have developed an unprecedented appetite for infl uencing the core work of schools-teaching and learning. Several decades of educational policymaking designed to bring systemic reform through the development of standards-based curricula and increasing use of student testing to hold teachers and administrators accountable all refl ect efforts to more tightly couple policy to instruction. State and federal agencies that had mostly taken a “hands-off,” or at least “an arms-length,” approach on instruction developed policies that held locals accountable for what teachers taught, acceptable levels of mastery, and in some cases even how teachers taught. But as state and federal policy makers’ appetite for instructional improvement increased, local educators were still left to fi gure out the particulars of improvement and procure the resources for these efforts.