Iowa Core

Iowa Core is a set of standards created by Iowa Board of Education. It looks like that every school district in Iowa will have to develop a written plan to describe its implementation of the Iowa Core Curriculum. Every subject taught in school has its standards described. For example for the science it first identifies the essential concepts that should be taught and developed and then it gives specific standards for each science discipline by grade. Some of the standards for different grade spans overlap but the general idea is that children are taught basic concepts in the first grades and then the standards expand to incorporate more complex concepts.  An example would be one of basic  standards for Physical Science where in K- 2 grade " Understand and apply  knowledge of the positions and motions of objects". This standard appears again in grades 3-5 as  " Understand and apply knowledge of how forces are related to an object's motion".  So the standard it the same in the sense that it describes the motion of objects but in the next grade span it is upgraded to represent more complex knowledge.
Some of the standards overlap across grades. 
Besides the standards that I will have to implement once I am teacher, it is interesting that there is information on the  characteristics of effective instruction  which could give me some beneficial guidelines.