In many countries, the roles of national governments, curriculum development agencies and schools are shifting. In a number of cases the trend is towards more decentralization of curriculum policy. In the Netherlands, for example, the government has legislated national curriculum frameworks - in terms of attainment targets - for primary education (ages 4-12) and lower secondary education (ages 12-14), but these attainment targets are much less detailed and much less in number than before and only cover a portion (70%) of the available instructional time. Schools and teachers have got more opportunity for site-specific curriculum choices, emphasizing local ownership and commitment. At the same time the latitude provided is somewhat restricted as schools have to realize the national attainment targets and are held accountable for the way they give this 'freedom in restraint' a personalized interpretation. In other countries, however, the pendulum seems to move into just the opposite direction (often in response to a too strong decentralization), emphasizing centrally formulated prescriptive standards, often combined with centralized high-stakes assessment of student achievement and schools' and teachers' accountability established by rigid external evaluations. Those different tendencies elicit numerous questions, with as a common denominator: What is wisdom?Against the background of this question an international comparative trend study has been conducted in 2004-2006. The study focused on school-wide curriculum practices in the compulsory age of schooling in a variation (centralized or decentralized) of curriculum policy contexts. The main results of this study (sponsored by SLO - the Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development - and jointly conducted by the University of Twente and SLO) will described in the paper to be presented. The study was guided by the following four operational research questions(i) Within selected (primarily European) countries, what does curriculum policy for compulsory education look like with particular regard to (de)centralization and school autonomy? (ii) How do schools and teachers in those respective contexts address their curriculum challenges? (iii) What forms of external support are in place to support schools and teachers with those tasks? (iv) How are schools and teachers held responsible for the education they provide and its outcomes? The first research question aimed at getting an understanding of curriculum policy features and backgrounds (macro), especially of the position of the pendulum on the scale 'central - decentral' as well as of the direction and the why of the direction of the movement of the pendulum. Via the other three questions the effects of the prevailing policy on curriculum practices at school and teacher level (meso) were addressed. In order to find answers to these three questions the study focuses on an analysis of some promising practices of developing/improving a site-specific curriculum by schools for (especially) lower secondary education, of the role of external support to do so, and of intelligent and productive school and teacher accountability.The study consisted of nine cases studies, each representing an education system: Belgium/Flanders, England, Finland, Germany (North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein), Hungary, Portugal, Sweden, USA/California, and the Netherlands. In each case study three perspectives were analyzed: policy, research, and practice. Research methods and instruments consisted: of policy and research documents' analysis; interviews with policy-makers, curriculum developers, school managers, teachers and students; and school visits (promising practices). 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