Educators and publishers in the field of K–12 education have long had an interest in identifying and retrieving curriculum materials by the learning objectives that these materials serve. A review of the efforts undertaken to accomplish this goal highlights a number of continuing problems and informs a set of criteria for the development of a schema that would be useful for identifying and retrieving educational resources. One such schema and its value space is offered as a solution, which exploits a unique resource developed at Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL).