Accountability for Moving Forward

What's more important - following a curriculum because it's the District's curriculum or adjusting the curriculum to meet the needs of your students?
Teaching isn't a race.  It's not about who can teach more quickly or the most stuff.  It's about sparking learning, teaching relevant skills using engaging content as a vehicle.  And that takes time.  Sometimes more time than a curriculum map will allow.  How can you expect teachers to innovate in their classrooms but tell them their hands are tied by the map?  In the area of science, this makes no sense in the face of our new NGSS standards, which inherently require more time for students to tinker, make mistakes, think, develop solutions, and write than ever before.
I'm not against curriculum maps. I wholeheartedly believe that what's being taught and how it's being taught should be written down and mapped out.  A curricular plan should be in place.  The merits of the content of the map should be discussed, debated, argued, reshaped, reformed, and rewritten on a regular basis.  The value of a curriculum map is that it is something to have discussions around, a document that can generate new ideas about what should be taught, how it should be taught, and WHY it is being taught.
It should be a guideline, not a curricular prison.  A map should be flexible, changeable, and nimble.  A curriculum should grow with teachers, not stunt their growth.
Maps should not be used to big-brother someone.  They should not be used as a measuring stick to determine how good of a teacher someone is by how well they finished the map that year.  Maps aren't something to hold over teachers' heads.  I understand we have to hold teachers accountable for teaching their curriculum, but what if teachers want to move beyond the map?  Should that be a strike against them?  
You can't expect innovation and progress when teachers are expected to do the same things every single year and for every single student.  What if we hold teachers accountable for moving forward rather than evaluating them on how well they can stay in the nice and neat little places dictated on a curriculum map?
Image credit:  Flickr