US History Curriculum Standards

I teach high school US History 2, I have also taught US 1, and World History. I am very familiar with the state standards as I have had the task of evaluating the standards in the past.
The standards are very thorough, involved and cover every area possible that a US history student would need to be educated on the United States of America. Recently, state standards were also put in place where teachers now have to try and find time to explore the state that we live in.
The problem is there is too much information to cover and not enough time to cover it. We have had numerous department meetings to explore ways to restructure our school curriculum to align better with the state standards.
In our district, 9th grade have World History (which was just changed from Ancient Civilizations to 1775 - present, the Ancient moved down to 8th grade), then 10th Grade have US1 which is Colonization to Reconstruction, then US 2 is After REconstruction to the present. The problem is that not all teachers of US 1 make it to Reconstruction, then when the US2 teachers pick up some kids get lost between the end of the Civil War and Industrialization, and depending on how much backtracking a teacher has to do, most only make it to Vietnam.
The advantage to the standards is that for new teachers, or for a very organized teacher, the guidelines are so thorough and the resources are plentiful that it becomes very easy to teach the information, but when you get into a topic that kids really get involved with, it is so easy to fall behind and then rush through to try and catch up.
I don't think that is what education should be about; the goal should not be to be on a time schedule, the goal should be to explore topics that spark discussions that kids will remember.
So my criticism of the current standards is that we need to have some flexibility to modify the standards as we go along, which I suppose would be frowned upon in Trenton.
The alternative may be to require to have seniors take an elective course in some type of history: ie, Contemporary Issues, American Govt and Politics and that way they would be exposed to a more present day contemporary issues curriculum as well as the mandated US History.