• enacted curriculum
• enacted instruction

• alignment to standards
• levels of cognitive rigor
• potential grade inflation

• classroom time usage
• teaching strategies
• custom issues

Education Reform Model of The Standards Company LLC

All too often, administrators and education researchers judge reform efforts by merely tracking test scores. While results matter, using test scores to gauge the quality of educational programs is problematic for a number of reasons:

1. Test scores are influenced by many factors beyond the control of schools. A student's home life affects his or her performance, but there is little a school can do to improve the situation.
2. Test scores do not necessarily indicate the exact nature of the problem. Even if test scores indicate low performance in a specific subject, there is little indication if the problem is centered on curriculum or instruction, or what aspect of curriculum or instruction is deficient.
3. Problems are discovered too late to correct. Test scores directly measure the performance of students, not schools. However, by the time a school is informed of test results, many of the students that completed the state tests have moved on to other schools; nearly all have moved on to the next grade level.

A full research/professional development cycle forms an integral component of education reform. Schools can choose to schedule the professional development services of The Standards Company LLC to follow a traditional quality-control cycle similar to those used in myriad industries to monitor and improve quality control and, as a result, increase productivity.

Benefits of following the quality-control cycle of The Standards Company LLC include:

• problems are discovered and corrected before they manifest in the final product (test scores)

• reform efforts focus on the quality of instruction and curriculum, not test scores

• professional development targets clearly identified problem areas

• problems targeted are highly measurable and readily improvable

In the education field, such a quality control cycle is designed to increase the effectiveness of curriculum and instruction and, as a result, increase student achievement.

Typical Plan