Education Research

The Standards Company formed in 2007 to perform education research for public agencies beginning with statewide contracts for Nevada and Oklahoma.

Since then, our company has performed curricular studies on a vast scale, encompassing thousands of teachers and hundreds of thousands of student assignments.

With our classroom observation services, we also focus research on classroom instruction, providing education agencies with precise and accurate portrayals of the learning environment experienced by their students.

Size and Scope

The Standards Company focuses much of its research efforts on helping education agencies ensure that their curriculum and instruction meet new college- and career-preparedness standards such as the Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards.

We can accommodate research studies on any scale, from small rural school districts to multi-state studies. We can also incorporate any grade levels, from Kindergarten to advanced college courses.

Service Offerings

Today, The Standards Company can provide any number of highly-customized research reports. The following reflect just a small sample of our service offerings.

Classroom Observation

Using specially-designed mobile tools customized to the client's needs, we monitor implementation of professional development trainings, classroom efficiency, and any other data points requested by the client.

Curriculum Studies

Either by examining adopted materials or collecting actual student work samples, we gauge curriculum alignment to college- and career-preparedness standards and Cognitive Rigor levels.

Curriculum Audits

Using a bottom-up approach that places the most emphasis on classroom-level processes, we generate curriculum audits that provide educators a deeper understanding of their students' learning environment.

Project Evaluation

Using any combination of classroom observations or curriculum studies, we provide an independent, objective, third-party evaluation of project implementation and success.

Resources

The following articles and reports reflect our considerable record of success:

• Oklahoma Curricular Alignment Study (105 public schools, 3,300 teachers). The largest classroom study of alignment to standards and Cognitive Rigor ever performed in the U.S.
• Nevada Curricular Alignment Study (95 public schools, 3,600 teachers). The second largest classroom study of alignment to standards and Cognitive Rigor ever performed in the U.S. (Executive Summary)
• Hess, Carlock, Jones, and Walkup. (2009). What Exactly Do “Fewer, Clearer, and Higher Standards” Really Look Like in the Classroom? Using a Cognitive Rigor Matrix to Analyze Curriculum, Plan Lessons, and Implement Assessments. A joint-collaboration between Karin Hess of the National Center for Assessment and The Standards Company LLC, this paper introduced Cognitive Rigor and the Cognitive Rigor Matrix (Hess Matrix) to the educational community.
• Hess, Jones, Carlock, and Walkup. (2009) Cognitive Rigor: Blending the Strengths of Bloom's Taxonomy and Webb's Depth of Knowledge to Enhance Classroom-level Processes. ERIC publication ED517804. This article expanded on the distinction between Bloom's Taxonomy and Depth of Knowledge.
  

Fees

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