• enacted curriculum
• enacted instruction

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

• classroom time usage
• teaching strategies
• custom issues

Ruby

Lydia Cherie Wesley is Principal of Thomas Jefferson Elementary School. Her K-5 school has 22 classrooms, 20 manned by full-time teachers and two by full-time substitutes. The principal is only concerned about the quality of the mathematics assignments of her full-time staff. She would like The Standards Company LLC to provide a detailed analysis of her school's curriculum.

Jefferson Elementary teachers are weary from attending a long string of professional development workshops. So, Principal Wesley's priority is to retrieve useful data about the state of her school's curriculum with the least impact on her teaching staff. Budgets are tight, so cost weighs heavily on all of Principal Wesley's decisions.

Principal Wesley purchases 40 collection envelopes and distributes them to her 20 teachers. She asks teachers to collect mathematics assignments for two days, with one envelope dedicated to each day.

Results indicate that a large proportion of the collected mathematics assignments were well below grade level and featured only a small subset of cognitive rigor levels.

Based on the results, Principal Wesley directed teachers to re-examine their state's mathematics standards especially in light of Sudoku, which appeared frequently in the collected work. She also asks teachers to avoid coloring exercises and games featuring nothing but low-level questioning.

For the following semester, Principal Wesley wants The Standards Company LLC to perform a week-long collection to provide more statistically meaningful data about the state of mathematics at her school.