Standards Coaching

---benchmarking your state's standards to the best---

---engaging teachers and the community---

---creating local ownership---

Our Unique Approach

StandardsWork's customized, grassroots approach to reform initiatives is far different from most others in the field, who design programs for everyone in general and no one in particular. Our clients appreciate the difference; they include the states of Arizona, California, Georgia, and Maryland, and individual districts in Chicago (IL), Charlotte-Mecklenburg (NC), Beaufort (SC), Ardmore (OK), Elaine and Marvell (AR), and elsewhere.

Why StandardsWork?

We:

Believe high standards drive student achievement.
Focus on goals that are ambitious but attainable.
Take the time to understand where a district is in implementing standards.
Convert the public from critics to supporters by engaging them, not persuading them.
Assist and encourage districts to constantly improve and create fair measures for holding everyone accountable.
Work where the determination to improve is strong.

Service Programs

Standards Planning & Coaching. Our planning sessions set in motion a process to engage the entire community in advancing reform, ensuring that standards reflect the needs of your district, are aligned to state assessments, and provide a means to continuous improvement. We also offer first-hand advice and coaching to superintendents, principals, curriculum specialists, teachers, and other members of the community to move standards-based reform through their district.
Standards Drafting, Benchmarking, & Alignment. Our experts facilitate the development of effective standards, benchmark them against "best of the best" standards, and work with educators to align them with district curriculum and state tests.
Student Diagnostics. The right multiple choice and performance assessments can help principals and teachers know their students' specific academic strengths and weaknesses. By working with schools to develop these diagnostic assessments, we can help educators take the mystery out of improving student achievement.
Embattled Districts. For school districts under siege as a result of voucher programs, we offer accelerated assistance throughout the country. StandardsWork assigns Rapid Response Teams of top practitioners to help schools -- on all fronts -- improve learning achievement through standards-based reform. Sites are determined by need and funding/partnership opportunities.
The Results Card. Nine states are working with us to develop a revolutionary means of producing a model performance profile. The template identifies the key data elements that states, school districts, and schools need to collect and analyze in order to accurately report school progress over time. Instead of relying on traditional inputs-driven data, the Results Card focuses on the outputs of learning and looks at common core indicators of school achievement. Right now, states can still join this exciting project.
The StandardsWork Network. Our newest initiative that focuses on building a Leadership Network by drawing together the brightest and most effective education leaders in the country to provide support, recognize each others' successes, and share policy and practice strategies that work.

HireStandards Executive Search Program. Serves as a liaison in placing interested members of the StandardsWork Network in superintendent and charter school leadership positions around the country.
Institutes for Training and Development. These institutes bring together a critical mass of regional education talent to 1) help districts build capacity for sustained improvement, and 2) give team members the tools and resources they need to carry out standards-based reform in their own schools.

Products & Resources

Raising the Standard: An Eight-Step Action Guide for Schools and Communities ($35.00). The second edition of this best selling Walton Family Foundation-sponsored book and CD-ROM has a new section for charter schools. The set helps schools, communities, parents, businesses, and civic leaders who want to move beyond setting standards to implementing them. The guides and tools included in the set provide clear steps to setting locally developed and adopted standards. They also show how to undertake a process of standards setting that emphasizes citizen and educator responsibility at the grassroots level. Call us at (202) 835-2000 to order your own set.
"GOALLINE: [www.goalline.org]." Visit StandardsWork's website for information on education reform activities, academic standards samples from around the country, news and products from our work in the field, and links to hard-to-locate resources.

A Reputation for Excellence

StandardsWork's Standards Development & Benchmarking

"California's [standards are] way out ahead of the country."

-NYU professor Diane Ravitch.

StandardsWork's standards development in California and Arizona also helped place the two states in two of the three highest ranking positions in an evaluation of state standards by The Fordham Foundation.

"It is simply not enough to have standards . . . schools and communities must be committed to developing and implementing high quality standards. StandardsWork guides a process around standards implementation that leads to ownership."

-John Murphy, former superintendent, Charlotte-Mecklenburg (NC) and president, Education Partners, L.P.

StandardsWork's Experts

"[They] helped me understand the nitty gritty of standards and why we need them in this country; Pimentel was superb."

-California State PTA Convention comment

"StandardsWork helped our schools and community become informed and feel empowered [about student achievement]. Now we believe that our schools can and should improve, and feel able to work towards that end."

-Wes Stucky, President, Ardmore (OK) Chamber of Commerce

StandardsWork's Action Guide, Raising the Standard

"Real change is real hard and takes real time . . . Teachers will welcome this thoughtful and real-to-life action guide."

-Adam Urbanski, President, Rochester, NY Teachers Association, and Vice President, American Federation of Teachers

"Raising the Standard is one of the most practical, user-friendly tools I have seen to help explain what education "standards" are and how they work."

-Amanda Broun, Vice President, Public Education Network, Washington, DC

"This is THE book. Read it. Do it."

-Richard S. Gurin, President & CEO, Binney & Smith, Inc.