How Aligned·By·Design Resolves Education's Problems

Aligned·By·Design is a web application that includes a complete suite of powerful yet easy-to-use screens, tools, and processes for managing, aligning, and tracking the large but finite lists of Knowledge/Skill items through all Educational materials and into Students' minds.

• Content-Independent can accommodate exactly what is being used today - all existing Standards/Frameworks, Classroom Curriculum, and Assessments content can be easily loaded in, and education can continue as is, except it would immediately be all on one system, organized, and easily manageable, updateable, alignable, supportable, archiveable, sharable, searchable, etc.
• End-to-End - By managing the interrelated parts of Education on one integrated, online, end-to-end system, the work products (Standards, Curriculum, Assessments) from multiple teams can be easily used directly by the other teams, multiple people can work on things simultaneously, and linking between materials, comparisons and sharing of materials, instant promulgation of changes becomes possible
• Knowledge-Centric - All Aligned·By·Design Education objects link back to Knowledge/Skill items, enabling instant comparisons of any two objects, easy alignment, and accurate tracking and analysis of both materials and performance
• Transitional - Educational materials should be constantly improving, and with Aligned·By·Design's analysis capabilities - knowing exactly which Knowledge/Skill items each Student knows yields accurate effectiveness of Units, Lesson Plans, Teachers, etc. - Educational materials and processes can be steadily improved by using and easily sharing what works, and improving what doesn't. Aligned·By·Design enables materials to evolve together - not only can changes be entered instantly instead of every several years, but they can also stay in alignment in near real-time, as well as archiving previous versions for referencing or reverting
• Alignment At the Knowledge/Skill Level - Orchestrating the integration and multiple alignments of ever-changing works from multiple teams goes from nearly impossible to an easily manageable task. Alignment of Standards to Classroom Curriculum can only be done at the lowest common denomination of the materials, and that currently is not the discrete Knowledge/Skill item level required for success.  Also, alignment work can be easily double-checked or audited at any time, and updates to materials do not cause an unmanageable ripple effect of having to redo everything

Resolving the Primary Problem - Accomplishing the sum of all Education tasks is such a massive, complex undertaking that it is nearly impossible to do by hand in real-time with any accuracy.

• By migrating from the current paper and pencil, Word and PDF toolset to an end-to-end online system, Aligned·By·Design unifies the Education universe by getting the multiple teams working towards their common goal in a single online place, and solves the massive organizing, aligning, tracking, and sharing task issues immediately
• The accuracy and frequency of the quality control testing of any system in any industry has tremendous bearing on the percentage of successful outcomes, and by radically increasing the quality control capabilities of the Education system, sustainable steady improvement becomes achievable

Resolving the Process Problem - Teachers rightfully struggle to pull a simple list of discrete Knowledge/Skill items to be taught in their Course out of the State Standards, and thus often end up using EOY Assessment Questions to help drive their Classroom Curriculum - Teaching to the Test.

• Aligned·By·Design provides tools for managing Standards, which include the ability to easily break down high level Standards into discrete Knowledge/Skill items
• Managing Standards separately from Knowledge/Skills - including separation of all supplemental Knowledge/Skill information (examples, definitions, prerequisites, etc.) from Standards - allows Standards to be simple lists of what to teach, exactly what Teachers require from Standards
• Since Standards and Classroom Curriculum are on the same system and both linked to common Knowledge/Skills items, Teachers will work directly with their lists of what to teach while developing Classroom Curriculum, and can see at glance which Knowledge/Skill items in their Course Standard are not covered by their Curriculum - precise alignment is almost unavoidable