Oak Park, IL - Progress Education Corporation has been awarded an SBIR Grant for the Development of a Process Methodology to Determine the Total Cost of Ownership of Instructional Resources in Relation to the Benefits of Improved Student Performance. 
 
Progress Education will support the U.S. Department of Education’s efforts in providing solutions that stimulate technological innovation in the private sector; strengthen the role of small business in meeting the DOE research or research and development (R/R&D) needs; increase the commercial proposal of ED-supported research results; and improve the return on investment from Federally-funded research for economic and social benefits to the Nation.
 
Over the next six months, Progress Education will develop a specific process methodology that enables administrators to make informed decisions about the allocation of resources in ways that are meaningfully linked to student learning.  In order to do this effectively, districts must be able to answer the following questions – What works over time? For which students? and At what cost?  The ability to provide valid, reliable answers to these questions for educators has the ability to transform the outcomes of our educational efforts for all students by ensuring that scarce resources are making their way to the classroom.
 
Progress Education's efforts will be focused on identifying the specific activities and tasks that a district should follow to determine the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of instructional programs and the methodology used to evaluate the “cost” of these programs in relation to the “benefit” in terms of measurable student learning outcomes.  The methodology identified will then be validated with a cohort of districts using their instructional programs and state test scores to ensure that the data / reports enable administrators to make informed decisions about the allocation of resources in ways that are meaningfully linked to student learning
 
Progress Education will be collaborating with the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC), headquartered in Houston, TX.  APQC created the Open Standards Benchmarking Collaborative, that has proved very successful in encouraging many of the nations' largest corporations to openly share best practices, and has recently formed a similar collaborative for K-12 education.