QM K-12 Rubric, Sixth Edition Revision Underway

Release of the Sixth Edition is slated for June 2, 2025. Members will find the Rubric inside MyQM course review tools automatically.

Sixth Edition Workbook

Pre-Orders Open May 15

Rubric Update Session

Register on Apr. 4
Session opens May 5
This self-paced session is free for members and will help you understand what’s new, what’s different, and make the transition to the Sixth Edition. It is required for all K-12 Reviewers, Master Reviewers and Facilitators in order to retain these roles.

Course Reviews

Last day to submit a Course Worksheet  for review with the QM K-12 Rubric, Fifth Edition is May 2, 2025.

The QM K-12 Rubric, Sixth Edition is well underway, with a release set for June 2, 2025. The new edition leverages the knowledge of the QM community, incorporating improvements in all areas of course design to help you improve outcomes for learners and online learning experiences.

“We look forward to bringing this new edition of the QM K-12 Rubric to educators across the K-12 community,” says Pam Shaw, Senior K-12 Quality Assurance Manager for QM and Co-Chair of the QM K-12 Rubric, Sixth Edition Committee. “The updates will highlight the importance of content standards, expand annotations for reviewers, and clarify the demonstration of alignment to learners. The changes will improve the effectiveness with which members engage with QM Standards, and that translates to better experiences for K-12 learners.”

Here’s a taste of what’s to come in the Sixth Edition:

A Single K-12 Rubric

Quality is quality for everyone — whether you’re a teacher at a small school or building courses for a major publisher. That’s why the Sixth Edition unites QM K-12 and K-12 Publisher Standards under a single Rubric, streamlining and simplifying the way the Standards are interpreted and addressed for teachers and course designers working in any context.

Content Standards and Alignment

Content standards are foundational to alignment in the K-12 Rubric, Sixth Edition. By placing content standards at the fore of alignment in the review process, the cascading effect of connecting the rest of the course to them helps make the alignment connections apparent. A course alignment map will be required as part of the review process and includes the following components mapped to one another so the connection between them is apparent:

• Content standards (SRS 2.1 C)
• Course-level learning objectives (SRS 2.2) with module/unit-level learning objectives (SRS 2.3)
• Assessments (SRS 3.1)
• Instructional materials (SRS 4.1)
• Learning activities (SRS 5.1)Tools (SRS 6.1)

The relationship between the learning objectives, assessments, and learning activities must be explicitly presented to learners, other than through the use of a course alignment map.  

New Review Types

Educators design courses with specific intentions for how they will be implemented, either for a single organization or for distribution. To address this, course reviews in the Sixth Edition are now based on a course’s intended method of distribution:

• Locally Delivered Courses are those used by the course representative’s own organization for use by the organization’s own teachers.
• Distributed Courses are those distributed for other organizations to use with their teachers.

A special thank you to the K-12, Sixth Edition Rubric Committee members:

These improvements wouldn’t be possible without the K-12 Rubric, Sixth Edition Rubric Committee, a team of volunteers from across the world of K-12 education who continue to devote themselves to the improvement of QM Rubrics in service of educators and learners everywhere.