Karin Hess, EdD, is founder and president of Educational Research in Action and author of the Hess Cognitive Rigor Matrices. She is a former classroom teacher and school administrator with more than 40 years of experience in curriculum, instruction, and assessment. She is an internationally recognized leader in applying the concepts of cognitive rigor, depth of knowledge, and learning progressions to the design and development of state and school-based curriculum and assessment systems. An expert in multiple content areas, she specializes in the design and use of performance-based assessments for preK–12 students.

Hess has authored or coauthored more than a dozen books in the field of education, including A Local Assessment Toolkit to Promote Deeper Learning (Corwin, 2018).