2024 Eddies Awards: Most Actionable Tools & Research

Democrats for Education Reform (DFER)

Network Policy Pillar: High Expectations 

Link: Spotlight Schools: High-Poverty Schools That Are Raising The Bar

SUMMARY

This research helps school leaders, policymakers, and advocates to identify and execute school improvement strategies so they can improve proficiency and spur student academic growth.

This research helps school leaders to identify and implement evidence-based strategies so that they can improve student outcomes, particularly in areas with concentrated poverty.

This research helps policymakers and advocates to identify effective educational practices so that they can advocate for policies that support student success, particularly in areas with concentrated poverty. 

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

It’s an unfortunate reality that students from low-income backgrounds often face significant barriers to accessing quality education, and these challenges have only been exacerbated by the pandemic. However, while there is ample research on the failures of the education system to adequately support students from low-income backgrounds, there’s too little attention paid to what schools can do instead. The spotlight schools series provides clear, actionable strategies that schools can implement to improve student outcomes, particularly in areas with concentrated poverty.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

1. Data-Driven Decision-Making: High-performing, high-poverty schools root all of their decision-making in data, including: summative assessments, interim assessments, live data (such as exit tickets), and non-academic data (such as PBIS points, student/family/staff satisfaction surveys, social-emotional screenings, and attendance data). Spotlight schools have regular data cycles to support students through targeted small-group instruction and behavioral interventions as well as to support teachers through targeted professional development and coaching. This process requires that principals and teachers build data literacy; it’s essential that state and district policies provide appropriate incentives, funding, and professional development to ensure that educators understand what data to collect, how to collect it, and how to leverage it to inform decision-making. 
2. Multi-tiered systems of support: Spotlight schools emphasized the importance of tiered interventions in boosting both academic achievement and attendance rates. For Tier 1 academic supports, principals agreed that high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) are essential to provide effective core instruction. Principals emphasized the importance of data-driven small-group instruction to provide personalized learning experiences beyond core instruction, particularly for students who are falling behind. States across the country have passed legislation aligned with these priorities, including Colorado’s high impact tutoring bill and Texas’s HQIM legislation. Successful policies should be replicated across the country and supplemented by ongoing professional development and coaching. 
3. Family engagement: As schools navigate unprecedented challenges in behavior and attendance, it has become increasingly important that they form strong partnerships with families. This may include regular communication, community events, or even welcoming families into the classroom for reading groups or SEL lessons. Establishing this trust and partnership then makes it easier to address problems as they arise, such as chronic absenteeism. In those instances, spotlight schools have seen particular success with attendance teams, whereby designated staff monitor attendance data and call the families of absent students each morning.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

One of the greatest barriers to advocacy is that practitioners, policy experts, and politicians often work in silos, but the spotlight schools series has brought these stakeholders together. First, we elevated and connected the voices of school leaders – both through a written report as well as webinars. This has spurred collaboration between principals across districts and states to learn from each other about how to successfully implement strategies that will boost student outcomes. 

We’ve also connected PIE members and other policy experts to our principals’ insights through webinars and panels – giving PIE members the opportunity to better understand how existing and potential policies may actually be implemented by practitioners. PIE staff tell us that the session we led on Spotlight Schools was one of the highest rated in recent memories. Lastly, we’ve had 10 meetings on Capitol Hill, at the request of key offices including staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee, and we’re working with congressional staffers to develop a federal policy agenda based on our findings – which will likely include further research proposals, statutory revisions, and/or additional funding streams specifically designed to support these evidence-based strategies.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

The spotlight school series has received over 4,678 total website sessions, including 3,697 unique users. This does not include direct pdf downloads, which we are unable to track. Our work has been shared through 66 social media postings across individuals and organizations, and it was profiled on The 74. These numbers are reflective of the first two reports on Colorado and Massachusetts, and we expect to see further increases in September as we launch our Texas report. 

The series has also been amplified across webinars and Lunch and Learns. We featured a panel of spotlight principals during a PIE webinar with over 30 participants, who rated the webinar a 4.7/5 – one of the most highly rated of the year. We also presented the webinar during a Massachusetts lunch advocacy coalition led by ERN’s Massachusetts chapter, which included several PIE partners.

Beyond policy experts, the series continues to gain attention from elected officials. We have presented our findings to 10 congressional offices, at their request, and we are planning a Fall webinar for Massachusetts stakeholders, including state legislators and Board of Education members.

National Parents Union (NPU)

Network Policy Pillar: High Expectations, Great Educators, Responsive Systems, Innovative Options

Link: Polling – National Parents Union

SUMMARY

This data helps policymakers, educators, journalists and advocates to understand the perspectives and priorities of parents. Specifically for policymakers, educators and advocates, the research has helped them make informed decisions that enhance student outcomes and support family needs. For journalists, the data is a compelling tool that provides unparalleled insight and helpful context for K-12 reporting on the experiences of students and their families. 

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

The National Parent Poll is the longest-running parent poll in the United States, providing invaluable insights into the views of parents on critical education issues. This work matters because it empowers decision-makers with data that reflect real-world concerns and priorities, helping to defend assessments, inform AI policy, build bipartisan support for the Child Tax Credit, and advocate against Title I cuts. By ensuring that parent voices are heard and considered, the poll helps to shape policies that directly impact student outcomes and opportunities, fostering an education system that is responsive and equitable.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

• Defending Assessments: The poll highlights strong parental support for standardized assessments, emphasizing the importance of maintaining rigorous evaluation methods to ensure student progress and accountability. We have used our polling data on assessment to brief the Department of Education and members of Congress as well as inform our collaborative work with NPU affiliates Unidos and the National Urban League. Additionally, our parent poll informed the collaborative efforts with Ed Trust and Collaborative for Student Success where we presented the data at the CCSSO annual conference on assessment. 
• Informing AI Policy: Insights from parents about technology use in education have guided the development of AI policies that prioritize student privacy, equity, and access to digital resources.
• Advocating for bipartisan action on the Child Tax Credit and opposing Title I cuts: The data has been pivotal in building bipartisan support for the Child Tax Credit and opposing cuts to Title I funding, demonstrating widespread parental backing for these essential programs.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

Describe how other PIE Network members or education leaders informed your work and/or applied your research to take action.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

Since its founding, the National Parents Union has secured over 3600 media placements across the country with its survey accounting for over 1000 direct media mentions in top tier and international media such as: The Economist; Univision National; The New York Times and The New York Times Opinion; Fortune Magazine; USA Today; CNN.com; NPR, NBC News; Scary Mommy and Telemundo National. NPU’s polling data has also resulted in organic opportunities to elevate the parent voice to top tier and international outlets such as: CBS evening with Nora O’Donnell, ABC News, The BBC, The PBS News Hour, Amanpour & Company; Fox News, The Atlantic, Univision Radio, and the Associated Press. Over the last four years, NPU’s polling has monitored parent sentiment regarding trending news such as chronic absenteeism; cell phone bans in schools; the use of artificial intelligence in schools; child tax credit support  CROWN Act support; cost of living challenges; ESSER spending in schools; youth mental health; student loan debt; the priorities of parent voters, views on vaccinating children during COVID-19; and the banning of books—prescient issues that inform national reporting and policymaking at the state and national level. 

Policy References: Policymakers in states and federally have referenced the poll in legislative sessions and policy proposals, demonstrating its influence in shaping education policies nationwide, including reference to our poll by Senator Cassidy in the HELP Senate Education Committee Hearing on K-12 Education in June.

The Education Trust in Tennessee

Network Policy Pillar: Responsive Systems 

Link: Make Funding More Fair Y’all

SUMMARY

These tools help state and local advocates in the South to evaluate how fair school funding is in their state so they can effectively advocate for equitable, student-centered school funding reform.

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

Research shows that money matters for all students’ success, but it especially matters for students furthest from opportunities. Simplified, student-weighted funding formulas give districts and schools the resources and flexibility to close opportunity gaps for historically underserved students. In Southern states – which educate more than one third of the nation’s public school students and more than half of the country’s Black students – school funding systems produce some of the lowest teacher salaries and per pupil spending in the United States. Southerners for Fair School Funding, which is powered by Ed Trust–Tennessee, supports advocates to build a movement for school funding formulas that are transparent, fair, and clearly provide for the needs of individual students. 

Using criteria developed based on research, best practice, and student-centered values, we designed advocate-facing tools to change the narrative in the South around equitable funding. Our State Ratings Rubric provides a concrete framework with five core components that works as a scorecard to inspire and drive reform. Advocates use the State Ratings Rubric to see how their state’s funding system measures up to equity principles, from the formula type and student weights to the reporting and accountability. 

The Advocacy Guides (Funding for English Learners, Funding for Rural Schools, Funding for Students with Disabilities, and Funding for Students from Low-Income Backgrounds) put in plain language why funding matters for specific student groups, so advocates can center these students in their local context. The fact sheets also provide model policies and key questions for advocates to ask policymakers. Both the State Ratings Rubric and the Advocacy Guides help advocates talk about where their state is lagging and point to specific ways to improve. Because school funding is complicated, advocates on the ground need these easy-to-digest, actionable tools to evaluate their state’s funding system and push for equitable change.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

For any Southern state, advocates can use these tools to:

• See how their state’s funding system impacts historically underserved students, benchmarked against peer states in the region. 
• Georgia advocate example: “My state provides more money for English Learners, but we are the only Southern state that does not provide additional funds of any kind for students living in poverty.”
• Alabama advocate example: “Almost all the other Southern states have a weighted-student or hybrid funding formula, but we still use an outdated resource-based formula.”
• Evaluate policy proposals to change state funding formulas.
• Mississippi advocate example: “If we adopt the proposed weighted-student funding formula, our ratings on the rubric would improve in every category.”
• Advocate for the needs of specific underserved student groups. 
• Virginia advocate example: “We currently fund students with disabilities based on estimated costs for special education staff positions, without considering students’ actual needs. Is our state considering tiered weights for students with disabilities?

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

Informed by: 

• The State Ratings Rubric and Advocacy Guides draw on work and input from organizations including Edunomics Lab, EdBuild, Ed Trust’s national office, The Commonwealth Institute, A+ Partnership in Alabama, Public School Forum of North Carolina, Mississippi First, Brown’s Promise, and Bellwether. These tools also draw on the work of and input from school funding experts like Zahava Stadler, Rebecca Sibilia, and Stephen Owens while he was at the Georgia Budget Policy Institute. 

Applied by:

• Working with Mississippi partners, Southerners for Fair School Funding used the State Ratings Rubric to create a side-by-side comparison of the state’s long-standing funding formula and the proposed student-based formula. Those two partners – Mississippi First and Teach Plus Mississippi – used that analysis and op-ed in their campaign for a new funding formula.
• A+ Alabama leveraged our tools  to create specific guides for Every Child Alabama coalition members to use in local and state advocacy. These guides were embedded in their Every Dollar Counts learning series and shared with their network. 
• Public School Forum of North Carolina shared the Advocacy Guides at a convening of 20-25 grasstops advocates and education leaders as a way to build momentum in a conversation about school funding reform in North Carolina.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

The main gateway to access the advocacy tools for Southerners for Fair School Funding is on the website, www.fundsouthernschools.org. Since the launch of the site in November 2023:

• 1.9k unique users have visited the site.
• The individual state rubric pages have the most engagement out of any page on the site, except for the home page, with 100+ views 
• An average of 68 users have accessed the site on a daily basis since launch.
• The website has served as an education funding resource for Southern states, with most of the ten Southern state pages having over 100 views each. 
• Our education funding resources, ratings, reports, justifications, and rubrics have been downloaded over 300 times across 18 different pages on the site. 
• The Southerners for Fair School Funding introduction video has had 8,636 impressions across all web and social platforms. 
• Southerners for Fair School Funding LinkedIn posts showed engagement across multiple profiles, with 197 total likes and 23 reposts. 
• Southerners for Fair School Funding Twitter posts have had over 6,800 views, with 42 likes and 22 reposts. 

Mississippi First and Teach Plus Mississippi used the analysis and op-ed from Southerners for Fair School Funding in their successful advocacy for the new Mississippi Student Funding Formula, a student-based funding formula with weights for all of the underserved student groups identified in the rubric. Advocates and legislators shared both items across social media. They also successfully advocated for a record increase of $218 million for education in the 2024-25 school year.

• Toren Ballard, Director of K-12 Policy at Mississippi First shared the Southerners for Fair School Funding analysis in a Twitter post which has 1,320 views and 5 reposts. 
• Gini Pupo-Walker, Executive Director at The Education Trust in Tennessee, had an important op-ed published in Mississippi’s largest newspaper, The Clarion-Ledger, which has a daily circulation of 15,500 and a Sunday circulation of 16,422.
• A+ Alabama’s coalition for school funding reform, Every Child Alabama, has 35 members. Their Every Dollar Counts learning series had a total of 201 registrants and 317 viewers, and each session had an average of 45 viewers.

ADDITIONAL TOOLS AND LINKS

Tools:

• State Ratings Rubrics 
• Advocacy Guide: English Learners
• Advocacy Guide: Students from Low Income Backgrounds
• Advocacy Guide: Students with Disabilities
• Advocacy Guide: Rural Schools

Reach: 

• MAEP vs. INSPIRE Comparison
• Toren Ballard Twitter post
• Clarion Ledger Op-Ed
• Every Dollar Counts Learning Series
• Every Child Alabama Advocacy Guides

Democrats for Education Reform (DFER)

Network Policy Pillar: High Expectations 

Link: Spotlight Schools: High-Poverty Schools That Are Raising The Bar

SUMMARY

This research helps school leaders, policymakers, and advocates to identify and execute school improvement strategies so they can improve proficiency and spur student academic growth.

This research helps school leaders to identify and implement evidence-based strategies so that they can improve student outcomes, particularly in areas with concentrated poverty.

This research helps policymakers and advocates to identify effective educational practices so that they can advocate for policies that support student success, particularly in areas with concentrated poverty. 

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

It’s an unfortunate reality that students from low-income backgrounds often face significant barriers to accessing quality education, and these challenges have only been exacerbated by the pandemic. However, while there is ample research on the failures of the education system to adequately support students from low-income backgrounds, there’s too little attention paid to what schools can do instead. The spotlight schools series provides clear, actionable strategies that schools can implement to improve student outcomes, particularly in areas with concentrated poverty.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

1. Data-Driven Decision-Making: High-performing, high-poverty schools root all of their decision-making in data, including: summative assessments, interim assessments, live data (such as exit tickets), and non-academic data (such as PBIS points, student/family/staff satisfaction surveys, social-emotional screenings, and attendance data). Spotlight schools have regular data cycles to support students through targeted small-group instruction and behavioral interventions as well as to support teachers through targeted professional development and coaching. This process requires that principals and teachers build data literacy; it’s essential that state and district policies provide appropriate incentives, funding, and professional development to ensure that educators understand what data to collect, how to collect it, and how to leverage it to inform decision-making. 
2. Multi-tiered systems of support: Spotlight schools emphasized the importance of tiered interventions in boosting both academic achievement and attendance rates. For Tier 1 academic supports, principals agreed that high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) are essential to provide effective core instruction. Principals emphasized the importance of data-driven small-group instruction to provide personalized learning experiences beyond core instruction, particularly for students who are falling behind. States across the country have passed legislation aligned with these priorities, including Colorado’s high impact tutoring bill and Texas’s HQIM legislation. Successful policies should be replicated across the country and supplemented by ongoing professional development and coaching. 
3. Family engagement: As schools navigate unprecedented challenges in behavior and attendance, it has become increasingly important that they form strong partnerships with families. This may include regular communication, community events, or even welcoming families into the classroom for reading groups or SEL lessons. Establishing this trust and partnership then makes it easier to address problems as they arise, such as chronic absenteeism. In those instances, spotlight schools have seen particular success with attendance teams, whereby designated staff monitor attendance data and call the families of absent students each morning.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

One of the greatest barriers to advocacy is that practitioners, policy experts, and politicians often work in silos, but the spotlight schools series has brought these stakeholders together. First, we elevated and connected the voices of school leaders – both through a written report as well as webinars. This has spurred collaboration between principals across districts and states to learn from each other about how to successfully implement strategies that will boost student outcomes. 

We’ve also connected PIE members and other policy experts to our principals’ insights through webinars and panels – giving PIE members the opportunity to better understand how existing and potential policies may actually be implemented by practitioners. PIE staff tell us that the session we led on Spotlight Schools was one of the highest rated in recent memories. Lastly, we’ve had 10 meetings on Capitol Hill, at the request of key offices including staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee, and we’re working with congressional staffers to develop a federal policy agenda based on our findings – which will likely include further research proposals, statutory revisions, and/or additional funding streams specifically designed to support these evidence-based strategies.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

The spotlight school series has received over 4,678 total website sessions, including 3,697 unique users. This does not include direct pdf downloads, which we are unable to track. Our work has been shared through 66 social media postings across individuals and organizations, and it was profiled on The 74. These numbers are reflective of the first two reports on Colorado and Massachusetts, and we expect to see further increases in September as we launch our Texas report. 

The series has also been amplified across webinars and Lunch and Learns. We featured a panel of spotlight principals during a PIE webinar with over 30 participants, who rated the webinar a 4.7/5 – one of the most highly rated of the year. We also presented the webinar during a Massachusetts lunch advocacy coalition led by ERN’s Massachusetts chapter, which included several PIE partners.

Beyond policy experts, the series continues to gain attention from elected officials. We have presented our findings to 10 congressional offices, at their request, and we are planning a Fall webinar for Massachusetts stakeholders, including state legislators and Board of Education members.

National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)

Network Policy Pillar: Great Educators 

Link: State of the States: Five Policy Actions to Strengthen Implementation of the Science of Reading

SUMMARY

NCTQ’s reading policy research and four tools help states and advocates leverage five policy actions so they can promote equitable access to effective reading teachers and improve reading results for students; by highlighting states that are leading the way and calling attention to those that need to do more, especially when it comes to students of color and students living in poverty. The four tools include:

• State of the States: Five Policy Actions to Improve Implementation of the Science of Reading: An analysis of five policies every state should make to improve teacher capacity to teach reading aligned to science of reading 
• State Data Profiles: Customized summaries for individual states on what they are doing well and where they can improve 
• State Reading Policy Action Guide: A how-to on five key actions states can take with case studies demonstrating how to do it  
• False Assurances: Reading Licensure Test Ratings by State: Analysis of each state’s reading licensure test to determine whether it is weak or strong in aligning to the science of reading 

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

Millions of students across the country cannot read on grade level. We could change this statistic and give millions more – each year – access to the civil right they deserve: literacy. If only they have access to teachers who are well-prepared and well-supported to implement the science of reading. NCTQ’s work is contributing to this mission.

State education leaders across the country are rightly prioritizing efforts to improve elementary student reading outcomes. However, too often these initiatives do not focus enough on the key component to strong implementation and long-term sustainability: effective teachers. Only when state leaders implement a literacy strategy that prioritizes teacher effectiveness will states achieve a teacher workforce that can strengthen student literacy year after year. NCTQ’s work sheds light on what each state is doing or not doing to leverage five policy actions to ensure an effective teacher workforce and sustain the science of reading in classrooms across the country to transform reading results for students. 

In January 2024, NCTQ provided customized state policy analysis and feedback with individualized state profiles and a State Policy Action Guide that features states leading the way to dispel myths and give credit to the courageous states and advocates who are getting the job done. We coupled these tools with a highly personalized campaign supporting state leaders and advocates to drive improvement in their states. And we are seeing results in states across the country.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

NCTQ tools provide data and customized recommendations on the following policy questions for each state:

1. Do we have specific, detailed standards for educator preparation programs to prepared teachers in the science of reading? 
2. Do we have a robust educator prep program review to measure alignment to the science of reading? 
3. Do we have a strong reading licensure test aligned to the science of reading? If not, what can we do — and what are other states doing — to use these three policy levers to ensure access to effective reading teachers for all students?

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

NCTQ is indebted to many members of the PIE network for collaboration and use of the tools to advance strong, good policy. For example: 

• Engaged and invited all PIE members to pre-release webinars to learn about the research and tools.
• Teachplus PA to publish an op-ed focused on the need to train teachers in the science of reading and support passage of legislation in PA.
• NCTQ presented findings and held strategy discussions with Teachplus Executive Directors on the implementation of reading policies.
• NCTQ provided feedback on new reading standards for teacher prep in Oregon and am currently a thought partner to STAND in Oregon, thinking about how to hold teacher prep programs accountable to implement those new reading standards.
• NCTQ provided feedback on reading bill in NY through Ed Trust NY
• NCTQ provided comparisons of curriculum ratings across states to GeorgiaCAN as part of their reading task force to help inform their decisions on curricula to approve. 

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

In six months, thousands of policymakers and advocates downloaded and used NCTQ the tools. Data from January-July 12, 2024:

• State Action Guide – 4,514
• Print-ready report – 1,893
• State Profile downloads – 13,873
• Top Performing States: 
• California – 823
• Illinois – 653
• New Jersey – 506
• New York – 418
• Oregon – 373

13 states passed laws that include NCTQ’s policy recommendations from the four tools:

• Oklahoma is revising their literacy licensure tests based on NCTQ’s False Assurances report on reading licensure tests.
• Iowa passed legislation that would require EPPs to administer the Foundations of Reading assessment to all candidates. Iowa was the only state identified in the recent State of the States report that did not have any type of reading licensure test. 
• Illinois will publish the subscores on the language and literacy elementary content knowledge tests; and publish test participation and language and literacy pass rates by program. Illinois also plans to revise the elementary licensure test to include additional literacy components and develop a ‘passing’ benchmark for the literacy component” – two policies NCTQ called for in The State of the States.
• Delaware  passed legislation to audit all teacher prep programs for alignment to the science of reading. The governor has also slated $3 million in his budget for literacy coaches.
• Arkansas funded literacy coaches.
• Georgia provided funds for literacy screeners and targeted literacy coaching in this year’s budget.
• Idaho revised their reading licensure test to strengthen it as a result of NCTQ’s critique of their previous test. 
• South Carolina expanded the Read to Succeed Act (S418) to include evidence-based literacy standards as part of educator preparation. The state will also provide more robust professional learning to educators, both recommendations that were part of NCTQ’s State of the States on Reading.
• Kansas passed legislation to improve reading instruction: Literacy training for teachers based on the science of reading, including the requirement for teacher preparation programs to use science of reading materials, among other requirements. 
• Massachusetts’ Governor Healey added $30M to her budget request to use for early literacy support and the legislature allocated $20M; NCTQ is working in coalition with other PIE members to add accountability measures to the incentives, including shortened timelines for ed prep program review (we successfully pushed to reduce from 7 years to 4 the timeline to review all programs).
• Minnesota – This supplemental education budget bill would modify The Read Act to include additional screening for students, an audit of teacher preparation programs and $33,225,000 for teacher professional development.
• New York – The budget includes $10 million for early literacy teacher training grounded in the science of reading and high-quality instructional materials.
• Oklahoma – Their early literacy bill would require screening and interventions for students with reading deficiencies and require the state’s K-3 reading curriculum to be based in the science of reading.
• Pennsylvania SB 801 would require high-quality reading curriculum and training for teachers.  It has passed the Senate and is currently in the House. 
• Wisconsin passed a bill requiring training for teachers, leaders, and ed prep faculty in the science of reading by July 1 2025. 

A number of other policies are still making their way through legislatures or committees at this time; we continue to work with legislators and state policymakers to support their passage and implementation (or testify against the bills, as needed).

Educators for Excellence

Network Policy Pillar: Great Educators, Responsive Systems  

Link: Where we Agree

SUMMARY

This tool — which was built based on extensive original academic research—helps teachers, union leaders, and district leaders to look past the status quo of overly prescriptive, adversarial Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs) and explore examples of districts that have leveraged their contracts to reimagine teaching roles, build modern classrooms, and enable strong teaching and learning so they can replicate these solutions in their own communities and ultimately boost student outcomes.

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

Although teacher contracts provide critical workforce protections for teachers and govern much of the profession, they remain an underutilized lever for enabling strong teaching and learning, elevating the teaching profession, and equipping school systems with tools and capacities to confront the challenges of a rapidly changing, increasingly uncertain world. 

This tool leverages formal, original academic research—conducted in partnership with the Center for Public Research and Leadership (CPRL) at Columbia University—and nearly a decade of teacher survey data to set forth a vision for reimagining teachers contracts—both what they say and the ways they are built—as a powerful mechanism for professionalizing teaching and imbuing the profession with the flexibilities and collaboration needed to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. It translates this research and survey data into an easily navigable website that separates issues into buckets based on what changes teachers or system leaders want to see and offers case studies of places where these changes have been implemented and led to improved student outcomes. This equips users with practical tools to transform their unions into agents of change and innovation and their contracts into policy documents that enable the creation of modern classrooms designed to bolster student outcomes. 

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

1. Teachers’ contracts offer an often overlooked, yet essential lever for improving teaching and learning. By redesigning contracts and collective bargaining processes to be student-centered, transparent, flexible, and inclusive of all stakeholders, we can create modern classrooms ready to meet the challenges of both today and tomorrow.
2. Districts across the country are already doing this work by adopting student-centered policy provisions aligned with teacher perspectives in the areas of teacher leadership, compensation, evaluation, layoffs, professional learning, school-based flexibility, and student discipline. The tool gives users the opportunity to engage with examples of these provisions without getting mired in contract language that is hundreds of pages long and encourages them to engage more deeply with their own union contract.
3. District and union leaders are successfully doing this work by taking a collaborative and inclusive approach to collective bargaining, instead of the more common, adversarial stance. The webpage’s case studies detail the how of these changes, providing system leaders with practical examples of avenues for achieving change and encouraging rank-and-file union members to engage more deeply with their bargaining process.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

This tool was built based on extensive academic research—conducted in partnership with CPRL—that included interviews of 84 education leaders in teaching and learning, school funding, school management, school transformation, collective bargaining, union building, teacher contracts, labor-management partnerships, family engagement, and community organizing. It also benefited from the expertise of an advisory council of 21 education leaders, including representation from the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. Though not captured quantitatively, we also had hundreds of informal conversations with many PIE Network partners over the course of this project, all of which contributed to the final product.

This work relied, in particular, on partnerships with PIE Network members TNTP and the National Council on Teacher Quality. In the first stage of the project, we partnered with TNTP to conduct a systematic review of 50 contracts in the 41 states that do not prohibit or severely restrict bargaining. We also relied heavily on the National Center for Teacher Quality’s state-level research as a guide for what is legally permissible at the contract level state-by-state, as well as their already existing database of teachers’ contracts. 

Though this tool was just released in June 2024, we are already starting to see members of the PIE Network and other education leaders informally use the work to inform their own. For example, the tool and its underlying research are augmenting the growing movement around strategic staffing, as flexible contracts are one of the prerequisites to that work. As a very specific example, we presented the work to a large audience of PIE Network members during a site visit to see Next Education Workforce’s model in action in Arizona, sharing how contracts can be leveraged to enable the model and others like it. The session was one of the top two attended and highly rated choice sessions of the day, and we received ample positive anecdotal feedback about it from attendees.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

Although our tool is brand new, and we are planning an official launch with our membership base and chapters in the fall, we have already presented this work to the Broad Fellowship, PIE site visit at ASU, Leading Now and have been accepted to present at the Aurora Institute Symposium and EdTrust West. Additionally, we’ve already had one media hit (The 74).

State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE)

Network Policy Pillar: Responsive Systems 

Link: Early Literacy Success For All Students: A Coherent Path Forward – SCORE 

SUMMARY

This research and tool helps state leaders, system leaders, and practitioners to develop a path forward for implementing effective early literacy academic support by proposing a new framework for instructionally coherent intervention that is also reflective of the research informing Tennessee’s literacy policies so they can sustainably serve more students with instructionally coherent academic support in early literacy and achieve greater impacts on student learning for those who are farthest behind academically.

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

Tennessee has passed landmark legislation for supporting early literacy success. The state has also provided robust opportunities for aligned professional development and guidance around adoption, purchase, training, and use of high-quality instructional materials in early grades literacy grounded in research on how students best learn to read. However, the use of these materials and the vision for reading instruction have not yet infiltrated Tennessee’s system of academic support for students who are furthest behind — a group of students that has continued to grow. Tennessee’s current Response to Instruction and Intervention Framework does not encourage providing the adopted high-quality materials used for core literacy instruction to students in Tier III, those furthest away from grade-level literacy success. Instead, those students receive instruction based on materials that are otherwise used to target areas of deficit. Instructional coherence adheres to a principle that students who are academically behind should receive additional time and support with the foundational literacy skills, texts, and tasks that align to core instruction.

SCORE partnered with six Tennessee districts across 2022-2023 to integrate high-dosage tutoring programs into an overall vision for student academic support in early grades literacy, scheduling and staffing structures, and budget models. As a result of this partnership, SCORE released a research report, Early Literacy Success for All Students: A Coherent Path Forward, detailing key findings to improve Tennessee’s approach to supporting students who are behind in reaching K-3 literacy expectations. In addition, SCORE shared a practitioner-facing toolkit and case studies, hosted a webinar, and participated in many other panel discussions in the hopes of increasing the impact and reach of these important findings.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

Instruction: This analysis points schools and systems toward a support strategy for students of more practice with the same high-quality materials from core instruction. For students who are furthest behind, learning could be maximized by providing them instructionally coherent small-group support through high-dosage tutoring. Students with IEPs, specifically, should have access to high-dosage tutoring as a support structure to align with the principle of least restrictive environment in a school’s continuum of supports. This approach of offering more practice and greater support represents a large shift from the decade-long strategy in Tennessee to offer struggling students “something different” at the first point of weakness.

Scheduling and Staffing: If schools shifted a majority of their academic support to a high-dosage tutoring structure, they would gain back 60 minutes a week from RTI Tier 2 structures and 210 minutes a week from Tier 3. Time and staff capacity from these settings could be repurposed to create additional high-dosage tutoring groups for more students in a cost-effective way. There may be opportunities for schools to build expertise in early literacy instruction across a range of roles, creating instructional teams that have deep content knowledge of research-based approaches to reading instruction as well as high-quality instructional materials, resulting in increased capacity to support students.

Funding: Districts implementing high-dosage tutoring are largely reliant on nonrecurring grant funds. The instructional, scheduling, and staffing implications from this analysis offer districts an opportunity to ease the transition away from grant funds to other more sustainable sources of revenue. The coherent approach described in the report and toolkit allows districts to: 1) Save money through decreased or discontinued use of disconnected assessments and materials, 2) Increase access to high-dosage tutoring under current staffing models, and 3) Focus high-dosage tutoring supports for students who benefit the most from this approach.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

The 2021 research, Design Principles for Accelerating Student Learning with High-Impact Tutoring, from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University and Results For America as well as TNTP’s 2022 paper, Instructional Coherence: A Key to High-Quality Learning Acceleration for All Students, informed the thinking behind SCORE’s research. 

The instructional coherence approach grounded in high-quality instructional materials (HQIM), the guidance on effective principles for small group instruction in alignment to high-dosage tutoring, Tennessee’s policy landscape to require adoption and training for the use of HQIM in core instruction, and new funding for high-dosage tutoring formed the basis for SCORE’s network and data analysis.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

The Report has been downloaded 1,868 times, the Toolkit has been downloaded 476 times, and the corresponding case studies have been downloaded 160 times. The webinar provided by SCORE engaged 204 viewers. Finally, following the report release, SCORE is aware of one district expanding instructionally coherent academic support to 31 additional elementary schools and 11 districts seeking technical assistance support to begin implementation.

The Education Trust

Network Policy Pillar: High Expectations, Responsive Systems 

Link: Automatic Enrollment Policies for Advanced Coursework – The Education Trust 

SUMMARY

This research and tools help advocates understand the positive impact of advanced coursework and policy solutions that extend access to advanced coursework for marginalized students, so they can advocate for equitable access in their state or community. 

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

EdTrust’s previous national research found Black and Latino students and students from low-income backgrounds are too often locked out of advanced coursework, missing out on critical opportunities that can set them up for success in college and careers. EdTrust seeks to change the narrative that students of color and students from low-income backgrounds are not ready for advanced classes through data and resources that show that high expectations and multiple measures of eligibility for advanced coursework leads to increased access and success. 

We also seek to change the systems that deny students access to those courses. Through work with national and state partners, we’ve identified a relatively simple but highly impactful policy solution: automatic enrollment in advanced coursework policies, also called “opt-out” policies. Generally, students are placed in advanced courses through educator, school counselor, or parent recommendation, or need to “opt-in,” which often replicates racial biases. With automatic enrollment policies, any student who meets or exceeds the state standard on the statewide exam in the preceding level to the advanced courses (or through another measure) can be enrolled into advanced classes automatically, rather than placing the onus on students and families to “opt in” or relying on teacher or school counselor recommendation. This reduces barriers to dual credit and advanced classes, particularly for underrepresented groups, and can help address hidden systemic inequities by more equitably enrolling students who are ready and eager to be in advanced classes. 

Our work lifts up this promising policy lever to show that we can easily get more students ready for college and careers, and we work with advocates and state and federal policymakers to advise on legislation that would incentivize or implement the policy. 

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

• Millions of students, especially Black and Latino students, lack access to advanced coursework, despite demonstrating that they are ready and eager for the challenge.  
• Automatic enrollment in advanced coursework policies, also called “opt-out” policies, are a particularly potent and relatively simple policy solution to extend access to underserved students.   
• States like Washington and North Carolina, and districts in Texas and Washington, that have already adopted and implemented policies like automatic enrollment have seen significant increases in access to advanced coursework and serve as a model for other states and districts across the country.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

As EdTrust has for nearly thirty years, we developed our research and tools in close partnership with experts in the field and national and state partners, including many in the PIE network. We worked collaboratively with PIE network members Stand for Children WA, EdAllies in Minnesota, and BEST NC in North Carolina to learn from the great work in their states, and consider how our tools can be applied to inform policy introduction and implementation. We’ve gathered educator and advocate voice through Stand for Children WA, EdAllies, E3 Alliance, EdTrust-Texas, and the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence to understand access to advanced coursework in states and consider how automatic enrollment policies can be implemented or strengthened to extend access. 

We’ve used our research and tools on advanced coursework to support PIE network members to take action in their states. In Massachusetts, we worked with EdTrust-Massachusetts and MassInsight to conduct research on access to advanced coursework in the state, provide concrete policy recommendations and share them with advocates in the Massachusetts Education Equity Partnership. This led the coalition to support the introduction of legislation that would require all state colleges to implement a consistent standard for accepting AP exams scores of a 3 or higher to receive course credit, a policy lacking in Massachusetts but in place in nearly three dozen states. In Kentucky, we leveraged our research on advanced coursework in the state to support the Prichard Committee and their partners to testify in favor of increasing access to advanced coursework through automatic enrollment.  Similarly, in Minnesota, we’ve worked closely with EdAllies to support their efforts to expand access to advanced coursework. EdAllies welcomed EdTrust Policy Lead Dr. Kristen Hengtgen to their podcast amplifED to discuss the decline in rigorous coursework in Minnesota and across the country, and Dr. Hengtgen testified before the Minnesota House of Representatives in support of HF2208 and the Minnesota Senate in support of SF2618 which would establish and fund an academic acceleration program where she applied EdTrust’s research and resources.  

Additionally, EdTrust has been the leading group pushing the federal Advanced Coursework Equity Act since its first inception several years ago, and has leveraged our research and tools to work intimately with the lead offices at the end of the 117th Congress (i.e., end of 2022) to identify ways to improve the legislation in advance of its reintroduction, including by providing edits and recommendations on ways to change and/or restructure portions of the text. 

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

EdTrust’s automatic enrollment landing page and accompanying resources has received Nearly 1,000 page views despite having only publicly launched a few months ago. 

As a result of EdTrust’s research, technical assistance, and advocacy, the Advanced Coursework Equity Act has more support from both congressional offices and partner organizations (13 co-sponsors in the House, 4 in the Senate) and we expect those numbers to rise in the coming months.  

More than 75 advocates and partners from across 9 states participated in EdTrust’s Hill Day to discuss education equity priorities, with a focus on the Advanced Coursework Equity Act. These partners applied EdTrust’s research and tools to engage in more than 30 bipartisan meetings with both House and Senate offices, as well as staff-level meetings with congressional leaders. 

Advocates and policymakers in Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Minnesota have applied our research and tools to support the introduction of policies that would increase access to advanced coursework.

Education Resource Strategies, The Education Trust

Network Policy Pillar: High Expectations, Responsive Systems 

Link: ARE Data Stories 

SUMMARY

This research helps education leaders and advocates build knowledge and capacity around equity in education so they can take action to better serve all students—especially those with the highest learning needs and those furthest from opportunity. 

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

Better understanding spurs more effective action. Our interactive Data Stories foreground the compounding effects of resource inequities in our education system and guide users to the Alliance for Resource Equity’s suite of comprehensive advocacy tools. 

The Data Stories transform a complex issue into digestible concepts, creating a narrative for advocates to draw from as they work to improve student outcomes and opportunities. By incorporating both national and district-level data, it offers deep insights into how students experience schooling from building to building. 

And the research is already driving change: District leaders, state leaders, press and media leads, and education advocates have informed us of the value this research has in promoting the importance of resource equity. With actionable data points at their fingertips, these stakeholders are better able to make the case for resource equity in their own districts.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

1. The compounding effects of resource inequity result in certain students—including students from low-income backgrounds, students with higher needs, and students of color—being consistently and systematically denied access to the resources that research tells us matter the most. 
2. These students are less likely to: 
• Receive equal (or equitable) funding. 
• Have access to effective teachers or principals. 
• Have access to counselors or social workers. 
• Take classes in learning-ready buildings. 
• Be surrounded by a diverse student body to help them feel like they belong. 
3. The first step toward creating a more equitable educational system is diagnosing resource equity in your district—evaluating both how much money you spend and how well you spend it. Using data from districts all across the country, the Data Stories give leaders the context needed to analyze resource equity in their own districts—and take action with our other tools to influence change.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

ARE Data Stories was created as part of the Alliance for Resource Equity partnership with the Education Trust. The ARE collaboration underscores the value of uniting organizations’ individual strengths in support of a shared mission. ERS brings significant analytical expertise and two decades of hands-on experience helping districts and states advance resource equity, while Ed Trust brings deep knowledge of community engagement, advocacy, and policy change. Together, we blend our strengths to create a suite of well-rounded, informed, and valuable resources for the education community. The PIE Network has been a continual source of inspiration for our two teams, helping us frame our resources through the lens of advocates and state leaders: two core audiences who hold the potential to influence change. 

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

This publication already has nearly 10,000 views from state and district leaders across every single U.S. state. In the first couple months after releasing, we heard from a number of major philanthropic partners and SEAs who found the data compelling and have been leveraging the resource to help advocate for change.

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS)

Network Policy Pillar: Innovative Options 

Link: Best Practices to Accelerate Student Learning Series – National Alliance for Public Charter Schools 

SUMMARY

This research or tool helps school leaders, staff, and families to address pandemic learning loss and ensure all students, including those from marginalized backgrounds, are successful.

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

The Best Practices to Accelerate Student Learning series is comprised of one policy brief, six case studies, and two toolkits, and it is the result of a year of research across a diverse range of charter schools and intended to be leveraged across the charter sector and beyond. The purpose of the research was to understand innovative strategies charter schools have developed to address pandemic learning loss. These innovations include recommendations for policy development, operational findings, and, of course, academic and social emotional innovations impacting students most directly. Each innovative strategy documented across the series is aimed at creating a school environment where combating pandemic learning loss is both prioritized and realized. 

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

The Best Practices to Accelerate Student Learning series proposes a wide range of actionable takeaways for school leaders and staff to improve student academic achievement and social emotional wellbeing. To select a few: 

1. Maximizing instructional time. We developed both a case study and toolkit to understand how charter schools are rearranging the school day and modifying job descriptions to ensure teachers spend less time on administrative and operational tasks and more time in the classroom. The toolkit is a self-audit tool that can be used by school leaders to assess if and how they are losing valuable instructional time. 
2. Creative and flexible staffing to support student needs. We developed a case study documenting how charter schools serving English learner students used their autonomy to adapt to meet the needs of an evolving student population.  
3. Leveraging families as partners to support students with disabilities. We developed a case study focused on a charter school that reflected on lessons learned about family engagement and support during the pandemic to formally incorporate it into their program following the pandemic. 

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

During our research process, we conducted 10 site visits, spoke with 88 focus group participants, and facilitated 53 interviews. This extensive research included school leaders, staff, families, and a range of policy experts. PIE Network members in these conversations included the California Charter Schools Association, the Northeast Charter Schools Network, Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and the Center for American Progress. Further, we are spending this year presenting our research at events such as the Diverse Charter Schools Coalition and the National Charter Schools Conference, where we know this work will reach PIE Network members.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

The resources have been downloaded 588 times (as of July 10). We have presented our research findings and provided technical assistance support at two education related events with immediate plans to present at two more and continue to seek additional opportunities, both in and outside of the charter sector, to share our work.

Rodel

Network Policy Pillar: High Expectations, Innovative Options, Responsive Systems 

Link: Global Lessons on Career Pathways 

SUMMARY

This research helps policymakers and practitioners in the US improve their approaches to career pathways by learning from their peers in Australia, Canada, New Zealand Scotland, and the US. The intent is to help students better navigate a rapidly changing world. This is the first international comparative study on career pathways, and it includes multiple components. Visit Global Lessons on Career Pathways to read blogs, podcasts and the full working paper.

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

Career pathways is perhaps one of the only bipartisan issues that leaders on the left and right can agree on. We have a massive challenge in that the economy, AI, and political polarization are exacerbating the opportunity divides in our country. Those with means will move at an unprecedented pace, those with limited means will be left behind. We have two trillion dollars in federal investment to build new green jobs, microchips, etc., and we don’t have the talent pipelines to meet the moment. By learning from high performing countries (more similar to ours than Switzerland and Germany), we can bootstrap the nation and close equity gaps across our states.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

1. We don’t need to be Switzerland to build a world-class career pathways system.
2. The US has thousands of career pathways ‘flowers’ blooming on soft money in this space. We need scalable and sustainable systems.
3. Globally, countries are realizing that we need to eliminate the false separation between general and vocational education, and the US is well-positioned to be a leader in this international shift. 

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

Sixty members of the PIE network across 12 states contributed to the US survey of policymakers and practitioners.  The blogs and podcasts on each of the five countries have been released over the last six months and the final working paper is due to be released by August 2024. (Listen to leaders from these countries discuss the research: Scotland | Australia | New Zealand.)  We have presented the preliminary findings at PIE Network, Grantmakers for Education, and JFF as well as international conferences in France, Italy, Mexico and Scotland. We are working to understand how many PIE Network members have used this research, and look forward to working with more leaders to support their policy and advocay.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

The blogs on this research have received more than 3,000 views, and the Rodel-Cast episodes featuring national and world leaders have received more than 600 views on You Tube.

ExcelinEd

Network Policy Pillar: Responsive Systems 

Link: 2024 Data Science Education Research 

SUMMARY

In February 2024, ExcelinEd and The Burning Glass Institute released their Data Science is for Everyone report and an accompanying dashboard, offering new insights into the growing demand for data science skills and, equally important, raising awareness for the importance of building these skills into the K-12 curriculum. This research, an exemplar of the Responsive Systems pillar, highlights the importance of gaining basic data science fluency in a K-12 setting, as it gives students important critical thinking and everyday data literacy skills while also preparing them for in-demand and high-paying jobs. 

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

It is only by ensuring that everyone graduates high school with at least basic fluency in data science that we can create a future in which workers have access to good jobs that offer economic stability and mobility, in which states can attract and retain the most innovative and industrious employers, and in which the nation can preserve its standing as a global economic powerhouse.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

Three key takeaways from our research include:

1. More than 22% of US job postings nationwide ask for data science skills. While we might expect states like California and Virginia to be high in data science skill demand, even the states with the lowest demand still have over 15% of job postings mention data science skills.
2. Data science skills are no longer tied to a narrow set of occupations. Rather, it has become a set of key skills that are sought by employers across a wide range of industries—even industries not typically considered to be “data driven,” such as healthcare and manufacturing.
3. For some jobs, like artificial Intelligence and machine learning, employers are willing to pay up to a 17% wage premium.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

We have partnered with the DataScience4Everyone coalition which was formed in 2021 in response to research from leaders like Freakonomics author Steve Levitt. The coalition unites organizations, schools and universities with the common purpose of advancing data science education so that every K-12 student is equipped with the data literacy skills needed to succeed in our modern world. From the coalition we have found valuable resources and thought partnership.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

To broaden the reach of our research, we hosted a Data Science Webinar, which was attended by 56 individuals from schools and colleges, nonprofits, state education agencies and legislatures. Our sister organization, ExcelinEd in Action, also dedicated a Statehouse Spotlight podcast episode to this topic entitled “How States are Answering the Workforce’s Call for Data Science Education.” 

Concurrently, and informed by this research, ExcelinEd released a model policy and FAQ guide giving lawmakers and state education agencies the evidence and tools to develop strong data science education policy. Combined with our efforts to promote the research and tool, we believe that these resources will help policymakers and employers anticipate industry needs and help students access the tools they need for successful careers post-high school. We will continue to promote our research and model policy in 2025 and beyond and identify direct impacts, legislative or otherwise, that come from those using our resources.

EdAllies

Network Policy Pillar: Great Educators 

Link: Eliminating Barriers for Teachers of Color in Minnesota | EdAllies

SUMMARY

This research helps policymakers, administrators, and the community understand the challenges and systemic barriers facing prospective teachers of color so they can take actionable steps to enact policies and processes that support teachers of color entering the classroom.

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

As of 2023, students of color and indigenous students made up about 38% of Minnesota’s K-12 population, but teachers of color and indigenous teachers made up only about 6% of the total workforce. These gaps have well-documented consequences for student outcomes, especially for Black students. A student is over 13% more likely to graduate high school and enroll in college if they have just one Black teacher between kindergarten and 3rd grade; if they have two within that time period, that rises to a 32% greater likelihood. Additionally, Black teachers increase classroom engagement by 26% and reduce absences of all students by over 20%. Despite the positive impact Black teachers have on student outcomes, Black teachers make up only 1.5% of the teaching corps in MN.

This report combines statewide data and the accounts of a Community Action Team (CAT)—seven once-prospective teachers of color who seriously considered entering the K-12 teaching profession but ultimately decided on another career path. Their firsthand accounts are essential to understanding and repairing this broken process. The CAT team met over the course of several months to develop specific recommendations for change to be implemented by school leaders and policymakers to improve recruitment and retention.

While states like Minnesota have made some investments in attracting and supporting teachers of color, the work that has been done fails to address the systemic issues that prevent passionate, interested teachers of color from completing the process of getting their licenses. 

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

• Address financial and time capacity barriers through direct financial support, covering ancillary costs, and fairly incentivize early-career teachers.
• Address rigid and unaccommodating systems through mentorship, increasing teacher prep instructor diversity, improving partnerships between teacher prep programs and high schools, and providing support for teacher certification exams. 
• Address “The Invisible Tax” in K-12 settings by reforming personnel policies that harm teachers of color, creating pathways for unlicensed school staff to work while preparing for licensure, and providing culturally relevant mental health support for staff.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

There is no better group to convene on this topic than people of color who have experienced these barriers first-hand. Over the course of nearly six months, the CAT cohort met regularly to:

• Share and hear stories of cohort members’ experiences with the teacher pipeline, helping us to identify trends and problem areas in teacher recruitment;
• Dig into state and national data, and help to identify what contributes to the trends seen; and
• Through a facilitated process, identify and research policy solutions to develop community-led recommendations for change to be implemented by school leaders and policymakers to improve recruitment and retention efforts

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

The report, released in June 2024, will be instrumental in developing EdAllies’ 2025 policy priorities. During the launch event, we held an open discussion with an engaged audience that included representatives from Black Men Teach, the National Parents Union, the African American Leadership Forum, and several higher education and district staff. It has been shared with our network of over 1,500 partners, funders, community members, and educators as well as members of the media, and has already sparked the interest of key legislators. 

This research informed EdAllies’ decision to make advocating for paid student teaching a policy priority during the 2024 Minnesota legislative session. Thanks to collective advocacy, where EdAllies focused on making the program as equitable as possible for historically unsure underrepresented groups, the Minnesota legislature created a pilot a paid student teaching program in 2024. Teacher candidates at 8 colleges and universities will be paid for their student teaching work, regardless of their income or intended licensure area. While we advocated for an approach that would better target limited stipend funding for preservice teachers from underrepresented backgrounds, this pilot is still an important first step in addressing unpaid student teaching, a major barrier to the classroom for many aspiring teachers.

The Education Trust-Midwest

Network Policy Pillar: Responsive Systems 

Link: Michigan Partnership for Equity and Opportunity 

SUMMARY

This research/tool helps every Michigander have access to actionable research that demonstrates the positive impact of greater funding and resources for students from low-income backgrounds in their individual communities, so they can be empowered to advocate to ensure that students with the greatest needs can reach their full academic potential and recover from COVID-19 learning losses. Our searchable database and public website arm advocates with community-specific data for every school district and public school in Michigan, and provides research, background and best practices from leading education states.

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

The Education Trust-Midwest and coalition partners have engaged in a multi-pronged campaign throughout the past year, building upon the historic school funding transformation that was passed in Michigan in 2023. This transformation was in large part thanks to our sustained advocacy through our years-long fair funding campaign, Opportunity for All.  

The campaign also includes ETM’s 2024 State of Michigan Education Report, Brown’s Hope: Fulfilling the Promise in Michigan, that included the following research and findings: 

• This year nearly half of all Michigan students of color and two-thirds of all Black students in Michigan attend public school in districts with high concentrations of poverty where 73% or more of the students come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, compared to only 13% of Michigan’s White students learning in those same school districts.  
• Michigan students in districts with the highest concentrations of poverty are much less likely to be in classrooms with highly experienced teachers who are, on average, more likely to be effective. Research shows that teachers are the single most important in-school factor related to student success, highlighting the critical need for effective teachers in all classrooms. (https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/does-teaching-experience-increase-teacher-effectiveness-review-research) 
• School funding disparities undermine higher-poverty districts’ capacity to support their students’ educational recovery from the pandemic. Had Michigan returned to its 2006 school funding levels by 2016, our state would have invested 20 percent more — or $22 billion dollars more — on K-12 public education between 2016 and 2021. High-poverty districts bear the brunt of that lack of investment. (https://www.schoolfinancedata.org/the-adequacy-and-fairness-of-state-school-finance-systems-2024/) 

The report was published in conjunction with a new campaign – Opportunity for All – which included a new research tool, which is designed to call attention not only to decades of neglect to Black, Latino/a students, and students from low-income backgrounds – and the resources and supports their public schools need and deserve – but also to the urgent need to address pandemic learning losses that most profoundly impacted students who are the most underserved. Our policy and advocacy on this issue positively impacted nearly 740,000 students from low-income backgrounds in Michigan and nearly 99,000 English Learners by securing significant funding wins amid a contracted budget cycle and laying the foundation for ongoing advocacy.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

• Ed Trust-Midwest’s funding efforts provided groundbreaking new data to empower every Michigander – local parents, advocates and policy makers – to work together to advance an investment agenda for Michigan’s children, from early childhood through high school graduation.
• The campaign allows community members to see how much more every individual school district is receiving for students from low-income backgrounds under Michigan’s new funding formula – The Opportunity Index; how much school districts would receive if the new Index were fully funded; and how much each school district would receive if Michigan invested in students from low-income backgrounds through a truly transformational model like that in  Massachusetts, the nation’s leading education state.
• This campaign website, research and fair funding tool took the complex topic of “school finance” and made it an accessible and radically more transparent issue that all Michiganders can digest – and allows anyone to see the impact of state policymakers’ investment decisions in students from low-income backgrounds, while arming advocates with actionable research to make policy change.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

Ed Trust-Midwest has leveraged PIE Network resources through the years on equitable funding messaging and hearing from experts on strategies from across the nation. 

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

• Ed Trust-Midwest has been and continues to be steadfast in building knowledge about equitable funding practices in Michigan and leading states through numerous presentations of tailored data and modeling to empower key political stakeholders, partners, and education advocates. Leading up to the public unveiling, ETM delivered presentations or served on panel discussions to hundreds of stakeholders – locally and nationally – expressing the urgency to address the systemic inequities in Michigan education and our state’s inequitable school funding system particularly impact Black and Latino/a students and students from low-income backgrounds. 
• During the unveiling, ETM successfully secured 14 stories/interviews in both print and radio outlets. The campaign stories are estimated to have received over 2.9 million media views with a potential audience estimated at over 3.5 billion.  
• Leading up to the release of the tool and website, ETM presented nationally at SXSW EDU 2024 on March 6, 2024, as national leaders and experts showcased what the nation can learn from Michigan and its historic recent strides in making its state’s school funding formula more fair and supportive of students from low-income backgrounds and English Learners. Through a podcast by EWA Radio, the campaign, too and data was shared broadly with media and listeners. 
• Our work was also featured nationally by New America in a research report, ‘Crossing the Line: Segregation and Resource Inequality Between America’s School Districts. ’ 
• ETM’s digital campaign surrounding our report and Opportunity for All campaign reached 6.3K, 150+ engagements. Additionally, the Opportunity for All website garnered 2.5K users since its launch in May 2024 alone. In that time, our top performing pages include the home page, the Opportunity for All “Find Your District” funding tool page, Lessons from Leading States page, Michigan’s Status Quo page and We Imagine page. Users are finding their way to the campaign page largely organically, yet several visitors are being directed from sources including the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News sites and various social media platforms.

Deans for Impact

Network Policy Pillar: Great Educators 

Link: Mobilizing Aspiring Teachers as Tutors – Policy Solutions 

SUMMARY

This research helps policymakers and advocates to advance policy efforts to mobilize aspiring teachers to serve in high-impact tutoring roles so they can both accelerate K-12 student learning and strengthen and diversify the teacher workforce.

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

American PK-12 schools today face major challenges: pandemic-related learning loss, deep inequities in student access to quality educational experiences, and a shortage of quality training and ongoing support for educators. Results from the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) show consistent, widespread struggles in literacy and math, pre- and post-pandemic, with significant disparities in performance among students of color and those from low-income backgrounds in comparison to their white, middle-class peers.

In our research-to-policy framework, Mobilizing Aspiring Teachers as Tutors, we proposed federal and state policy solutions that would address these issues through mobilizing the 600,000 aspiring teachers enrolled in educator-preparation programs as high-impact PK-12 tutors in high-need communities. This approach:

• Benefits PK-12 students by increasing their access to academic and social-emotional support, and accelerating their learning, with motivated and knowledgeable tutors
• Strengthens aspiring teacher success through their preparation experience by connecting them with valuable quality, on-the-job learning and financial support
• Provides schools with immediate staffing solutions and the ability to cultivate and identify future teaching talent that would be more prepared to address the unique needs of their students

A number of programs already use aspiring teachers as tutors, a practice that grew at the local level during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our report and coordinated advocacy during the 2023-24 school year seek to scale these efforts at the state and federal levels to broadly improve student outcomes and strengthen and diversify the teaching workforce, particularly in communities where inequitable access to quality educational experiences is most prevalent.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

1. Make high-impact tutoring a common opportunity for aspiring teachers prior to licensure. Traditionally, states have required aspiring teachers to spend time in PK-12 schools via “early field experiences,” logging clinical hours through observation but without necessarily requiring on-the-job learning with PK-12 students prior to a culminating clinical experience. By making high-impact tutoring a foundational component of learning to teach, leaders can provide meaningful practice opportunities for aspiring teachers to strengthen their instructional skills, build more confidence and joy for teaching, and earn compensation. We offer policy solutions for states and the U.S. Department of Labor to adopt requirements and guidance for making this a reality.
2. Streamline funding to enable more aspiring teachers to serve as high-impact tutors. There are several sources of federal and state funding that seek to support students with great needs, develop effective teachers, and accelerate student learning for all students. However, in practice, these funding streams often do not support one another and are riddled with sub-priorities and limitations that can make it difficult to access the resources for their intended purposes. Our policy solutions recommend modifications to existing programs and introduce new legislative ideas to foster more efficient and effective processes for tapping valuable funding sources.
3. Ensure program and tutor quality so that students learn and tutors become strong teachers. Not all tutoring is created equally. Many school districts have turned to tutor providers with negligible track records for supporting student success. Our policy recommendations anchor programs to research-based guidelines and practices to ensure both aspiring teachers and students are connected to high-quality tutoring experiences.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

Our policy framework and subsequent advocacy over the course of SY23-24 was informed by research findings and programmatic experiences and insights from a network of leaders and practitioners representing – at the time of development – 23 tutoring initiatives across the country. These initiatives mobilized more than 1,000 tutors serving nearly 3,000 students across a broad range of geographic and educational contexts during the 2022-23 school year. We conducted surveys, field research and analysis, and learning visits, and also convened a working group to develop the report. We  also solicited feedback from national partners and field experts including our grant partner Accelerate and PIE members including, but not limited to, Educate Texas, Tennessee SCORE, New Jersey CANN, TNTP, and NCTQ.

We amplified our report through all our owned communications channels; supported the tutoring initiatives in our network to leverage it for advocacy in their states and at the federal level; and directly shared it with more than 100 leading education nonprofits, thought leaders, and state and federal policymakers. As a result, there were, and are, a number of ways these leaders, practitioners, and policymakers applied our research to action, resulting in the following:

• Increase in the number of educator-preparation programs including tutoring as an option for their teacher-candidates. For example, National Louis University began to pilot a tutoring initiative to mobilize their own teacher-candidates as tutors in local and virtual high-impact tutoring programs upon learning about this effort and joining our network. Bowling Green State University scaled its partnership with Bowling Green City Schools to serve students in each of its elementary schools in both math and reading. 
• Increased paid, on-the-job-learning experiences for aspiring teachers, including by leveraging Federal-Work Study funds to mobilize college students as tutors. Our framework was the first to name Federal Work-Study (FWS) as a funding solution: in particular, we advocated to increase the percentage of FWS used for community service, which includes tutoring. Since we’ve socialized this key policy solution with partners, it’s been championed by White House-based initiative National Partnership for Student Success and U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, who issued a call to action for higher education institutions and asked to double the community service percentage for FWS. This solution has also been included in reports by FutureEd and Saga Education and covered extensively by reporters at outlets including, but not limited to, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Higher Ed Dive, The Hechinger Report, Diverse: Issues in HIgher Education, Education Week, EdSurge, and others. At the state level, we supported programs to advocate for direct appropriations for this work in New Jersey and Virginia; removed prohibitions in Ohio that limited the ability of aspiring teachers to receive pay for instructional services; and supported a program in Indiana to access federal Volunteer Generation Funds. 
• Increased consideration for this effort among state and federal policy leaders. In partnership with programs in our network, we advocated for these policy solutions with state legislators across sixteen states. . Findings also informed the PATHS to Tutor Act, which received bipartisan support and became bicameral legislation after being introduced in the Senate in Summer 2023 and in the House of Representatives in Winter 2024. A few notable advances include: 
• Redefining the state definition for “accelerated instruction” in Louisiana to reflect characteristics of high-impact tutoring. The state now requires any student who is not successful on state assessments in math or reading to have access to high-impact reading instruction; to support effective implementation, the state doubled funding for this program. 
• State interest and approval of a new “tutor-to-teacher’ pipeline in Delaware, led by new DFI’s Aspiring Teachers as Tutors Network partners Reading Assist and the University of Wilmington
• Texas introduced its “Effective Preparation Framework,” detailing its vision for high-quality pathways into teaching; this framework emphasizes the importance of early field experiences for aspiring teachers and defines high-impact tutoring as an effective clinical experience. 
• Several states and individual programs, including but lot limited to Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, New Jersey, Texas, and Virginia designed and/or launched new Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Programs aligned to National Guidelines for Standards for K-12 Teacher Apprenticeships, which identifies high-impact tutoring as a meaningful on-the-job-learning experience for apprentices. 

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

• 6,000+ webpage views of the framework and related web content since its release, as of July 2024
• Policymakers in 18 states who engaged with the report thanks to one-pagers and direct advocacy by members of DFI’s Aspiring Teachers as Tutors Network
• Over a dozen national media mentions of the report or key research findings and actions from the report, where previously there were none, in top-tier education outlets such as Chalkbeat, The 74, Education Week, Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Hechinger Report.
• Over a dozen national leading partners in education who amplified the report, or key actions from the report, including Accelerate, FutureEd, Saga Education, the National Partnership for Student Success, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Labor, the National Student Support Accelerator, Pathways Alliance, and the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading.

GO Public Schools

Network Policy Pillar: High Expectations 

Link: California School Dashboard Guide 

SUMMARY

This tool helps families, advocates, and education leaders to better understand and utilize the California School Dashboard so they can assess their schools’ and districts’ progress and areas of need, advocate for change, and hold education leaders accountable.

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

A crucial step in enhancing student outcomes and opportunities is understanding the current status of student performance. The California School Dashboard is the state’s primary tool for school accountability and information sharing. Its multifaceted approach—measuring progress across various areas, combining current year data with improvement metrics, and providing robust disaggregation by student group—plays a vital role in the school accountability system.

Despite its importance, the Dashboard can be confusing for families, community members, and even educators. GO Public Schools’ California School Dashboard guides and webinars make the Dashboard more accessible and actionable. By translating technical data into understandable language and providing clear insights, these resources empower users to understand their schools’ performance, advocate effectively for improvements, and address equity gaps. The guides include statewide and localized reports for Fresno, Oakland, and West Contra Costa in both English and Spanish, highlighting strengths and areas for growth in districts and schools, particularly focusing on underserved student groups. This approach not only helps in identifying disparities but also in replicating successful practices across various schools and districts.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

1. Consider Both Status and Change: The Dashboard’s performance levels combine current “status” (recent performance) with “change” (improvement or decline from the previous year). Evaluating both provides a comprehensive view of student outcomes. Status alone may overlook growth, while focusing only on change might obscure remaining gaps.
2. Dashboard’s Role in Accountability: The Dashboard is central to California’s school accountability system, influencing Local Control and Accountability Plans, systems of support, and charter school authorizations. Understanding this data empowers family and community advocates to hold districts accountable. Recommended next steps include exploring school data, identifying and learning from high-growth schools, using data in school and district committees, and ensuring systems use this data effectively.
3. Uncovering Equity Gaps: The Dashboard’s Equity Reports highlight significant disparities in outcomes, revealing consistent opportunity gaps for student groups such as foster youth, English learners, and Black or African American students. Our guides also spotlight schools and districts with positive outcomes, helping to identify practices for replication and promoting equitable educational practices.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

Our work was informed by feedback from family leaders who often struggle to interpret school and district data for advocacy, and from school and district leaders who frequently underutilize the Dashboard. These insights motivated us to enhance the accessibility and applicability of the California School Dashboard. Our efforts aimed to support both family and district leaders in understanding and using Dashboard data effectively, thereby holding systems accountable and driving educational improvements.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

Our team has effectively quantified the reach and impact of the California School Dashboard guides and webinars through a range of key metrics. The Dashboard reports have been downloaded over 1,800 times, showcasing widespread interest and engagement. The tools have reached legislators and local education leaders throughout California, who have leveraged them to demystify the Dashboard and gain clearer insights into the data. This broad dissemination underscores the tool’s significant role in informing educational policy and decision-making. Additionally, the guides and webinars have been integrated into our Family Leadership Program (FLP) trainings and used in school-site data discussions, highlighting their practical application and value in advancing educational advocacy and planning. These combined efforts demonstrate the extensive impact of our resources in enhancing the understanding and utilization of the California School Dashboard across the state.

BEST NC

Network Policy Pillar: High Expectations 

Link: NCEdFacts.org

SUMMARY

BEST NC’s Facts & Figures resource helps policymakers and educators find the data they need to be grounded in a shared set of facts about North Carolina’s educational landscape so they can seek solutions that will benefit educators, students, and families, not argue over basic information.

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

Facts matter! That’s why every impactful policy solution is grounded in great data. But educators, researchers, and policymakers often have misconceptions that they bring to important education discussions simply because finding accurate, relevant data can be difficult.

And even if they could find it, most people don’t have the time or expertise to collect, let alone analyze, that data. 

But in North Carolina, we no longer have that problem.

That’s because BEST NC’s Facts & Figures: Education in North Carolina, the highly anticipated, one-of-a-kind annual publication and landing page features the most comprehensive collection of education data in North Carolina! Featuring key metrics gathered from dozens of agencies, organizations, stakeholders, reports, papers, publications, and data requests, Facts & Figures’ hundreds of data points are presented in an easily digestible format – with tables, charts, graphics, and even interactive online heat maps, spanning from cradle to career. And every source is listed so you know exactly where that information comes from.

Most importantly, we ensure that everyone can engage in the work of improving North Carolina’s education system – at any time – by providing the most updated Facts & Figures online, free to download.

That means stakeholders can always turn to the most recent Facts & Figures guide with the confidence that they’ve got the most thorough, nuanced, and up-to-date information available.

And they do! The physical 76-page Facts & Figures guide sits on the desks of North Carolina’s most prominent education and business leaders, in the offices and briefcases of state legislators and policymakers, and is often heard being referenced in subcommittees and on the floor of the North Carolina Legislature! 

Ask anyone from across the political and educational spectrum in North Carolina and they’ll tell you: the go-to source for education data in the state of North Carolina is Facts & Figures. You can hear what they have to say for themselves in this brief video. Whether it’s a legislative committee hearing, a state board meeting, or a strategy session about program implementation, education stakeholders can be found pulling out their worn-out and bookmarked copies of Facts & Figures.

Facts matter. Go Figure!

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

• Facts & Figures is not a traditional report or tool. Its longevity, recognizability, and commitment to unbiased accuracy makes it a trusted resource, which allows it to sit in the center of critical education policy and program discussions. Many important policy conversations have pivoted when a Facts & Figures guide is opened mid-discussion, rooting conversations in facts instead of assumptions or misinformation.  Here are just a few examples of data that are making an impact today:
  • An analysis of teacher preparation, including educator preparation program enrollment and a breakdown of preparation routes for first-year teachers. The 8-year trends in the 2023 and 2024 guides showed a near doubling of teachers coming into the profession through alternative pathways, sparking active debate about the future of teacher preparation in North Carolina.
  • Inflation-adjusted 20-year trends in per-pupil expenditures (PPE) and interactive district-level heat maps of per pupil expenditures continue to bust myths about spending levels and funding equity.
  • Graphics on diploma integrity contrast high school graduation rates with student proficiency levels and ACT scores. This is a powerful data point that policymakers have used as a call to action for education innovation and improvement.

• Embedded in the guide are five Spotlights, which are deeper dives into research and reporting on timely and relevant education topics in North Carolina. This year’s Spotlights include a one-of-a-kind examination of North Carolina school expenditures during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as an overview of North Carolina’s significant investment in the Science of Reading and early indicators of its impact.
• Lastly, Facts & Figures has become a key branding strategy for BEST NC, and easily our most recognizable calling card. Even when we are not in a room, Facts & Figures usually is. So when we lean in on an education issue, we are welcomed into the conversation as a trusted source. And because of our deep commitment to presenting the data without editorializing it, the Facts & Figures guide brands us as an unbiased and apolitical source of information – which means the same data is being used in policy discussions on both sides of the aisle, allowing for more common ground.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

When BEST NC was first formed, Colorado Succeeds had a data guide that inspired this concept. It was smaller, but the concept and structure were inspired by their work. 

Since then, several members of the PIE Network have taken the Facts & Figures concept back to their states. One former member, who is now a state chief, called recently to share that they are trying to develop a similar guide in their state, and that they were reaching out to us because no one else in the country has a resource as robust as ours.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

Over the past several years, we have distributed thousands of physical copies of Facts & Figures to members of the NC General Assembly, Governor’s Office, NC State Board of Education, NC State Superintendent and leadership team, NC Community College System Board, UNC Board of Governors, and many other education, business, and policy leaders in our state and across the nation. We also hand deliver copies to legislators, many who eagerly anticipate its arrival every year.

Additionally, Facts & Figures is available to download for free on our website at NCEdFacts.org, a landing page with additional resources and interactive charts and maps. NCEdFacts.org continues to remain BEST NC’s most visited landing page, often surpassing visits to our organization’s homepage, and the digital copy of Facts & Figures is downloaded hundreds of times throughout the year.

Facts & Figures has also been highlighted in EducationNC, North Carolina’s premier education news outlet.  You can view a brief video with policymakers and business leaders talking about the value it adds to the education dialogue in North Carolina.

Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE)

Network Policy Pillar: Responsive Systems

Link: AI in Education 

SUMMARY

CRPE’s work in AI rapid response research helps advocates, policymakers, and philanthropic organizations to understand the fast-changing landscape of generative AI, including developments in the field, emerging state-level policies and guidelines, and bright spots of innovation so they can make informed decisions about how to equitably incorporate AI into learning, teaching, policy, and practice. 

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

This work is essential because AI is advancing by the minute and carries significant opportunity and risk for educational equity and opportunity. Guidance for systems, teachers, and students/families is desperately needed. AI has the potential to tip the scales of accessibility and equity even more askew unless leaders act now to ensure otherwise. Policy advocates must be well informed about how AI guidance is playing out in states and what policy and implementation issues schools and school systems are wrestling with to ensure that students who are already behind or disadvantaged do not fall further behind more privileged students and that students who need AI-enabled interventions (such as personalized learning) the most actually have access to them. 

CRPE is addressing the ever-changing landscape of AI through (1) rapidly gathering evidence related to state- and federal-level AI policies, system-level implementation, and bright spots of innovation; and (2) working closely with experts in policy, advocacy, and edtech to solve for equity in AI through in-person convenings and ongoing collaborations. Learn more here.

CRPE is committed to remaining at the forefront of this ever-changing technology and to continually informing our audience about new research, policies, and perhaps most importantly, examples of innovation that prove that AI can be implemented effectively and equitably to help students learn and to help teachers and administrators better manage their roles and responsibilities. 

Further, we’re committed to gathering leaders in education, advocacy, and edtech to collaborate on problem-solving, best practices, and solving for equity in AI. We will release a white paper next week detailing the conclusions and recommendations from our recent gathering in Albuquerque, NM in April 2024. Below is a link to the embargoed white paper, which offers action steps for policymakers, advocates, funders, and state and federal government leaders to appropriately address the advent of AI and ensure that the technology is accessible and equitable for all students. Preview our embargoed report, Wicked Opportunities: Leveraging AI to Transform Education.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

States are taking a slow and fragmented approach to policy, leaving school districts on their own to navigate the risks and opportunities associated with generative AI. More assertive and proactive state and federal policy is urgently needed. And the education sector must speak with a unified voice to advocate for policy around equitable access, bias, AI literacy, privacy, and quality assurances.

There are early signs that more advantaged school systems are moving the most quickly to prepare for AI realities and train their teachers. Policymakers and advocates must move quickly to ensure that AI tools and technologies are accessible to all students, particularly those from underrepresented or disadvantaged backgrounds. This involves providing necessary resources, training, and support to bridge the digital divide.

Other countries like South Korea and Singapore, as well as some U.S. school districts, are showing that AI can be a tool to radically customize education, connect student interests with career aspirations, and make the job of teaching much easier and more effective. Those designing AI-enabled learning, tutoring, and curriculum should consider how they can use AI tools to analyze student data, identify learning gaps, personalize instruction, and help educators tailor interventions and resources to meet individual student needs. 

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

CRPE convened a cross-sector group of national leaders in April 2024, including education policy leaders, systems leaders, edtech leaders, advocates, and national funders, to discuss a national strategy for ensuring equitable and effective AI use in schools. CRPE  invited over a dozen PIE members Executive Directors or staffers to this event As a result of our work, we have had requests from media, funders, and policymakers to weigh in on news items, strategic plans, and state policy plans. 

Tennessee SCORE invited Robin Lake to meet with its board of directors and a group of influential state leaders to help the organization and state develop an action plan around AI policy and implementation. CRPE has also guided several members of the Senate HELP Committee on emerging AI trends and policy implications. 

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

CRPE’s AI rapid response research has generated some of our highest media impressions and reach.

• Our work on AI and/or our principals investigating AI (Robin Lake and Bree Dusseault) have been mentioned in over 70 media articles on the topic in outlets such as Politico, District Administration, Yahoo! News, The 74, EdWeek, K-12 Dive, Marketplace, and NewsBreak. Our AI work has generated over 600k media impressions.
• Our blogs on AI have received over 11,000 views. 
• Robin Lake’s new newsletter, “Think Forward: Learning with AI” has over 3,700 subscribers with a steady organic growth rate of 25-30 subscribers per new edition. 
• Bree Dussault presented our work in AI as well as actionable steps for policymakers to the California School Boards Association AI Taskforce in May 2024. The group addresses significant developments in the application of AI in education, considers emerging policy issues and best practices, and will make meaningful recommendations for policy development at the local and state levels. 
• The Virginia Board of Education and the Department of Education & Early Childhood in New Brunswick, Canada asked CRPE to provide feedback or advisement on AI-related policy development. 
• Robin Lake was honored among “Women Leading the AI Revolution in EDU” at the ASU+GSV summit in 2024. 

Center for Black Educator Development, Teach Plus, Teach Plus Illinois

Network Policy Pillar: Responsive Systems 

Link: Seeing Myself: Students of Color on the Pros and Cons of Becoming Teachers 

SUMMARY

This research helps school and district leaders, as well as state policymakers better understand how to support and encourage students of color who are interested in the teaching profession, so they can work towards improving the diversity of the teaching profession, which positively impacts outcomes for all students.

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

The Seeing Myself report contributes to the larger body of knowledge on teacher diversity by focusing on one crucial yet underrepresented part of the educator pipeline – students. Through its focus on students of color with a demonstrated interest in becoming teachers, our research helps the field better understand how to support and affirm students of color and encourage their interest in teaching as a career. 

Research has made clear how important exposure to teachers of color is for students of color and for all students. Intentional efforts to recruit, retain and support teachers of color has far reaching positive impacts for students’ academic and non-academic outcomes. Teachers of color don’t only experience education when they’re standing in front of their own classroom – their experiences begin as students, and understanding the perspectives of students of color as they are considering teaching as a career helps education leaders at all levels approach the work of recruitment, retention and support of teachers of color.

The Seeing Myself report shows that students of color are thinking deeply about the ways their schools affirm and educate them, and that what they’re seeing in schools today, impacts their decision to become educators in the future. Our findings closely align with what prior research has shown matters for educators of color, and our recommendations provide actionable steps and resources for education leaders to support recruitment and retention of teachers of color. 

Findings:

• Students of color and Indigenous students value the unique benefit teachers of color and Indigenous teachers have on students’ experiences in school and on their futures.
• Students of color and Indigenous students are drawn to the teaching profession  by a desire to build strong relationships  and make a difference for future generations of students.
• For students of color and Indigenous students, the low pay associated with teaching is a strong deterrent to choosing teaching as a future career.
• For students of color and Indigenous students, the representativeness of the curriculum and teachers’ level of agency in their own classrooms play an important role in shaping their school experience and influence their perspective on the attractiveness of the teaching profession.
• Students of color and Indigenous students need their schools to provide safe and affirming environments that value and respect their cultural identity. 

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

Our findings show that students of color are interested in becoming teachers, but they emphasize that they, and teachers of color need to feel safe and supported, they are looking for opportunities to learn about and experience the teaching profession while they are in high school, and they believe teachers are important and want to see more diverse teachers in their schools. The following are three steps school leaders, district leaders, and state policymakers can take to improve the pipeline of teachers of color starting with students:

School leaders should prioritize creating affinity group spaces for students of color within their schools. These groups help facilitate positive relationship-building between students and faculty and help foster feelings of safety and belonging for students and teachers of color. Students we spoke to in our research highlighted their desire for safe affinity spaces to connect with other students and teachers and research underscores the importance of affinity groups in retaining teachers of color.

School districts can leverage partnerships with universities and other education organizations to help to improve the pipeline of teachers of color through strategic  financial assistance to potential teachers, mentorship opportunities, and programming to help expose students of color to the teaching profession. One example is the Teaching Academy, a partnership between The Center for Black Educator Development and The School District of Philadelphia, a year-round program that provides learning and support for students of color who are interested in teaching. 

State policymakers can provide formal and structured opportunities for teachers of color to be meaningfully involved in decision making and leadership at all levels. Teacher advisory cabinets, fellowships and formalized mentoring programs are all examples of programs that allow teacher leaders to support their schools, districts or state education agencies in recruiting and retaining teachers of color. State policymakers can support these efforts through financial and technical assistance. 

Full policy recommendations can be found in the report.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

Teach Plus, The Center for Black Educator Development (CBED), and Educators Rising partnered in this collaborative effort to understand from the perspective of students of color what is drawing them or deterring them from choosing teaching as a career and to use that knowledge to help inform and support policymakers and other education leaders in their efforts to recruit and retain diverse teachers. 

Our Seeing Myself research developed as a continuation of a body of collaborative research on educator diversity from PIE Network members, including Teach Plus, The Center for Black Educator Development, and The Education Trust. The other reports, If You Listen, We Will Stay and To Be Who We Are focus on the perspectives of teachers of color, and Seeing Myself extends that research to elevate the perspectives of students of color on diversifying the teaching profession. Our research specifically asks the questions:

1. What experiences, values, or aspirations contribute to the perspectives of high school students of color and Indigenous students regarding teaching as a potential profession?
2. What aspects of the teaching profession do students of color and Indigenous students find appealing or unappealing?
3. How do students of color and Indigenous students perceive the role that teachers of color, in particular, play in schools?
4. What can schools do to better support the humanity of students of color and Indigenous students?

Our work has also been an integral part of the One Million Teachers of Color Campaign, a coalition of education organizations committed to adding one million teachers of color to the educator workforce over the next decade. The Seeing Myself report was featured in the launch of their new webinar series that highlighted the report’s findings and a webinar of stakeholders, including Teach Plus, CBED, Educators Rising, and one of the students who participated in the study.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

Since its release in October 2023, Seeing Myself has received: 

• 157 report downloads
• Over 2300 web page hits
• Featured in national publications: Education Week, K-12 Dive, Higher Education Dive, and Ed Surge and local publications: American Federation of Teachers New Jersey and Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development. 

Seeing Myself was featured in a number of policy and research-oriented learning opportunities including the Black Male Educator Convening, The Association of Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) 2024 National Conference, The Hunt Institute Race & Education Webinar Series, and as part of a webinar series developed by the One Million Teachers of Color Campaign. 

Our collective body of research, including Seeing Myself and our two other national reports on recruitment and retention of teachers of color serve as the basis for the work of the Equity Leadership Institute, a collaboration between Teach Plus and school districts where teams of leaders including administrators, teacher leaders and district leaders work together to identify and develop strategies to improve the districts’ efforts at recruiting and retaining teachers of color. This body of research has also helped launch funding efforts and legislation for teacher diversity in twelve states.

All4Ed

Network Policy Pillar: High Expectations, Great Educators, Responsive Systems 

Link: State Policy Center | All4Ed

SUMMARY

This tool helps state policymakers and state advocates to access open resource model legislation, research, case studies, and policy exemplars to amplify their critical work enacting and implementing more equity-centered education policy so all learners can graduate prepared to succeed post-graduation. The State Policy Center also offers in-person technical assistance for tailoring model legislation to meet the unique needs of advocates and legislators.

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

Only 10 states have the equivalent of a full-time legislature that operates similarly to the U.S. Congress with significant resources and staff. That means the majority of state legislators split their time between legislative work and other occupations and operate their legislative offices with few staff members. The result is that many of our state advocacy and policy partners shoulder the effort of not only advocating for equitable policies for students, but also drafting, researching, testifying, and working to ensure effective passage and implementation of policies. 

All4Ed has been a partner to many policymakers and state organizations over the years, often providing 1:1 technical assistance on a broad range of education policy issues. To expand this work and to provide the most impactful resources for our partners, All4Ed realized that an online repository of policies, model legislation, case studies, research, and opportunities for direct assistance would allow state policymakers and advocates to respond in real-time during fast-paced legislative sessions. 

Launched in October 2023, the State Policy Center currently focuses on three primary policy areas: college and career pathways, digital equity, and next-generation accountability. It offers 12 model bills and various resources and guides, and will be expanding yearly, including this fall with an upcoming bill on student data privacy. The State Policy Center combines in-depth policy research with usable, effective policy tools that are accessible to both seasoned and new lawmakers, including a broad range of resources and supports to address some of the specific challenges policymakers face. 

The State Policy Center also builds on All4Ed’s promise to deliver policy from the classroom to Congress, developing and informing policies with school and district leaders at the center through All4Ed’s Future Ready Schools Network of leaders from school districts across the country. 

These resources allow more lawmakers and state organizations to move faster, introduce more equity-centered educational policy ideas, and ultimately deliver increased opportunities and results for all students.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

Providing usable, real world resources: Many policymakers are working on a truncated legislative schedule and need resources and tools that are ready to use in time for pre-filing deadlines and last minute committee hearings. The State Policy Center provides model legislative language, as well as research, case studies, and interviews that can be used to develop talking points and materials for policymakers. Through the State Policy Center, All4Ed also offers partnership with state advocacy and policy organizations to help develop policy ideas, draft legislative language, and prepare and participate in legislative testimony to support policy proposals that provide greater educational opportunities for all students. 

Building policy solutions with practitioners at the table: All4Ed convened listening sessions with district leaders to develop policy proposals that addressed digital equity concerns. These conversations, as well as All4Ed’s ongoing collaboration with the Future Ready Schools Network of district leaders from across the country allows the organization to meet its mission of building policy from the classroom to Congress. In addition to centering the lens of educators and school and district leaders, who are in classrooms everyday, All4Ed has centered state and local advocates and policymakers who know their state, district, and constituency best and has utilized the State Policy Center to empower their ongoing critical work. 

Taking an open and clear stance on policy solutions, while recognizing no one-size-fits-all approach:  Policymakers need real-time solutions. The State Policy Center offers real models for how to enact All4Ed’s deep policy work and research. All4Ed realizes however, that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to complex educational issues, it is important to showcase a broad range of exemplars and offer clear policy solutions that show states how to navigate different political environments, geographic diversity, and student populations.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

As a living equity-centered policy repository, the State Policy Center is informed by education leaders and is currently assisting PIE Network members. Many of the currently featured model policies were developed in deep partnership with district leaders, elected officials, state advocates, and national education policy partners. The resources have been used by partners to build out policy bills and ideas, and All4Ed’s direct technical assistance has been used to develop additional model bills to help a wider range of partners for the upcoming and future legislative sessions. 

As the State Policy Center grows, All4Ed is working with PIE Network members and other education leaders to understand where resources are needed and what tools and resources would be helpful for the field as a whole. All4Ed is also building new resources and policy solutions that center the voices and experiences of practitioners, consulting directly through listening sessions and All4Ed’s Future Ready Schools Network.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

All4Ed has quantified the impact of the State Policy Center through tracking online activity, as well as through direct technical assistance and partnerships in states and with national coalitions and partners. 

In the first year of launch, All4Ed has directly provided resources, developed model legislative language, and created partnerships to build future resources in 9 states. All4Ed has also shared State Policy Center resources, bills, and policy expertise with multiple coalitions, multi-member state organizations, and national and state partners. The main State Policy Center landing page has been accessed by 1200 users since its launch in October 2023.

Teach Plus Illinois

Network Policy Pillar: High Expectations 

Link: “Student Teaching Is Unpaid & That’s How It’s Always Been”: Barriers to Illinois Early Childhood Educator Licensure 

SUMMARY

This research helps legislators to understand barriers to earning a teaching license, particularly for adults already working as support staff in schools and early childhood settings so they can address these barriers with state policy and investments in order to make the pathway to licensure more accessible and thus recruit and retain more highly qualified, diverse early childhood educators. 

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

Illinois experienced 3,532 unfilled teaching positions in fall 2023.  Illinois is experiencing acute teacher shortages in certain positions, subject areas, and regions.  The number of candidates earning credentials in early childhood education, special education, and bilingual teaching lags behind demand, and these teachers post a higher-than-average attrition rate.  When students do not have trained and licensed individuals teaching them, they are less likely to maximize their potential. 

While student teaching provides many benefits for preservice teachers, limitations on flexibility and financial compensation continue to be barriers for early childhood educators and other staff currently working in education, such as paraprofessionals. These barriers prevent incumbent educators from advancing in the field and restrain the teacher pipeline, thus making it harder for schools to fill vacancies. By increasing flexibility in student teaching requirements and placements and by expanding options for paid student teaching experiences, Illinois and teacher preparation programs can support more early childhood educators in obtaining PELs and becoming highly qualified teachers equipped to better support young children throughout the state. 

Allowing teachers in training to get paid during student teaching is critical given that the process of obtaining licensure can be quite expensive, a fact that prohibits potential candidates from pursuing it. However, many teacher preparation programs do not allow participants to be paid.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

Report makes the case for:  

• More flexible student teaching requirements and differentiation based on experience.  Flexible programming, including class times, and allowing students to complete student teaching in their workplace, have been cited as a key quality in recruiting and retaining teacher candidates.   
• Universally allow student teaching to be a paid experience by prohibiting programs from requiring student teaching to be an unpaid experience. 
• Provide reasonable compensation via stipends to ensure paid student teaching experiences.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

The report proposes that “The state could create a program to provide paid student teaching opportunities, particularly in shortage areas like early childhood education, special education, and STEM and in locations with higher levels of teacher vacancies.” 

From November 2023 to May 2024, Teach Plus Illinois, Advance Illinois, and a union partner worked closely on legislation that would create a paid student teacher and cooperating teacher system. The report provided the most central research that we could inform and then build the proposed legislation around. While the bill passed the House this past session, it did not pass the Senate during a tight budget year.  We are hopeful to utilize the research to make a similar legislative push in the future.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

The report was shared out through the networks of both Teach Plus Illinois (~5,000 recipients) and Advance Illinois (~3000 recipients). The report’s authors shared their findings with Representative Laura Faver Dias, who became the bill’s champion and chief sponsor; advocates also shared the report in meetings with another dozen legislators. The findings were shared during a legislative hearing in March 2024 that was also livestreamed, and the bill eventually garnered 25 co-sponsors in the Illinois House.

Prichard Committee

Network Policy Pillar: Responsive Systems 

Link: A Fragile Ecosystem | Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence 

SUMMARY

This research and data tool helps advocates to influence state and federal legislators so they can make needed investments and reforms in the early care and education sector. 

The Fragile Ecosystem survey series distilled the needs of parents, child care providers, and the business community as Kentucky’s child care sector navigated the onset of the pandemic, federal aid packages, and state-level appropriations and policy reform from 2020-2024.  The series served as a valuable advocacy tool in influencing local, state, and federal officials and for statewide advocates making the case for child care investment during the pandemic, in its aftermath, and as Kentucky looks to build a new system of early care and education as the sector moves forward with the pandemic and its aftermath in the rearview mirror. The series began in June 2020 and significantly influenced Kentucky’s federal delegation as pandemic aid received sharp debate in Washington. 

A Fragile Ecosystem: The State of Child Care in Kentucky Following COVID-19 shared the dire reality of what a lack of relief funding for child care might mean for the sector and the workers, families, and children the sector served in the darkest days of the pandemic. A Fragile Ecosystem II followed shortly after to capture the needs of Kentucky’s working parents. A Fragile Ecosystem III served as a timely update one year into the crisis. A Fragile Ecosystem IV (2022) rang alarm bells as pandemic-era federal funding slowed and showcased the advances in the sector at risk without continued state funding and policy reform. Finally, A Fragile Ecosystem V: Kentucky Voters Demand Action on the Child Care Crisis (2023) polled 800 Kentuckians and found that 73% of Kentuckians supported increased state investment into child care in preparation for the 2024 state budget session – the first budget session to follow the end of federal pandemic-era investments. Fragile Ecosystem V kicked off the call for investment and policy reform to put Kentucky’s early care and education sector on firm footing for the future. 

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

• Access to quality early care and education is a key mechanism capable of closing gaps in achievement for all children in their early learning and throughout the arc of their educational and life experiences. 
• Participation in high-quality early learning programs increases the likelihood of registering as “ready for kindergarten” on the BRIGANCE screener. 
• Participation in high-quality early learning programs results in higher rates of proficiency in reading and mathematicians by the third grade. 
• Children who participate in high-quality early learning programs are forty percent less likely to drop out of school. 
• Expanded early care and education would return $5 in public and private benefits for every $1 invested. 
• Investments in high-quality early care and education result in higher rates of educational attainment, a reduction in health costs, a reduction in the incidence of crime, and less demand for social welfare services.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

1. A Fragile Ecosystems I, II, and III facilitated cooperation among the Prichard Committee, statewide partners, and then Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office. 
1. Continued engagement with Leader McConnell’s office led to a record amount of funding for child care proposed and later passed by the then Republican-controlled US Senate in the Coronavirus Response & Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) ACT in March 2021. 
2. A Fragile Ecosystem IV (September 2022) moved the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) to release an additional $50 million in state funding to bridge a funding cliff for early care and education from the elapse of federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding until Kentucky’s 2024 state budget session. 
3. A Fragile Ecosystem V marshalled voter support for state investment into early care and education in the 2024 state budget session. The report’s information appeared in Kentucky’s gubernatorial debate, before state legislative committees, and was championed by a coalition of state business leaders. 
1. These efforts secured an additional $58 million in state investment in early care and education – the highest amount ever invested into the sector using state funds. 
2. The report also seeded ground for policy reform for a statewide system of mixed-delivery early care and education. 
3. More advocacy remains to produce large-scale policy reform and more state funds are needed to reach more Kentucky children and their working parents.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

Efforts by the Bipartisan Policy Center, EdTrust, the Hunt Institute, and the US Chamber of Commerce permitted the Prichard Committee and other state partners to evaluate the state-of-play in Washington regarding investment opportunities for early care and education. As partners with the Alliance for Early Success (Prichard is a member of the Alliance), each partner also helped state-based advocates in Kentucky to assess the national landscape in early care and education and provided critical insight into the interplay between state and federal funding and policy efforts. 

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

A Fragile Ecosystem is a nationally recognized survey series. The series is featured in national webinars by groups like the National Women’s Law Center and Red Tree Strategies, an advocacy consultancy in Washington, DC. The Alliance for Early Success showcased the series at their 2023 national convening and produced an informational video on the series found here. Other Alliance partners replicated the series in their respective states. Every member of the Kentucky General Assembly and every member of Kentucky’s federal delegation have received copies of each of the surveys and reference them in their work.  See examples here and here.

Mississippi First

Network Policy Pillar: Great Educators 

Link: Falling Behind: Teacher Compensation & The Race Against Inflation

SUMMARY

This research helps policymakers understand which teachers are at the highest risk of attrition and why. This allows them to pass legislation to retain these teachers, thus bolstering a more experienced and effective teacher workforce.

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

Mississippi First has conducted two iterations of the Mississippi Teacher Survey, with the most recent survey data being released in the Fall of 2023. Hearing directly from public school teachers in Mississippi has allowed us to examine effective policy levers for strengthening the teacher pipeline. 

Through analyzing survey data, we found that financial insecurity plays a large role in teachers’ decisions to leave their classrooms. These findings helped us develop policy recommendations for legislators with the specific purpose of retaining teachers who are most likely to exit the profession. Ultimately, the goal of this is to ensure that all students in the state have access to an experienced and effective teacher workforce.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

• Financial insecurity is widespread among Mississippi teachers, and it is a strong predictor of which teachers are at the greatest risk of leaving the classroom. 
• Over half of the teachers we surveyed reported that they were somewhat likely or very likely to leave their Mississippi classroom by the end of the school year. 
• Teachers who have student loan debt, teachers with children, teachers of color, and teachers in low-rated school districts are at a heightened risk of financial insecurity, increasing their risk of exiting the classroom.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

Conversations with the Mississippi Office of State Financial Aid helped inform our understanding of the limitations of the state’s teacher loan repayment program. This was the catalyst behind one of our policy recommendations, which was to expand the state’s teacher loan repayment program. The Office of State Financial Aid was also a critical partner in advocating for the legislation to accomplish this expansion.  

Mississippi Professional Educators (MPE), one of the state’s largest professional organizations for teachers, publicized our research and helped spread awareness about our recommendations to teachers across the state.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

We have measured the impact of this research through the legislative actions taken based on our policy recommendations that arose from the research. Our recommendations included three policy changes that prioritize teachers at the greatest risk of attrition, including teachers with student loan debt, teachers with children, and teachers in low-rated school districts. 

A description of these policy recommendations and progress made on each recommendation are outlined below.

• Our first recommendation was to expand the state’s teacher loan repayment program. The initial version of the program was only available to first-year, traditional route entry teachers. In the 2024 legislative session, we introduced and passed legislation that expands this program to include all teachers regardless of experience or route into the profession. This will allow any teacher with student loan debt to apply for up to $15,000 in student loan relief. 
• Our second recommendation was to create an additional stipend for teachers in critical shortage areas, many of which are low-rated school districts. Legislation was introduced to accomplish this during the 2024 legislative session, but it did not make it through the process. We plan to continue to advocate for this legislation in the upcoming session. 
• Our third recommendation was to subsidize state insurance premiums for state employees who are on family plans (premiums for family plans can cost as much as $10,000 per year in Mississippi–a sizable proportion of a teacher’s salary). Legislation was introduced to accomplish this during the 2024 legislative session, but it did not make it through the process. We plan to continue to advocate for this legislation in the upcoming session.

Texas Public Charter Schools Association

Network Policy Pillar: High Expectations, Innovative Options 

Link: What You Need to Know: The Governing Boards of Texas Public Charter Schools

SUMMARY

This tool helps lawmakers to separate myth from fact so they can make informed votes that expand high-quality educational opportunities for students. 

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

During the most recent legislative session in Texas, it became clear that many lawmakers were confused about the same thing: the governing boards of public charter schools. They repeatedly claimed, for example, that charter school board members are unaccountable or motivated by profit.  

These are not harmless myths. The misperception that charter schools have a “governance problem” can easily lead to harmful policies for students. One Texas House member, for example, proposed requiring all new charter schools to be approved by voters during local elections. That requirement — which would have chilled the growth of successful charter schools statewide — could have made it into law.

To combat this information problem, TPCSA created a comprehensive campaign to educate lawmakers and their staffers about charter school governing boards. The campaign was built around a brisk report that explains the three most important facts about those boards — along with answers to frequently asked questions and profiles of board members.    

We didn’t stop at sharing the report with lawmakers directly. TPCSA rallied charter school leaders and board members around this single source of truth — and gave them the confidence to approach lawmakers about this topic, whether independently or at a series of on-campus events organized by our regional advocacy directors.  

In addition, we created digital ads and targeted devices both at the Capitol and throughout the neighborhoods where lawmakers live. Those ads, as well as our organic social media posts, introduced lawmakers to Kyle Clark — a public charter school board member and administrator at the University of Texas, Austin.     

Ultimately, this “surround sound” approach makes lawmakers far more likely to remember the truth about our schools’ governing boards — and far less likely to support harmful bills, or oppose helpful ones, based on misinformation. 

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

A surround sound approach gets results. Lawmakers gave us great feedback on the report in part because they heard about it multiple times, in multiple ways, from multiple messengers. They’re more likely to remember our key messages as a result.  

In-person events bring research to life. While governance might sound like a dry topic, lawmakers and legislative staff loved their visits to campuses and opportunities to shake hands with actual board members. They’ll remember those experiences just as much (or more) as the facts in the report. 

Charter school board members are underutilized as advocates. We knew going in that board members themselves would be more memorable narrators of our governance message than TPCSA itself. But rolling out this report showed just how eager many boards are to get involved in advocacy. Getting discussions of new research on their meeting agendas can be an effective tactic for outreach — no matter the topic.

Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Network Policy Pillar: High Expectations, Innovative Options 

Link: Think Again Series: Challenging Outdated Beliefs in Education 

SUMMARY

This research series or tool helps policymakers and practitioners to revisit conventional wisdom about various hot-button education issues so they can leverage the most up-to-date information to make compelling cases for important policy changes in their localities.

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

There’s a growing and largely unmet need for intellectually honest mediators who can bridge the gaps between scholarship, journalism, policy, and practice by addressing some of the big myths in education and setting the record straight based on research and evidence. Indeed, the field of education policy remains rife with outdated beliefs and baseless assumptions. 

In an effort to equip open-minded and well-intentioned education policymakers and practitioners with the latest know-how, free from bias, we recently initiated our series called, Think Again, a set of policy briefs that summarizes the most rigorous research and cogent thinking on some of today’s most critical and controversial topics. Fordham’s website has seen some of its highest pageviews (on average, over 26,000 views for each brief) for the series and fielded numerous requests from advocates interested in learning more about each of the topics addressed.

To date, the Think Again series has revisited six timely, controversial topics that prompt open-minded educators and stakeholders to scrutinize their beliefs and adapt them as necessary: Do charter schools drain resources from traditional public schools?; Is education funding in America still unequal?; Is grade retention bad for kids?; Should elementary schools teach reading comprehension?; Does “equitable” grading benefit students?; and Do college admissions exams drive higher education inequities?

The Think Again series has helped improve student outcomes and opportunities by shining new light on old questions so that better policies can be developed and implemented; each brief provides multiple actionable policy recommendations focused on improving policies for students in schools and districts. For instance, our recently published brief titled “Think Again: Does ‘equitable’ grading benefit students?” has already led leaders from two school districts (Falls Church Public Schools and Arlington Public Schools) to reach out to our authors seeking guidance on implementing improved grading policies. (This brief has also received 48,000 views and a whopping 26 mentions in the media, including five from local and state outlets).  (See below for more examples.)

As another example of these reports’ impact, our first brief of the series, “Think Again: ‘College Admissions Exams Drive Higher Education Inequities,’’ prompted Kurt Burkum, Senior Director of Strategic Engagement of Strategic Engagement—Government Relations, Policy, & External Affairs at ACT—to reach out to report author Dr. Adam Tyner and ask for permission to share the brief with select members of Congress and other ACT stakeholders.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

• Stay in the know on the issues that vex the field in language that laypeople can access: We make the latest and most credible research accessible to policymakers and practitioners. 
• Challenge stakeholders to be open to the evidence to improve education policies for students: We prompt readers to reassess their beliefs and practices in light of new evidence.
• Revise policies to reflect best-in-class research and evidence: As mentioned above, each Think Again brief provides several actionable policy recommendations focused on improving policies for students in schools and districts.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

As a think tank, one of our roles in the education policy space is to conduct solid research on difficult topics, explain how to take action based on the evidence, and trust that we can change hearts and minds in the process.  This was the goal of our Think Again series, which was focused on urgent, pressing topics that play out at both the national and state/local levels.

For several of the briefs, we selected the topic based on conversations with PIE Network partners. Following their publication, we have also heard from many key PIE Partners about the usefulness of the series. For example, ExcelinEd’s staff informed us that our brief on grade retention was exceptionally well-written and instrumental for informing debates in Alabama, Nevada, Louisiana, and Wisconsin. ExcelinEd’s Patricia Levesque also reported that she would reference the brief when her team encountered challenges in promoting or defending third-grade promotion policies.

Another example of the series’ impact relates to our second installment in the series, “Think Again: Do Charter Schools Drain Resources from Traditional Public Schools?” Our Chief of Staff, Victoria McDougald, previewed the report during the PIE Network’s charter policy webinar. Following the presentation, several charter organizations, including Tennessee SCORE, the Freedom Coalition for Charter Schools, the Washington State Charter Association, and the Massachusetts Public Charter School Association, requested embargoed copies of the report for their own use.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

For each of the six Think Again briefs, our detailed impact reports keep track of the number of page views each brief receives, national and local media hits, as well as speaking engagements, including conference presentations, webinars, or appearances on podcasts, radio shows, etc. 

We include interactions with policymakers and organizational and educational leaders, as well as policy impacts, such as invited testimony, sharing and implementing lessons with particular schools and school districts, changes in policy or practice based on findings/recommendations, etc.

With an average viewership of over 26,000 views, our Think Again briefs have been some of our most successful publications to date. As mentioned previously, our first brief of 2024, “Think Again: Does ‘equitable’ grading benefit students?,” has received over 48,000 page views and counting. Our most recent report, “Think Again: Should Elementary Schools Teach Reading Comprehension?,” released less than three months ago,  has already received over 34,000 page views. 

The series has also been covered in major outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, K-12 Dive, Ed Week, Chalkboard News, and The Washington Post, and Fordham’s brief authors have also appeared on various podcasts and radio shows discussing the work and implications, including on the Newell Normand Show and the Education in Focus podcast.

National School Choice Awareness Foundation

Network Policy Pillar: Innovative Options

Link: The Ultimate Guide to Special Education / Tus Opciones Escolares en la educación especial

SUMMARY

This tool helps parents of students with special needs to understand how school choice and special education services intersect so they can choose the right educational fit for their child.

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

Students with disabilities comprise 15% of the traditional public school enrollment. This number has steadily grown over the last few decades. 

At the same time, school choice is rapidly expanding, with open enrollment, public charter schools, private school choice programs, and homeschooling all attracting new families. 

Many parents are unsure how to combine the special education services their child needs with the environment they’d most like to choose for their child. Our team provides 1:1 guidance to parents in English and in Spanish who have questions navigating the school choice process, assisting more than 1,000 in the last year. Of these questions,1 in 10 come from parents trying to choose a new school for a child with a disability.

These guides, created in English and in Spanish, give parents all the information they need to weigh their school choice options, specific to their state and the type of school they’re considering, alongside their child’s special education needs.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

• Parents learn about how to access special education services in every type of school, including traditional public, public charter, public magnet, private, online, or home options with information about continuing to access district services, if possible, while attending a private school.
• Parents find state-specific information about how special education is governed as well as a list of state and local groups and resources for additional support.
• Parents new to the special education world gain an overview of the process they’ll experience as their student’s needs are identified all the way through the ongoing process of re-evaluating progress.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

We conducted extensive original research to write this guide in-house, and referenced the work of dozens of state and national education organizations throughout.

Since publication, these guides have been cited by a variety of organizations in newsletters and social media posts, including PIE Member organization The Center for Learner Equity. They are currently referenced as a parent resource by the Florida School Choice Association and School Choice Minnesota.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

Our goal was to directly reach parents with this information, so our key metrics are total unique parents reached and overall time spent accessing the information.

The Spanish and English written guides have been visited by more than 55,000 individual parents and the supplemental videos for these guides have received 6,600 views.

We’ve also had the joy of hearing direct, appreciative feedback from parents who were able to apply this information for their children. One Spanish-speaking mom in New Jersey was advised her zoned school couldn’t serve her nonverbal son, but by using her state-specific resources and receiving guidance in her preferred language, she was able to get him enrolled in the school she wanted to choose for him.

TNTP

Network Policy Pillar: High Expectations 

Link: Unlocking Learning Acceleration for Multilingual Learners – TNTP 

SUMMARY

This research or tool helps schools and systems to unlock new ways to catalyze learning acceleration for multilingual learners so they can thrive in learning environments that leverage and engage their linguistic assets.

WHY THIS RESEARCH MATTERS

TNTP believes that it is time to supercharge nationwide efforts to harness multilingualism as a “superpower”—so every young person thrives. Multilingual Learners (MLs) represent the fastest-growing student population in our nation’s schools. With diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, MLs bring unique assets, or superpowers, that can propel them forward and enrich the entire educational ecosystem. But for too long, they have been among the most underserved student populations, grappling with significant resource gaps at every level. 

As federal dollars wind down, how can schools and districts strategically and sustainably center the unique needs of MLs? Over the last few years, the influx of Emergency Relief Funds (ESSER) has provided a much-needed lifeline for schools to accelerate learning after the pandemic. Unlocking Learning Acceleration for Multilingual Learners provides a comprehensive analysis of innovative and impactful strategies deployed to support the success of MLs, largely made possible by leveraging federal funds.

For too long, our multilingual learners have been neglected and relegated to the back of the classroom due to outdated approaches that have not accounted for the demographic shifts in our country’s classrooms. This has resulted in schools and districts providing limited access to the four critical resources essential for student learning: grade-appropriate assignments, strong instruction, deep engagement, and teachers with high expectations. Far too many systems still lag in centering students furthest removed from opportunity. 

TNTP recognizes the importance of concrete and practical examples for district and school leaders seeking ways to better support MLs and their academic growth and achievement. Through these case studies focused on each of the six levers, we hope this report helps education systems unlock new ways to catalyze learning and advancement for multilingual learners.

THREE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS

To supercharge multilingual learners (MLs) success, we believe schools and systems must:

• Prioritize and create systems for authentic engagement with and leveraging the expertise of community voices across language and culture,
• Develop educators with an asset-based approach to students’ multiple identities, including cultural and linguistic identities, and equip them with strategies to integrate language and content instruction, and
• Implement systems that collect key data on MLs and make that data easily accessible to educators and communities.

HOW OTHER LEADERS INFORMED OR USED THIS RESEARCH

Based on our analysis of a comprehensive education dataset from Burbio, 2.8 million multilingual learners in their national dataset attend school in a district that did not plan to spend ESSER funding on interventions specifically targeted to them. To the extent that ESSER spending plans are an indication of school district priorities, this lack of targeted support for such a significant student population is alarming. 

As such, we wanted to learn from school systems that made intentional investments specifically targeting MLs, and so to examine their strategies we engaged leaders in six districts: Surry County and Charlotte-Mecklenburg in North Carolina; Gadsden, New Mexico; Fresno, California; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Chicago, Illinois. 

The case studies in this report explore the ways districts center MLs in their decision-making and illustrate how the levers of learning acceleration can catalyze learning for multilingual learners—at scale. Throughout, we uplift district efforts that demonstrate a clear lens and integrated approach to supporting these students and demonstrate how other schools and systems might also apply them to fully support their MLs.

UNDERSTANDING REACH AND IMPACT

Unlocking Learning Acceleration for Multilingual Learners was published on March 4, 2024. As of July 19, 2024, the report’s landing page has been viewed 4,451 times, and the report has been downloaded 1,155 times, for a conversion rate of 26%. 

On release day, the report was featured at SXSW EDU during a panel with Assistant Deputy Secretary Montserrat Garibay on “Unlocking Title III Funds for Multilingualism.” 

Because of this report, TNTP was invited to speak with a reporter from Axios, which led to this lead story in the Axios Latino newsletter on April 2, 2024. The article quotes Leticia de la Vara, TNTP’s Chief of Policy, Engagements, and External Affairs, as well as LuAnne Llwellyn, one of the district leaders spotlighted in Unlocking Learning Acceleration for Multilingual Learners. Axios tweeted this story to its nearly 663 thousand followers.