A Strategic Research Agenda for AI-Driven Transformation in Public Education
A new white paper from the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) names our current reality: no shared measures of success, governance not keeping pace with the technology, and a market increasingly shaped by the priorities of ed-tech vendors. Generative AI carries real risk—”wicked problems” like data and identity theft, cognitive offloading, and threats to students’ […]
The Transformation Gap: Why Motivated District Leaders Pursue Incremental Change
School districts are struggling to create both equitable and fundamentally different outcomes for young people through incremental improvements. The alternative is transformational systems change, when school districts redefine their purpose and operations through a coherent strategy to ensure every school is a high-quality, empowering place for all students to thrive—but this remains rare. With support […]
Small Changes, Big Relief: How States Can Support School Districts While They Work Towards Strategic Leadership
State education agencies (SEAs) are being asked to do something they have rarely been asked to do before: lead. As the federal government’s influence over education recedes, leaving confusion in its wake, calls for guidance, clarity, and strategic direction are shifting to states. And they are shifting fast, to agencies that are often understaffed, under-resourced, […]
A Mile Wide, an Inch Deep: The State of Civic Learning in U.S. School Districts
As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, civic learning is having a moment—but new data suggest that more support is needed to move students from knowing the basics to participating in civics learning and practice within their communities. This brief is the first in a three-part series from the American School District Panel (ASDP), […]
Webinar: CRPE’s AI Early Adopter Research, 2026
As AI adoption accelerates across K–12 education, leaders are navigating a rapidly evolving and often fragmented landscape. This webinar, held on May 27, 2026, shares early insights from CRPE’s research on AI in school systems, state agencies, and the broader education ecosystem. It offers a synthesized view of what’s actually happening on the ground, where […]
Early Adopter Districts and AI: Strategic Pathways, System Strain, and the Conditions for Amplifying Transformation
School districts are making consequential AI decisions largely on their own—purchasing tools, training teachers, setting policies for student use, and trying to determine what responsible and effective adoption looks like. Without clear federal guidance or a reliable roadmap, what are the most advanced districts learning, and what does it reveal about what the field needs […]
Getting Beyond the Lightbulb Stage: Why AI Is Not Yet Transforming Education
New AI tools are entering the ed tech market every day. But how are they actually playing out in schools and classrooms? Drawing on semi-structured interviews with more than 50 stakeholders across ed tech, philanthropy, policy, teaching, and advocacy, this brief identifies the gaps between what AI developers are building and what students, teachers, and […]
The Reckoning: Addressing Oakland’s Literacy Crisis
Oakland Unified School District has spent the past five years trying to address a severe literacy crisis—one where most Black and Latine students were not reading at grade level. In 2020, The Oakland REACH and OUSD families pushed the district to adopt evidence-based reading instruction and commit to improving how literacy is taught across schools. […]
Navigating the Math Wars: A Practical Guide to the Divides and Debates Influencing Math Instruction
Two Connected Paths for School Districts to Thrive in an Era of Enrollment Decline and Heightened Competition
America’s school districts are serving a shrinking share of a shrinking market. The K–12 population is declining overall, families are leaving high-cost cities, homeschooling has expanded since the pandemic, private school enrollment has rebounded, and charter school enrollment continues to grow. Over the past six years, district schools have lost nearly two million students nationwide, […]