Launching districtwide innovation: Lessons learned from a year of pursuing “Bold Ideas” for systemic change
What does it really take to pilot bold, systemwide innovation in public education? Over the 2023–24 school year, CRPE partnered with 11 districts across the country to support and study their “Bold Ideas”—ambitious initiatives designed to make student learning more joyful, individualized, and relevant. These pilots weren’t just tech upgrades or isolated experiments. They were […]
Calming the Noise: How AI Literacy Efforts Foster Responsible Adoption for Educators
In the two years since ChatGPT’s release, generative AI (genAI) tools have flooded the K-12 education space. Each day, educators and administrators hear new claims about AI’s power to transform learning, while also facing warnings about its dangers. Caught between the hype and the fear, they struggle to distinguish real opportunities from noise. This uncertainty […]
Running fast but not getting far: Five years of studying the pandemic’s impact on education
This report distills five years of research to understand how the pandemic reshaped public education. Drawing from over 100 reports and articles, we examine the crisis response, recovery efforts, and ongoing challenges facing schools today. Key Findings Crisis Response: Schools struggled to maintain instruction with little federal or state guidance, facing political conflicts, mental health […]
How Have High Schoolers Fared in the Aftermath of the Pandemic? New Evidence from CRPE Evidence Project Grantees
As we continue to grapple with the long-term effects of the pandemic on K-12 education, the need for high-quality research to support recovery is greater than ever. In 2023, to better understand the impact of the pandemic on high school-age students, CRPE awarded nine grants to researchers as part of its Evidence Project with support from the Walton […]
Unfinished Business: What Must Come Next for Public Education, Five Years After Pandemic Shutdowns
The Current Crisis Five years after the pandemic disrupted education, public schools are still struggling to recover. Achievement gaps have widened, student performance is in decline, and many schools have reverted to an outdated, ineffective system that fails to meet today’s challenges. The pandemic exposed longstanding weaknesses in the education system—rigid structures, inequities, resistance to […]
Schools of Education Play a Critical Role in Fulfilling the Promise of AI
Observers have started to craft different narratives about where artificial intelligence (AI) will lead us, but we can’t know how the story will end. All we know for certain is that AI is rapidly transforming our world, from the classroom to the lab, the boardroom to the marketplace—and we humans aren’t ready. That’s especially true […]
Eliminating the Department of Education won’t fix education’s dysfunctions—but neither will denying they exist
Announcing a new forum for bold ideas to build momentum Proposals to eliminate the Department of Education (ED) have been a Republican talking point since Ronald Reagan first suggested it in the early 1980s. The Trump administration’s executive order to weaken the agency is just the latest attempt. While the stated goal is to cut […]
Chartering, revisited: A proven strategy for big-city schools
Post-pandemic, big city K-12 leaders are doing everything they can to strengthen their schools and meet student needs. However, the districts they lead are tapped out in terms of teacher and administrator capability, dollars, and political support. Urban school districts need to: Make school more engaging for students Flex to meet the needs of students […]
Embracing AI in Education Can Move Us Toward a New Era of Learning
For decades, students of color and those from low-income communities have faced persistent achievement gaps in our education system. Despite countless reform efforts, these students continue to encounter barriers to accessing high-quality, personalized instruction that builds critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Now, the emergence of generative AI represents an unprecedented opportunity to transform this inequitable […]
NAEP results come out tomorrow—but we already know what must happen next
Tomorrow’s release of the Nation’s Report Card will surely generate abundant hand-wringing among parents, policymakers, business leaders, and educators. While the fine-grained details deserve examination, we can already tell you what the headlines will say: American students are not receiving the educational opportunities they deserve, nor those that will enable them to thrive in an […]
