Toward Understanding Unionization’s Impact on Charter School Students
In this brief, we set out to understand how unionization may or may not shape practices central to charter schools’ ability to serve students.
State Accountability Systems in the COVID Era and Beyond
This brief presents a set of ideas and themes to begin to inform challenges around testing and accountability during the pandemic.
“Public Education Will Never Be the Same”: How COVID-19 Forced School District Leaders to Innovate on the Fly

In this brief, we summarize themes from an American School District Panel survey on innovation during COVID-19.
How Are School Districts Addressing Student Social-Emotional Needs during the Pandemic?

In this brief, we look at how our nationally representative sample of 477 school districts attended to students’ social-emotional learning and well-being in fall 2020.
The New Landscape of Public Schooling

This article originally ran in the November 2010 edition of the Phi Delta Kappan. We’re republishing it here because many of the ideas it describes are now being tested in real time on a large scale, as school systems across the country experiment with new structures that allow them to support remote learning. Critics of […]
Don’t force square-peg students back into wrong-shaped holes

While President Biden has promised to have most public schools open within his first 100 days, new data indicate it will be a daunting challenge. Spiking virus rates and intense opposition from teachers unions is causing many school districts to revert to all-remote instruction. The benefits of in-person contact with friends and teachers are real. […]
Five lessons on how community-driven learning hubs could change school districts long-term

In the final months of 2020, we sat in on nearly three dozen conversations with teams of district leaders and community-based nonprofits that are collaborating to run learning hubs. Learning hubs provide in-person learning environments or intensive virtual support to students—often in small groups. They offer school systems promising opportunities to rethink how they work […]
What does ‘attendance’ mean for remote learners in a pandemic? How 106 districts are dealing with absenteeism, student engagement & grades

Our analysis of reopening plans in 106 large, high-profile districts finds that they have taken student engagement and attendance far more seriously this fall than they did after schools first closed last spring. But many school systems have struggled to create consistent rules, especially for remote learners.
Thinking forward in 2021: We must safely reopen schools, but the goal cannot be a return to normal

What a year! Since early in March, the CRPE team has been operating at full steam to try to be helpful in the pandemic. In the first few months we pushed for urgent action to prepare schools to move to remote learning. I am incredibly proud of the CRPE team. We were often exhausted, but […]
How Can Learning Management Systems be Used Effectively to Improve Student Engagement?
This paper summarizes findings from a consensus panel on using data from learning management systems and software to help educators understand and improve student engagement during remote instruction.