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Focus Area:
Innovation and the Future of Learning

In public education, we need to challenge our assumptions and recognize that we can’t get dramatically different results by doing the same things over and over.

We need to rethink traditional models for teaching and learning. Finding ways to use the innovative technology of the 21st century can improve public education by maximizing teacher expertise, and creating new ways for parents to engage with their child’s schooling. Some technology can also create more flexible learning environments for students to receive curriculum and instruction tailored to their unique needs. Using these technologies in the classroom can greatly increase the efficiency of teaching, learning, and administration. Our work addresses policy barriers that make many of the most promising innovations impossible to implement.
Current Work: A Learning Agenda for Taking Personalized Learning to Scale
With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CRPE is conducting a multi-year, multi-method effort to learn about how school districts and regional partners can support the successful implementation, expansion, and sustainability of personalized learning (PL) in schools. CRPE researchers will use a combination of field studies, surveys, and secondary data analysis to explore how schools, districts, and partner organizations outside the school district help to seed and grow PL and with what results.

Key questions for the project include:

What do principals, teachers, and system leaders need to know and be able to do to successfully support, implement, and scale up PL?
What policies and practices, at the classroom, school, district, partnership, and state levels, offer important supports (and barriers) for successfully implementing and scaling up PL?
What are the early results for teachers and students?

This brief provides an initial, formative assessment of lessons learned in the first year of ReSchool Colorado’s initiatives to expand access to out-of-school learning opportunities for children in the Denver area.

In education policy debates, we often talk about inequality as if it was primarily driven by learning that happens—or doesn’t happen—in schools. But out-of-school learning matters too. Sports and recreational programs can cultivate teamwork, passion,...

These essays rethink foundational aspects of the current education system and offer new ideas to shift the lens from schools to students. 

Twenty-five years ago CRPE was founded on the idea of the school as the locus of change. Today we are reexamining our old assumptions in light of new technical possibilities, changes in the economy, and...

Once again, virtual charter schools are coming under heavy scrutiny. Last week, the Center for American Progress published a report that called for banning for-profit online charter school operators. Soon thereafter, two Democratic U.S. senators...

This essay explores the need for new models that expand who works with students and differentiate teaching roles to a far greater degree.

CRPE researchers find inequities in current 21st century learning approaches and recommend strategies to deliver better learning opportunities for all students.

Robin Lake is quoted in The 74 about the San Antonio Independent School District’s chief innovation officer, Mohammed Choudhury.

This working paper analyzes data from ReSchool Colorado’s “Blueprint4SummerCO” platform to understand  supply and demand of summer programs Denver.

CRPE researchers analyze how school leaders can both encourage experimentation and support the formalization of innovative practice.

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