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Innovation and the Future of Learning

At CRPE, we study how public education can evolve to meet the challenges and opportunities of a rapidly changing world. Our research on innovation and the future of learning examines how schools are rethinking teaching and learning models—from personalized and competency-based approaches to the use of technology and AI—to better prepare students for life beyond school. We investigate how these innovations take shape in real contexts, what barriers and enablers schools encounter, and how systems can support sustainable change. Across this work, we aim to understand how schools and communities can design learning environments that are more equitable, adaptable, and responsive to the diverse needs of students.

  • The Lens    

2018 at CRPE: Looking Around the Corner

Robin Lake

At CRPE, our core business is gathering and analyzing evidence to inform education policy and propel systemic improvements. But what makes us unique is our ability to look around the corner to anticipate new challenges and develop bold ideas and pragmatic solutions.

  • The Lens    

In a Changing Rural America, What Can Charter Schools Offer?

Terry Ryan, Paul Hill

Rural America is not your grandparents’ heartland. Its population is getting older: 21 of the 25 oldest counties in the United States are rural.

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Personalized Learning Will Live or Die on Ability to Manage Change

Robin Lake

This is the ninth installment in our series of “Notes From the Field” on personalized learning. Even the best thinking on redesigning schools to personalize learning will be for naught if school and district design teams can’t lead and manage the change process that a move to PL entails.

  • The Lens    

Teachers Don’t Need to Go It Alone on Personalized Learning

Betheny Gross

This is the eighth installment in our series of “Notes From the Field” on personalized learning. When we first visited schools in spring 2016 for this project, teachers seemed to be taking on an unsustainably heavy lift as they transitioned to personalizing student learning (PL).

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Time to Help Teachers Generate and Use Their Own Evidence on Digital Tools

Betheny Gross, Michael DeArmond

This is the seventh installment in our series of “Notes From the Field” on personalized learning. “There are so many digital resources out there, I am lost as to which ones are good.I usually try things that some of the more technology-knowledgeable people I teach with [use].”From “Teachers Know Best,” Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2015, page 21 Teachers in the personalized learning (PL) schools we visit are using a wide range of digital tools—sometimes picking up and dropping them at a rapid clip—but their decisions about which tools to use generally aren’t guided by systematic evidence.

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Are We Personalizing Learning for the Students Who Need It Most?

Robin Lake

This is the sixth installment in our series of “Notes From the Field” on personalized learning. The theory behind personalized learning (PL)—crafting an individualized education experience for each student—holds tremendous potential for better serving all students, especially students who don’t fit the norm.

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Starting With the “Why” in Personalized Learning

Betheny Gross

This is the fifth installment in our series of “Notes From the Field” on personalized learning.  Last spring, on our first visit to 35 schools committed to personalized learning, teachers often told us they weren’t sure what they were supposed to be doing to personalize learning.

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Six Unifying Education Policy Ideas for 2017

Robin Lake

Polarization was the theme of 2016, and we’d be kidding ourselves to think that will be much different in 2017. Still, there has rarely been more need for new ideas that people can begin to come together around, especially in education.

  • The Lens    

Why Schools Shouldn’t Go It Alone on Personalized Learning

Betheny Gross, Colleen McCann

This is the fourth in our series of “Notes From the Field” on personalized learning. Principals and teachers trying to personalize their students’ learning are charged with radically reimagining the classroom.

  • The Lens    

Personalized Learning Can’t Ignore School Leaders

Michael DeArmond, Betheny Gross

This is the third in our series of “Notes From the Field” on personalized learning. Over the course of this project we’ve heard a lot from schools about what personalized learning (PL) means for teachers and classrooms, but less about what it means for principals—and that is worrisome.

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