Don’t engage families: Liberate them

I set out to reflect on parent engagement as we settled into another school year in the U.S. where 84% of Black eighth-graders lack proficiency in reading. And then something happened. On the evening of Sept. 19, more than 30 Oakland, Calif. mamas, grandmas, dads, and uncles graduated from the Oakland REACH’s Literacy Liberator fellowship. […]

How state leaders can stand up for the Covid generation of high schoolers

A high school student looks at the camera, wearing a mask

CRPE director Robin Lake and Travis Pillow, Director of Thought Leadership for Step Up for Students (formerly a senior innovation fellow with CRPE), contributed an essay to this year’s edition of NASBE’s State Education Standard, “Engaging All Students.” With billions of dollars in lost economic activity and untold squandered human potential, COVID-19 threatens to leave an […]

Beyond test scores: Broader academic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on American students

Recent state and national achievement exam results, as well as academic progress reports, have underscored how the Covid-19 pandemic and related school closures had a large, negative impact on students’ reading and math development. But there has been less research conducted on how the pandemic affected other academic measures beyond standardized testing, such as attendance, engagement […]

Innovation spotlights: Case studies in high school redesign

Educators nationwide are forging their way in a landscape rocked by pandemic-induced disruptions. Training resources designed to spark new thinking among school staff often feel outdated—especially if they were published before 2020. To address this need, the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University and the Center for Public Research and Leadership (CPRL) […]

Unconventional private schools are attracting parents with tailored offerings. Public schools can, too.

School children gather around a picnic table.

Small learning environments that operate outside public schools—such as microschools, hybrid homeschools, and learning pods—exploded into broad public consciousness during the pandemic. While many children who were in these programs have now returned to public school, entrepreneurs continue to expand alternative learning options, and many families are interested in what they offer. One thing is abundantly […]

Teachers want to innovate. Schools that don’t let them are losing out

This piece was originally published in The 74. Waite: Education entrepreneurs are taking their creativity and ingenuity to hybrid schools and microschools — and taking their students with them At the end of April, I attended a conference in Atlanta featuring a small but heterogenous group of self-described education entrepreneurs. It was the second year […]

How states can support ongoing academic recovery

This piece was originally published on EdNote, the Education Commission of the States’ blog. School closures, quarantines and staffing uncertainties have contributed to the biggest math and reading declines our country has seen in more than two decades. The recent State of the American Student report from the Center for Reinventing Public Education describes the contours of the crisis […]

First literacy, now math: Oakland REACH prepares to train more tutors

We can all see where the good jobs are going. By 2025, there will be 25 million digital jobs in this country – more than manufacturing and construction combined. This means that there’s no other option: Our kids must be able to read and do math to have good jobs and good lives. But right now, […]

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