Event Recap

The Results for America State Education Fellows Discuss the Power of Evidence-Building

State/ Education/State Education Fellows/ 2019/

On February 26-27, 2019, Results for America’s State Education Fellows re-convened in Washington D.C. to share and discuss progress each state team has made toward accelerating the use of data and evidence to drive improvement in their districts and schools, and to welcome four new states to the Fellowship; Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Mississippi.

During the convening the Fellows discussed what it means to be a learning organization – one that invests in ongoing efforts to both use and build evidence, and applies what they find to continuously improve. Fellows dug into topics such as learning agendas, monitoring implementation, and evaluating impact of evidence-based approaches to school improvement, all of which tie to one of the key evidence leverage points in the  federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Fellows had the opportunity to hear from national experts on topics such as the intersection of politics and evidence-based policymaking, and what state education agencies can learn from other sectors when building and implementing a learning agenda.

Featured speakers included:

  • Dr. Faith Connolly, Executive Director, Baltimore Education Research Consortium
  • Keith Fudge, Policy Program Manager, Urban Institute
  • Dr. Nora Gordon, Associate Professor at Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy and Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research
  • Molly Irwin, Chief Evaluation Officer, Department of Labor
  • Bethany Little, Principal, EducationCounsel
  • Bruce Reed, Results for America Senior Fellow; Former Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to Vice President Joe Biden (Obama Administration); Former Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council (Clinton Administration)

Results for America’s State Education Fellowship program, founded in December 2017, is helping 27 state education agency officials from 13 leading states leverage opportunities under ESSA to make data and evidence more central to their efforts to improve outcomes for their students.

Learn more about RFA’s work to help education leaders use and build evidence to improve student outcomes here.