Systems Change for Advancing Learning and Equity (SCALE)

Systems Change for Advancing Learning and Equity

The vision of our initiative is to transform the landscape of educational opportunity by leveraging knowledge and insights for better education decision-making. The initiative aims to identify, support, and scale promising solutions across diverse issues in K-12 education, engaging decision-makers (e.g. policy makers, district and school leaders, teachers, and supporting non-profits) to integrate research, policy, and practice to effect positive change for learners.

The Challenge

Effective interventions supported by research are abundant for K-12 education, but implementing these interventions at scale can be extremely difficult, regardless of the strength of the evidence. Scaling is not mere replication of a program; it is often context-specific and takes great effort to do successfully.

The key ways to implement effective education interventions at scale are to engage and connect stakeholders across a decentralized education system; generate and test interventions quickly; and disseminate knowledge and solutions at scale. Universities possess the potential to play a crucial role in supporting these three activities in order to address the most pressing educational needs of learners.

Our Solutions

We collaborate with scholars across traditional disciplinary lines on fast-paced research to identify promising practices and to iterate on programs and approaches with strong potential to improve educational outcomes for K-12 students. Our current focus of work sits at the intersection of personalized learning for students, relationships, and engagement. We convene stakeholders across diverse contexts, generates high-impact tools and resources, and produces knowledge, in order to effect systems and policy change for educational good.

Impact Programs

TipsbyText

TipsbyText is an innovative texting program which supports parents and caregivers in creating positive educational environments and building social-emotional skills. Recognizing that home learning experiences affect children, our research program seeks to identify barriers to beneficial parenting and caregiving, and to develop, test, and refine interventions for parents and caregivers that overcome these barriers and promote learning and wellness.

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The National Student Support Accelerator

The National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA) is devoted to translating promising research about how tutoring can benefit students into action on the ground. NSSA provides comprehensive resources for those interested in implementing high-impact tutoring and introduces a framework for structuring tutoring programs to suit their communities. Designed with the needs of tutoring organizations, schools and districts in mind, the NSSA tools articulate best practices, drawing on an extensive body of existing research, with the goal of making implementing high-impact tutoring programs at scale as straightforward as possible.