As 2024 comes to a close, we at AERDF are proud to reflect on a year marked by promising breakthroughs and measurable progress toward discovering and advancing research-backed solutions to pressing challenges in PreK-12 education. As we chart a course for the year ahead, AERDF remains committed to advancing evidence-based solutions and cutting-edge interventions that boost learning outcomes, honor the perspectives of students and educators, and position all learners to thrive.
Our gratitude goes out to the powerful network of district partners, educators, and learners that makes our work possible. With your help this year, we were able to illuminate new science and technological breakthroughs and witness tangible, meaningful change in classrooms across the country. Together, we are pushing the boundaries of scientific possibilities in education to better serve learners and teachers everywhere.
Here are a few highlights from this pivotal year:
Uplifting Program Successes
AERDF programs operate on a five-year cycle to develop scientific insights, technical advancements, and prototypes that address major teaching and learning challenges and opportunities within their area of focus. Below is a snapshot of our program teams—each at a different point in their AERDF program lifecycle—and their recent successes.
Piloting Transformative Math Learning Approaches with EF+Math
Every student is a powerful learner capable of success in math. The innate assets they bring to the classroom–cultural wealth, lived experience, and executive function skills–need only be honored and activated to help them succeed. AERDF’s inaugural program, EF+Math, is proof of this. Their current three R&D teams, Fraction Ball, MathicSTEAM, and CueThinkEF+, are generating evidence-based solutions proving that creating math learning experiences that bring out the innate skills inside every student can improve math outcomes for all learners.
Earlier this year, the EF+Math team presented at the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). There, the teams shared how they are co-creating and implementing math learning breakthroughs, alongside educators, researchers, and developers, that allow students to showcase their assets in the math classroom. Watch the video and hear directly from researchers and educators about:
- CueThinkEF+’s AI-powered problem-solving and collaboration platform improving learners’ critical mathematical thinking skills
- Fraction Ball transforming basketball courts into interactive math games, teaching fractions through movement, significantly improving students’ understanding of rational numbers, and seeing higher overall accuracy scores
- MathicSTEAM co-designing curricular materials with educators and students to drive improvements in MIND Research’s neuroscience-based core K-6 curriculum called Insights Math and their development of a digital game-based app that provides opportunities to deepen students’ math fact fluency while simultaneously strengthening their executive function skills, like working memory.
Charting a Course for More Meaningful Assessment with Assessment For Good
A student’s learning experience is about more than just mastering subject content. It also involves building confidence, self-awareness, and motivation as they encounter exciting and challenging opportunities in the classroom, at home, and in their communities. AERDF’s program, Assessment for Good (AFG), has identified 30 key skills that maximize growth and learning in the classroom and beyond. AFG is designing and testing assessment prototypes that measure the skills that enhance learning for all students, everywhere learning happens.
In a recent webinar with EdSurge, Dr. Temple Lovelace—Program Executive Director of AFG—shared the program’s vision for assessment that captures student learning as it’s happening. With this approach, we can measure the skills students use to learn–like perseverance and confidence–as well as the content they’re learning. Learn how AFG, alongside learners, caregivers, and educators, is working to make such assessment tools possible.
Driving Literacy Forward with Reading Reimagined
AERDF’s program, Reading Reimagined—now nearing its midway point—recently unveiled groundbreaking research in partnership with ETS to shed light on why many older students are struggling to read. The study underlines the importance of decoding—a crucial foundational literacy skill where readers identify and understand unknown words by breaking them down and sounding them out. Students who lack this critical skill fall below the “decoding threshold”—and show slower progress in vocabulary, sentence processing, and comprehension.
These findings underscore the urgent need for programs like Reading Reimagined that develop breakthrough, classroom-tested approaches to support struggling readers of all ages. In an August 2024 New York Times article, Program Executive Director Rebecca Kockler gave her perspective on how the national movement to rethink reading has largely left out a generation of older students who are behind in literacy—and who will not recover without extra help.
Dare to Dream: The AERDF AdvancED Fellowship to Prove the Impossible
In April 2024, AERDF launched a nationwide search for the next big idea with the power to transform how all children learn. Out of nearly 1,000 incredible applicants, a select group of fellows were invited to participate in our AdvancED Fellowship—uniting visionary leaders across disciplines to hone their ideas with the support of experts across learning science, development, technology, educator practice, policy, and more. We look forward to sharing what we learned about the state of the art in education through this fellowship.
Stay tuned for the launch of AERDF’s next program and news of the talented executive director who will pursue courageous and ambitious solutions that produce transformative outcomes for all learners.
Scaling AERDF’s Influence at the National Level
In addition to being selected as one of Fast Company’s 2024 World Changing Ideas, AERDF was honored to present at some of the nation’s most prestigious education and innovation events this past year—including ASU+GSV Summit 2024, ISTELive 2024, NCTM, and AERA Annual Meeting 2024. We are excited to continue bringing this essential work to the forefront of national conversations about innovation and impact in education.
Relive our time at ISTELive:
As we enter 2025, we’re ready to build on this year’s momentum, deepening our commitment to advancing education solutions that are both transformative and inclusive of learner and teacher perspectives. Together, we will continue to innovate, collaborate, and create opportunities for every learner to thrive.
