When an email from the principal lands in teacher inboxes asking for volunteers, it doesn’t always lead to transformative experiences. For Pam Barrett and Chris Davis, two veteran mathematics teachers at Vista Magnet Middle School in California’s Vista Unified School District, responding to that call changed not only their teaching practice but also their understanding of the power of authentic co-design on math learning approaches for their students.

Experienced Educators Meet Real-World Research

Mathematical Thinkers Like Me (MLM) is a project team that was funded by EF+Math, one of the Advanced Research and Development Fund’s (AERDF) inclusive research and development (R&D) programs. MLM developed an online collaborative problem-solving and storytelling program that supports students in developing their identity and strengths as mathematical thinkers with strong executive function skills. The online environment developed by MLM, known as “Virtual Math Teams” (VMT), integrates content from Desmos and Geogebra along with original content. In 2020, MLM partnered with Vista Unified School District in California to engage in inclusive research and development with seasoned educators as part of its work with EF+Math. When the principal of the Vista Magnet Middle School reached out for volunteers to work on this R&D project, Pam, in her 28th year of teaching mathematics and Chris, who brings 30 years of math teaching experience across high school and middle school, answered the call. They were exactly the type of educators which the MLM team were seeking, experienced educators willing to collaborate on something new. What Chris and Pam didn’t expect was how much they would learn about themselves as teachers in the process.

“At first, we didn’t know our role and neither did they,” Chris reflects on the early days of the project in fall 2020. The pandemic had created an already challenging educational landscape, and they engaged in this early work without a real sense of what it would entail. As they worked through the initial confusion, they emerged into a team where educators felt their voices and their contributions were highly valued and reflected in the VMT tool they were working to develop and improve. 

Co-design is a collaborative development process where educators and researchers work together as equal partners to create educational tools, with teacher expertise and feedback actively shaping the final product rather than simply being consulted on predetermined solutions. As the co-design process emerged and MLM heard the educator feedback, there was more and more listening and active intention to engage the educators in the co-design process. The evolution from peripheral participants to central collaborators became a defining feature of their co-design experience.

Discovering Executive Function in Mathematics

For Chris, the MLM co-design project revealed something profound about his teaching philosophy that he hadn’t fully realized before. “The goal with my teaching was about teaching thinking skills. What I didn’t realize was my passion was EF (Executive Function) skills. Learning about and naming EFs in this work was when I realized those are the skills I had been focused on all along with my students.”

This realization came at a particularly poignant time. Chris became increasingly focused on EF skills because of the impact of COVID on student well being. EF skills are foundational skills that all students possess that allow them to have agency over their attention, thoughts, emotions, and behavior. EF skills include the ability to hold and work with information in mind, the ability to focus attention on what a student deems important and ignore what she deems unimportant, and to be flexible in her thinking. Chris understood that their work with MLM was creating a tool that would leverage and strengthen the EF skills that all students possess, and this project felt very urgent and critical. 

The alignment between the teachers’ existing practices and the project’s focus on executive function skills in mathematics created a powerful foundation for collaboration. Rather than asking teachers to abandon their expertise, the project amplified what they already knew worked while giving them new vocabulary and frameworks to understand why it worked.

The Power of Teacher Voice in Product Development

One of the most striking aspects of the Vista teachers’ experience was how their feedback directly shaped the VMT product. Unlike many educational technology initiatives where teachers are expected to adapt to predetermined tools, this collaboration prioritized teacher expertise and student needs.

“So many little things we suggested had outsized impacts,” Pam recalls about the iterative design process. “We suggested making the VMT environment anonymous and this had tremendous impact. I immediately saw a different level of student participation.” This seemingly simple feature, allowing students to participate anonymously in mathematical discussions, transformed classroom dynamics in ways the original developers hadn’t anticipated. The anonymous feature revealed students who had been invisible in traditional classroom discussions. “Kids who often didn’t speak in class became very engaged in math discussions in the anonymous environment.  Pam observed, “In the VMT setting, they would be very engaged. This engagement led to additional interest among many students.”

There were several impactful educator-driven product improvements. The educators suggested:

• creating mixed-class VMT rooms to generate excitement among students
• adding sub-room functionality for smaller group work
• developing teacher-friendly data reports that didn’t require excessive time investment to understand what their students were engaged in
• including emoji options for students because, as the teachers noted, “students like to use them”
• building a dashboard where teachers could monitor all groups simultaneously. 

All of these recommendations strengthened the product, and the teachers felt valued for their expertise. This is the transformational impact that true co-design can have on educational products.

Transforming Student Identity and Discourse

The impact on students went beyond engagement metrics. The anonymous discussion environment created space for students to develop new mathematical identities. “Some sub-groups who didn’t feel smart in math, through the VMT process and reflections, they would shift their perspective to see themselves as strong mathematicians,” Chris observed.

This shift in student identity had ripple effects in traditional classroom settings. Students who gained confidence through anonymous VMT discussions became more willing to take risks in face-to-face interactions. “I saw consistent improvement in students who were reluctant to participate in traditional classroom discussions after they were well received in the VMT environment. They would take more risks in the classroom environment,” Chris noted.

Lessons for Inclusive R&D Success

The Vista teachers’ experience offers valuable insights for others considering inclusive research and development and co-design processes:

1. Embrace the Uncertainty

Initial role confusion isn’t a bug—it’s a feature of authentic collaboration. The process of figuring out how teachers fit into product development teams can lead to a more meaningful integration of classroom expertise.

2. Value Teacher Expertise

“We aren’t used to people taking our knowledge and having respect for it,” Pam reflected. “It was unusual and they truly did.” This respect for teacher expertise created conditions where real innovation could happen.

3. Prioritize Practical Usability

As Pam put it bluntly: “I won’t use it if it’s hard to use.” The development team’s commitment to teacher-friendly design made adoption possible and sustainable.

4. Foster Real Relationships

Beyond the professional collaboration, lasting friendships developed. “Our friendships with the MLM team are invaluable to me and something that warmed my heart. I learned so much from sharing our different perspectives on how people work together,” Pam shared.

A Call for Authentic Collaboration

The Vista experience demonstrates that when researchers, product developers, and teachers work together as true partners, the results can transform not just products but practice. The key lies in recognizing that teachers are not just implementers of educational innovations—they are co-creators whose classroom expertise is essential for developing tools that actually work for students.

For educators considering similar collaborations, Chris and Pam’s advice is simple: “Take risks as an educator and try in the classroom and see what impact it can have. It was engaging for the students. [You] can’t see what could happen if you don’t try.”

In an educational landscape often dominated by top-down initiatives, the Vista story reminds us that the most powerful innovations emerge when those closest to students have a genuine voice in shaping the tools they use. The result isn’t just better products—it’s renewed passion for teaching and deeper understanding of how students learn mathematics.

The Mathematical Thinkers Like Me project represents a collaboration between educators, researchers, and product developers focused on integrating executive function skills development into mathematics instruction. Vista Unified School District serves nearly 19,000 students in northern San Diego County, with Vista Magnet Middle School operating as an International Baccalaureate program focused on developing student thinking skills.

“There’s a misconception that students are done developing reading skills by the end of 3rd grade, after which they read to learn, said Rebecca Kockler, executive director of Reading Reimagined, a flagship R&D program of the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund (AERDF). “That statement has done a lot of harm to our understanding of what kids need,” she said in a recent EdWeek article. 

And nowhere is this misconception more apparent than in the results released from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Commonly referred to as the nation’s report card, NAEP scores show that more students are scoring below its threshold for mastery of “basic” skills in reading as well as science and math. 

45% of 12th graders are below NAEP’s threshold for “basic” performance in math, while 32% of students are below the same cutoff in reading. That means less than half of all high school seniors are prepared with the 21st century skills needed for them to lead and succeed in a rapidly changing world. 

“Currently, there is an ‘innovation gap’ holding back development of truly research-based solutions that deliver results for students, families and school systems,” AERDF CEO Auditi Chakravarty said in a statement reported by District Administration. “Increasing national investments in education R&D can change that.” 

AERDF is one part of the solution, prioritizing the big problems in education and experimenting with different models and approaches for tackling them through each of our R&D programs: EF+Math, Assessment for Good, Reading Reimagined, and AugmentED. 

As a purpose-built discovery and invention hub, we drive breakthrough R&D that bridges the gap between discovery and adoption, ensuring that bold ideas are tested, improved, and ultimately implemented at scale. 

NAEP scores present us with an important snapshot of where our students are excelling and where we must step up. Yet it will take shared commitment and collaboration across the ecosystem to make sure that we do, that the science and solutions are rooted in the needs of learners and educators, and that they can reach all learners.

 

Photo by John Rego

At AERDF, we exist to push the boundaries of what’s believed to be possible in education research and development—bringing bold ideas to life and bridging the gap between innovation and real-world learning impact.

AERDF aims to deliver proven and accessible inventions to the education sector. Since our inception in 2021, we’ve embraced a model that unites the rigor of learning science with practical classroom application: Advanced Inclusive Research & Development.

Why an Advanced Inclusive R&D Model Matters

Education R&D has long been fragmented and underfunded. Too often, promising ideas are developed in isolation, without the perspective of the people closest to learning: students, families, and educators. Meanwhile, breakthrough research doesn’t always translate into tools and practices that improve learning in the real world. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Education receives less than 0.2% of federal research and development funding, while sectors like energy and healthcare receive billions. This leaves education without the discovery hub it needs.

AERDF was created to change that. We operate as the nation’s discovery and invention hub for public education, unlocking breakthrough learning solutions that are designed to reach students in actual classrooms. Our signature approach, Advanced Inclusive R&D, is designed to do what traditional education research rarely does: drive bold, high-risk, high-reward discovery that pushes beyond known solutions. Our work is not about improving the margins, it’s about creating what doesn’t exist yet, and doing it in partnership with the people education was built to serve. Educators and learners are equal partners from the start, ensuring discoveries serve real needs.

Through our Advanced Inclusive R&D model, we provide the guidance, infrastructure, and partnerships needed to move bold ideas from research to real-world impact. Our approach successfully compresses traditional R&D timelines from decades to just 3–5 years, so students benefit now, not later, and systems evolve faster.

Understanding Advanced Inclusive R&D

Advanced Inclusive R&D is a collaborative approach that brings together researchers, educators, developers, and learners to work across every phase of the R&D process, from early discovery to real-world adoption. It emphasizes deep partnership, scientific rigor, and real-world relevance, creating conditions for ambitious innovation that are both groundbreaking, effective, and useful.​

This model is the foundation of AERDF’s work, as illustrated below:

The Four Phases of Advanced Inclusive R&D

1. Scientific Discovery + Invention
   We support ambitious research that generates new knowledge and solutions in education. From the start, we collaborate with educators and learners throughout the process, ensuring discoveries are grounded in the realities of today’s classrooms and communities.
2. Transition to the Real World
   We help innovations evolve from concept to application. That means supporting pilot testing, feedback loops, and adaptations that make new tools and approaches viable in diverse learning environments.
3. Sustainability + Adoption
   We promote the widespread adoption of our scientific research, technical capabilities, and dynamic prototypes through strategic, cross-sector partnerships and connections to funding opportunities that can take these solutions and insights to scale in schools across the nation.
4. Learning Transformation
   The goal of our work is lasting, meaningful change in how learning happens. When discovery, design, and implementation work in harmony, we create the conditions for breakthroughs that can benefit learners nationwide.

How We Approach R&D Investment

Through our unique Advanced Inclusive R&D approach, AERDF programs manage a portfolio of R&D projects with expansive scopes that exceed the limitations of traditional, one-time grants. AERDF programs focus on opportunity spaces that are:

• Under-explored and with strong potential for major breakthroughs, unlocking significant new capabilities that would propel teaching and learning outcomes in our US PreK-12 education system.
• Critically important for learners in order to nurture their brilliance and transform their educational experiences.
• Ideally explored by a cross-sector community of experts whose diverse insights, perspectives, and resources catalyze progress in a way no one could achieve on their own.

Looking Ahead to the Future of Education

At its core, this model is about driving what’s next in education. We believe in research that leads to invention, invention that leads to adoption, and adoption that leads to transformation.

And we know this work can’t happen in silos.

AERDF’s Advanced Inclusive R&D model unites educators, caregivers, learners, scientists, and technologists to discover research-backed solutions that push the limits of what’s believed to be possible in education. We are building the infrastructure, partnerships, and momentum needed to move discoveries from idea to impact, so every student can thrive in a rapidly changing world. Support our work and get involved.

National education R&D non-profit program working to transform assessment launches a new, interactive digital experience that emphasizes the need for learner-centered assessment of the future. Forecast guides readers through a research and development-based vision for modernizing assessment, putting PreK-12 learners and educators at the center.

AERDF is one of the few organizations purpose-built to match the pace of AI and global disruption, ensuring education can anticipate change rather than react to it. That is why Assessment for Good (AFG), one of our flagship R&D programs, is advocating for new approaches to assessment that supports instruction and learning in a fundamentally different way. Currently, educators have to navigate information from a variety of sources, but it often comes too late and is too varied to support the 1500 decisions a day that they have to make. AFG is creating research-informed assessment solutions that focus on delivering accurate, meaningful data to teachers and students immediately, do not interrupt the learning process, and foster a more student-centered experience. Today, the program released a new publication, “Futures of Assessment.”

“Our nation’s schools need evidence-based assessment solutions that better support the dynamic ways that students learn and also significantly propel learning outcomes,” said Dr. Temple Lovelace, Executive Director of AFG. “ Assessment for Good calls for a new approach to assessment that reflects the learning of the future – that promotes greater flexibility, discovery, and connection.”

While most assessment innovation has been tied to subject mastery, educators are often missing information about a student’s foundational skills that are important to any learning process, across multiple academic areas. Visibility into both content area learning and the skills that power that learning are crucial. Our new publication, “Futures of Assessment” asks, “How might assessment be improved to help educators and students create and pursue learning opportunities that can maximize student potential?”

To examine this question, AFG and the Strategic Foresight team at KnowledgeWorks embarked on a year-long data-driven approach to create the “Futures of Assessment” forecast which depicts a range of possible futures that can be imagined in less than 10 years. This publication introduces four worlds where new cultures of assessment are created, especially at the intersection of artificial intelligence and the call for reimagining school success. As AI use continues to rise and new models for quality education emerge, education must contend with how to customize support, increase student agency, unlock powerful learning opportunities, and embed community connections across the PreK-16 continuum.

“The Futures of Assessment” invites readers to think beyond the “now,” and explore radically different assessment approaches so that we can support the learning process differently. Key recommendations include:

• Seamless Assessment: Measure key competencies earlier and without disrupting the learning process
• Accessible Assessment: Communicate assessment data in an understandable, actionable way with the learner, their educator, and their family — at the speed of teaching and learning
• Comprehensive Assessment: Move beyond subject matter mastery to get a complete picture of the learner and the skills that power their learning
• Dynamic Assessment: Provide solutions that support a formative, self-directed approach to assessment and learning

Over 60 educators and practitioners from across the nation contributed to this forecast that explores a preferred future of teaching and learning while also thinking deeply about change beyond the status quo.

“What will assessment look like when we put learners first?” said Dr. Lovelace at a 2024 Futures of Assessment convening with Knowledgeworks. “Assessment can be used as a tool that leads to greater learning, connection, and discovery – and we can build that future together.”

The “Futures of Assessment” forecast features concepts developed by this group of how we can do that at the intersection of two critical uncertainties: AI and school success. Our goal is to explore the power of assessment and find actionable ways to modernize it to serve today’s learners.”

Assessment For Good’s “Futures of Assessment” publication includes:

• An invitation to imagine the future, forecasting new approaches that center learning and introduce new types of data that will be key in maximizing student growth
• Eleven concepts of asset-based assessment informed by national leaders, to be used as a platform for future innovation
• Four distinct future worlds, introduced through the eyes of four learners, that explore multiple plausible futures where assessment becomes discretionary, compassionate, joyful, or automated and how teaching and learning is impacted.
• Twenty-four highlights that grapple with two “critical uncertainties” AI and school success —  both of which feel uncertain, yet will be highly impactful for how assessment will be designed and used over the next 10 years.

“We are inviting the field to join us in creating a new vision for assessment to inspire education leaders, researchers and decision-makers to take direct actions that will lead us to a preferred future where assessment can support all learners to reach their maximum potential” said Dr. Lovelace. “Assessment For Good’s call to action is to build a better, more innovative process for assessment that places learners and educators at the center.”

For more information, visit the new “Futures of Assessment” website here: https://futureofassessment.org/.

About AERDF

The Advanced Education Research & Development Fund (AERDF, sounds like air-diff) is a national nonprofit that unlocks scientific breakthroughs, new inventions, and cutting-edge research to solve for the most pressing teaching and learning challenges in PreK–12 education.

Through our Advanced Inclusive Research and Development (R&D) model, we unite educators, caregivers, learners, scientists, and technologists to discover research-backed solutions that push the limits of what’s believed to be possible in education.

We build the infrastructure, partnerships, and momentum needed to move discoveries from idea to impact, so every student can thrive in a rapidly changing world.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Yasmene Mumby, Communications Director, ymumby@aerdf.org

Auditi Chakravarty joined the Fullmind Learning podcast to explore how education research and development is being redefined by putting learners and educators at the center of breakthrough innovations.

She shares her unique journey from growing up as a child of immigrants in rural America to becoming a passionate educator and the CEO of AERDF. Auditi highlights the critical disconnect between learning sciences, education ecosystems, and practitioners, advocating for R&D that includes educators and learners as partners.

The episode explores how AERDF’s approach uses iterative, time-limited programs to accelerate learning breakthroughs, especially in technology like AI, while addressing equity and the future needs of education systems.

In this conversation, Auditi dives into:
1. How AI is shaping the future of classrooms
2. Why learner-centered solutions are more urgent than ever

Don’t miss this inspiring discussion on transforming ideas into impact—so every student can thrive in a rapidly changing world.

Listen to this episode here.

The traditional landscape of education innovation often feels siloed. Researchers conduct studies, edtech startups build tools, investors inject capital, and educators are left at the tail end, hoping something works for their students. This incoherent marketplace, where solutions often lack substantial evidence of their effectiveness and are built without a deep understanding of the problems, was the central challenge addressed during the session “Uncovering the Hidden Gems: A State and Regional Deep Dive into R&D” at this year’s ISTELive and ASCD Annual Conference with Advanced Education Research and Development Fund (AERDF), Leanlab Education, Learner-Centered Collaborative, Alliance for Learning Innovation (ALI), and InnovateEDU.

Over 100 visionary leaders explored the possibilities for innovation hubs that enable more collaborative learning and experimentation, aligning with each community’s unique needs and strengths. Together, the group uncovered promising state and regional gems of innovation where more learner-centered education along with research and development (R&D) infrastructures are being created with communities of schools, teachers, and learners. These hubs, envisioned as collaborative ecosystems that span cities and states, unite local educators, researchers, technologists, and community leaders to foster innovation and drive progress. They offer a framework for collaborative learning, experimentation, and progress, tailored to each community’s unique needs and strengths.

This ISTE+ASCD session built on previous collective work among the coalition of the five education innovation organizations at ASU+GSV 2025. There, over 20 national leaders gathered to explore the promise of such state and regional innovation hubs in helping communities prepare for future educational challenges. Guided by the “Seizing the Opportunity for State Education R&D” brief—published by ALI, Transcend, and Education Reimagined—participants evaluated the urgency and importance of its eight recommendations for developing these regional hubs.

A Collaborative Ecosystem for True Innovation

The ISTE+ASCD session kicked off with an opening from Joseph South, Chief Innovation Officer, ISTE ASCD, welcoming attendees and inviting them to discover where education innovation is already thriving and join fellow educators and leaders from across the country to map these breakthrough initiatives across the country.

Next AERDF CEO Auditi Chakravarty shared the organization’s powerful vision for sparking breakthroughs in education. AERDF’s approach draws inspiration from successful advanced R&D models in energy, health, and defense and enhances those models by starting with a collaborative ecosystem where teachers, learners, and practitioners are engaged from the outset. This isn’t just about collecting feedback; it’s about co-designing and co-developing solutions through iterative cycles of research informing development and vice versa. AERDF focuses on the “front end of scientific discovery and invention,” seeking the fundamental new science or technical capabilities needed to solve persistent, complex problems in education.

This commitment to deeply integrated R&D extends throughout the sector. Devin Vodicka, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Learner-Centered Collaborative, articulated his organization’s vision for “education ecosystems where all learners know who they are, thrive in community, and actively engage in the world as their best selves.” He emphasized that R&D takes many forms, from tech-enabled products to human development and data systems.

Devin then transitioned the room into an interactive activity, challenging attendees to identify “innovation gems” across the United States. This exercise highlighted a key insight: these gems are all powered by state and regional innovation hubs. As Devin explained, there’s a “sweet spot” where these hubs are “big enough to impact systems and small enough to build trust and adapt to local contexts.” This regional focus allows for meaningful change that is both scalable and deeply contextualized to local needs.

Bright Spots

Katie Boody Adorno, founder and CEO of Leanlab Education, provided a compelling example from her hometown, Kansas City. She highlighted the work of Liberty Public Schools and the Success-Ready Students Network across Missouri. This grassroots movement is reimagining assessment by shifting away from traditional, standardized tests toward competency-based approaches that truly honor learning, whether it happens in a classroom or out in the field. This regional effort, driven by educators and community needs, is a testament to the power of localized innovation.

Treah Hutchings from InnovateEDU further demonstrated the power of “networks of networks,” catalyzing change by connecting diverse stakeholders. Their work spans policy, technology, and capacity building, bringing people together to develop policy around AI adoption, improve data infrastructure, and advance inclusive practices for students with disabilities.

Timothy Michalak from the Alliance For Learning Innovation (ALI) rounded out the discussion by emphasizing the importance of policy at the federal and state levels that encourages innovation and data collection. He shared insights from ALI’s research identifying state policies that drive R&D, emphasizing that innovation isn’t pursued for its own sake, but for the benefit of student outcomes.

Co-Creating the Future of Learning

The overarching message of the session was clear: the context of PreK-12 public education is changing rapidly, with pressures ranging from AI integration to teacher shortages. It’s up to us as educators, researchers, policymakers, and learners to co-create something new and different if we are serious about the success of every learner.

The mapping activity, where attendees identified bright spots and regional hubs of innovation across the country, was a powerful affirmation of this collaborative spirit. It showcased that innovation is happening everywhere, in “blue states, red states, purple states.” By identifying and connecting these “innovation gems,” the hope is to accelerate progress and build a future of education that is truly responsive and learner-centered.

Here are a few of the innovation gems identified in the room:

• Blueprint for Maryland’s Future: The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future will transform public education in the state into a world-class education system by increasing state funding for education over the next 10 years, enriching student experiences and accelerating student outcomes, as well as improving the quality of education for all children in Maryland. The Blueprint is a product of the recommendations made by a cross-section of stakeholders including education advocates, teachers, legislators, and experts to address education funding and needed approaches to better prepare students for success in the modern workforce.
• Ohio’s AI Summits: Ohio educators joined sold-out AI Summits to learn about AI literacy and its effective implementation in the classroom. Hosted in partnership with aiEDU, the Ohio Educational Service Center Association (OESCA), the Montgomery County Educational Service Center (MCESC), Future Forward Ohio, and the Nord Family Foundation, the events brought together educators from across the state to learn and share ideas around AI. Key takeaways emphasized the importance of AI as a supportive tool, the need for continuous learning, and the necessity of empowering educators and students with a clear understanding of AI literacy, as well as the need to handle AI use responsibly and ethically.
• The Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Career Ready PA initiative, in collaboration with Remake Learning Days, is actively strengthening the state’s educational landscape. This partnership is dedicated to cultivating a highly educated and skilled workforce. While Career Ready PA focuses on preparing learners for meaningful engagement in postsecondary education, workforce training, and diverse career pathways, simultaneously fostering responsible citizenship, Remake Learning Days complements these efforts through a widespread celebration of learning. It provides engaging, hands-on educational experiences for youth and their families across Pennsylvania. Together, these initiatives create a comprehensive and cohesive approach to enriching student experiences, ensuring future success by nurturing both essential foundational skills and a lasting passion for learning.

This session wasn’t just a conversation; it was an invitation to join a movement. It’s a movement to break down silos, prioritize real-world problems, and build an education system where research and development are deeply intertwined with the expertise and lived experiences of students and teachers.

How will you contribute to this evolving ecosystem?

Sign up to stay up to date on state and regional innovation hubs.

Written in collaboration with leaders from AERDF, ALI, InnovateEDU, Leanlab Education, and Learner-Centered Collaborative.

As a new school year begins, we were honored to be included in District Administration’s predictions for the 2025-2026 school year. Two of our AERDF leaders shared insights about what promises to be a watershed moment in education. District Administration asked AERDF to share our predictions about what factors will define the 2025-26 school year. 

“The education system is not built for rapid change, and faces the challenge of integrating one of the fastest-moving, most transformative technologies of our lifetime,” shared Sasha Rabkin, Chief of Program Strategy and Innovation at AERDF. “This calls for new investments, new laboratories and new kinds of partnerships and structures that invite us to reimagine the essential role of education in a healthy, vibrant society.”

There is no time to wait. AI technologies are rapidly shifting the way we learn, work and interact. Education, like all fields, has significant questions to answer not just about how we integrate this technology but also why and under what conditions we choose to do so. We are beyond debates about whether or not AI has a place in education. It is here. Our education system will need to make creative and forward reaching investments in its systems, processes, and networks to iterate at the speed of technology. This is one reason we are so proud of the recent launch of our newest program AugmentED led by Sherry Lachman.

Rebecca Kockler, Executive Director of Reading Reimagined, one of our flagship R&D programs, predicts this coming school year will have a greater focus on foundational literacy instruction to end decades of stagnation through targeted support for teachers and students. Additionally, national assessments continue to show that only 30% of eighth graders are proficient in reading. She and the team at Magpie Literacy, the nonprofit launched to scale the insights she developed at AERDF, are set to partner with hundreds of schools this year to make headway with thousands of students on this once intractable problem.

Read the article to see what factors education experts are predicting will shape our schools this coming year.

A new, free-to-use reading curriculum is available now for educators working with grades 4-9!

R&D partner and AERDF Awardee, Read STOP Write, has created a research-backed, freely available curriculum resource to help students build comprehension and knowledge while reading complex informational texts. Led by a team of researchers at University at Buffalo and Michigan State University, the Read STOP Write project has developed and tested a new curriculum with teachers and students that integrates instruction in evidence-based practices for teaching multisyllabic decoding, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and writing. 

The curriculum includes lesson plans, slide decks, and student materials, with 24 weeks of lessons for grades 4-5 and 12 weeks of lessons in grades 6-9. It is the outcome of AERDF’s signature R&D model – an approach that compresses traditional R&D timelines from decades to just 3–5 years, so students benefit now, not later, and systems evolve faster. 

Read STOP Write’s curriculum grew out of the same evidence base that informed a 2024 partnership between AERDF’s flagship R&D program, Reading Reimagined, and ETS.  

At AERDF, our goal is to create a virtuous cycle from research to development and back again. While confirming the decoding threshold is an important milestone, it is equally important that organizations like Read STOP Write are funded to create scalable solutions aimed at solving this problem for educators and students.  

Read STOP Write directly addresses these challenges by embedding instruction in foundational literacy skills, including multisyllabic decoding, vocabulary, and fluency, within ambitious instruction focused on promoting comprehension and writing in response to grade-level texts – delivered in ready-to-use lesson plans, slides, and student materials. 

At AERDF, we accelerate discovery, development, and diffusion, ensuring innovations move efficiently from idea to classroom and evolve through real-world use. This new curriculum is just one example. By building the infrastructure, partnerships, and national capacity, we ensure bold discoveries go beyond the lab or academic journals, reaching classrooms and transforming learning.

📚 Explore and share the free curriculum!

🔍 Learn more about the decoding threshold research.

Throughout history, moments have invited us to rethink how learning happens, who it serves, and what it could become. And yet, many of these opportunities have come and gone without the lasting change they promised.

The COVID-19 pandemic is one such moment. It revealed long-standing inequities, catalyzed fresh thinking, and sparked a desire for new approaches from education leaders and entire communities. Five years later, it’s fair to say that turning the desire for a more learner-centric model into a reality anchored in practice was uneven and sparse. But innovation and transformation did happen.

A new brief, Seizing the Opportunity for State Education R&D: Findings and Recommendations for Action, by Education Reimagined and Transcend, in partnership with the Alliance for Learning Innovation (ALI), describes some examples.

Each example showcases a universal truth: a specific set of underlying conditions and infrastructure for learner-centered change had to be in place for success. Those conditions and infrastructure provide a promising blueprint for reimagining learning and innovation in today’s educational environment.

Evaluating the Conditions and Infrastructure That Matter Most

As we ride another wave of uncertainty across the educational landscape—the expiration of COVID-19 relief funds and shrinking public school district budgets, cuts to federally funded research initiatives, and opportunities and challenges around AI integration—we need to understand where, when, and how to create systems that support and sustain learner-centered change no matter what comes next.

In April, five education innovation organizations—Learner-Centered Collaborative (LCC), Advanced Education Research and Development Fund (AERDF), Leanlab Education, InnovateEDU, and the Alliance for Learning Innovation (ALI)—convened a national group of 20+ leaders at ASU+GSV in San Diego to discuss the potential and promise of regional innovation hubs to prepare every community for the unexpected.

Regional innovation hubs are collaborative ecosystems defined by citywide, statewide, or multi-state collaboration that bring together local educators, researchers, technologists, and community leaders. These hubs provide a collaborative learning, experimentation, and progress framework that aligns with each community’s unique needs and strengths.

Using the eight recommendations from the Seizing the Opportunity for State Education R&D brief as a conversation starter, participants assessed the importance and urgency of each one as it relates to the development of these regional hubs:

Recommended Condition/Infrastructure	Participant Notes
Condition: Establish a state vision and goals that prioritize innovation and continuous improvement.	“If you don’t know where you’re going, you won’t get there.”
Condition: Establish a dedicated office to oversee and drive state education R&D.	“There are different models. This could be one, but there are tradeoffs.” “Some capacity is needed, but not necessarily this solution.”
Condition: Empower local leaders to test evidence-based solutions and develop innovative models that improve learner experiences and inform systems.	“Locally-embedded solutions are needed to demonstrate possibility.” “This has to be rooted in community for the best ideas to come forth and for the work to be sustainable.”
Condition: Identify and build the needed capacity that impacts mindset and behavior change.	“Mindsets are a necessary starting place.” “Focus on individuals as close to students as possible.”
Infrastructure: Modernize state longitudinal data systems (SLDS)	“This can occur once the vision is clear and the ecosystem has modeled a data system.” “It depends on the current system in place, especially given federal pullback.”
Infrastructure: Leverage tools, artificial intelligence, and technology platforms to support and enable education R&D.	“Necessary for today’s world and for the future.” “Needs to be aligned to the vision and connected to local leaders.”
Infrastructure: Build human capacity through partnerships, networks, and community engagement.	“Creates capacity, connectedness, and momentum.” “Having networks across contexts supports local innovations and policy implementation.”
Infrastructure: Provide technical support for R&D activities and continuous improvement.	“Tech support is valuable, and partnerships with expert organizations are important.”

 

Why Regional? Why Now?

The shape and scope of federal funding in education are evolving, including a potential shift toward regionally focused investments in research and innovation. With that shift comes an important question: Are communities equipped to lead?

We believe they can be.

Regional ecosystems offer the ideal scale for experimentation and evolution. They’re big enough to impact systems, small enough to build trust, and flexible enough to adapt to context. In short, regional hubs are where vision meets action.

Promising examples of regional education innovation hubs exist. In Missouri, 114 school districts collaborate via the Success-Ready Students Network to redesign assessments aligned with competency-based, real-world learning.

In Columbus, Ohio, a brand new initiative launched in 2024 called the Columbus Learning Ecosystem Initiative—”A tight partnership of the STEM visionary PAST Foundation, learner-centered leader 100 Roads, and Education Reimagined.” This initiative was originally born from a need to address the city’s fast population growth and increase the availability of skilled workers. As a result, they came up with the following solution:

“While the urgent need for workforce development has sparked this K–12 evolution, this learner-centered ecosystem is fundamentally designed to support the fulfillment, purpose and sense of belonging among learners. It’s developed to ensure young people find their role in the burgeoning community, seize opportunity as businesses grow, and understand ways they can contribute. It’s an endeavor to fundamentally change what K–12 teaching and learning looks like in Columbus.”

In North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, they have formed the Ed-Tech Collaboratory—an initiative focused on enhancing operational efficiency for education agencies and improving student outcomes through the use of common data strategies, infrastructure, and modern software solutions. This collaboratory endeavors to create and maintain replicable models for state data systems, aiming to make education more responsive, adaptable, and student-focused for the future.

Looking at the backstory of each initiative, specifically when and why each began, we might note there is always a moment to reimagine our systems and structures so that every learner is fully seen, supported, and empowered. That moment is here and now in all our communities, so let’s explore how we might respond and rethink how we do school.

What We Need to Build

Several cross-cutting elements should guide the creation and scaling of regional hubs. Below are insights gathered both in our April conversation at ASU+GSV and in the Seizing the Opportunity for State Education R&D brief:

• State-Level Advocacy: States can act as important allies—advocating for enabling policies, aligning data systems, and ensuring coherence in service of grassroots or district-level innovation.
• Capacity Building: Regional hubs must invest in developing people who do the work and shape it, not just in programs. This means supporting educators, community leaders, and learners themselves.
• Collaborative Ecosystems: Innovation doesn’t thrive in silos. Successful hubs will be those that foster deep partnerships across sectors and roles.
• Data & Infrastructure: To learn what works and scale what matters, robust systems for measurement and evidence generation, actionable feedback, and iteration are essential.
• Communication & Amplification: Moving fast and sharing broadly will be critical to building momentum across regions and fueling a national movement.
• Authenticity & Purpose: Amidst the complexity, the work must stay grounded in what matters most: the humanity of learners, educators, and communities.

What Comes Next

Building regional hubs is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Each hub must reflect its local context’s needs, assets, and aspirations. Some may emerge within a single district, others may form through statewide coalitions, and others may span geographic or thematic boundaries.

What matters most is that the work begins, that leaders, educators, researchers, and communities come together around a shared purpose, and that we work together to build ecosystems from the ground up.

This work is just beginning. And you can be part of it!

We are continuing this conversation in person at ISTELive 25 in San Antonio, TX. If you plan on attending and would like to know more details about our regional innovation hubs conversation, please email us at info@aerdf.org. If you are not attending, but would like to be involved in future conversations or simply receive updates about the work, submit your information here.

Together, we can co-create a future where education innovation is local, change is lasting, and every learner is seen, heard, and empowered.

Education systems that were able to adapt and innovate during the COVID-19 pandemic had community-aligned visions; distributed leadership that allowed for rapid ideation and iteration; strong community-based partnerships, including with parents; support systems to build and sustain educator capacity; and the underlying technological and data infrastructure that made sense for their context. Without these robust conditions and infrastructures in place, it was difficult to do more than tread water during the ongoing uncertainty of a global pandemic.

If we want to make the most of future opportunities—and better yet, create them—we need to invest now in the foundational elements that make systemic transformation in education possible. We hope you’ll join us!

Written in collaboration with leaders from AERDF, ALI, InnovateEDU, Leanlab Education, and Learner-Centered Collaborative

Auditi Chakravarty, CEO of the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund, spoke with Edtech Insiders at THE AI SHOW @ ASU+GSV to emphasize the importance of learning science to harness the power of AI in education. Take a listen to the conversation between Auditi Chakravarty and Alex Sarlin to hear why grounding AI in research and practical classroom needs is key to truly advance AI’s role in teaching and learning.

This is our approach at AERDF. Each of our R&D programs is exploring applications of AI, and AugmentED, our newest program, will focus squarely on discovering how AI can enhance human teaching, rather than replace it. Check out the full interview here: