Bellwether Education Partners
Project Title
For support of a teacher shortage landscape analysis
Date
Mar. 09, 2023
Duration
6 months
Description
While teacher shortages and teacher pipeline issues have been well-researched, the field is lacking access to quality and actionable information about the exemplary innovative talents and staffing approaches schools are taking. It is not widely understood what successful new approaches look like, or what the policy conditions are that make these approaches possible or challenging. With support from the Corporation and in partnership with four additional national funders, Bellwether will conduct a landscape analysis to (1) distill existing research and conduct qualitative research with practitioners (teachers and school/system leaders) who are addressing talent and staffing challenges to better understand and communicate the “pain” in teaching and learning and the human capital and broader challenges contributing to this “pain”; (2) identify and describe innovative models and promising approaches for organizing talent to perform the “jobs to be done” for students; (3) identify local, state, and federal policy opportunities to drive innovation; and (4) identify funding gaps, opportunities, and potential tipping points ripe for exponential impact.
Website
Project Title
For the Postsecondary Pipeline Big Idea and a research project on the impact of COVID
Date
Mar. 10, 2022
Duration
18 months
Description
Since March of 2020 the pandemic has disrupted almost every facet of education. Now, with most students back in schools and the availability of ESSER funding, there are increasing calls to “rebuild” or “re-envision” the sector. Bellwether Education seeks to build a learning and improvement agenda to both help students recover from the pandemic and seed enduring changes to the contexts and conditions of the education sector. This grant will support two initiatives: (1) helping the field learn from this moment via data and research to understand how COVID-era policies are impacting students; and (2) generating new solutions to critical challenges through leveraging Bellwether’s ‘do-tank’ approach to surface new thinking and build the more nimble, generative, and flexible contexts and conditions necessary for improvement, with a focus around postsecondary pathways.
Website
Project Title
To develop better functionality on a microsite that will inform the field around postsecondary transitions amidst the COVID-19 crisis
Date
Mar. 04, 2021
Duration
6 months
Description
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an uncomfortable truth: instead of developing a coherent ecosystem to guide students from high school into careers, our postsecondary transitions space currently relies too much on students’ resiliency to make it from high school through postsecondary education and into a secure, meaningful career. Bellwether Education Partners proposes a body of work that starts with deeply listening to current high school students and recent alumni and their families about their needs, choices and trade-offs. They then plan to conduct a landscape analysis across several cities to determine interventions that meet students’ needs. This grant will support the development of a microsite to share the landscape assessment, survey findings, case studies of “bright spots,” and a series of tools and guidance for policymakers and district and postsecondary leaders. This body of research will help decision-makers replicate and scale promising practices in ways that bring student voice to the forefront of program design and develop more coherent transitions between programs and systems.
Website
Project Title
For a project to inform the OpenSciEd initiative through a landscape analysis of the elementary and high school science curriculum market
Date
Mar. 05, 2020
Duration
3 months
Description
The early success of OpenSciEd’s middle school science curriculum has begun a discussion on the merits of expanding their resources into elementary or high school. However, there is not a full factbase from which leadership and partners can understand, engage with, and make decisions about tradeoffs to either approach. Bellwether Education Partners plans to collaborate with OpenSciEd to inform the initiative’s goal to improve the supply of and demand for high-quality science instructional materials in the elementary and high school grades. This project will help the Corporation and other key stakeholders in science education determine which direction to expand its science strategy funding support beyond middle school through market information and the grantee’s expertise in the field. Through this grant, Bellwether will: (a) develop an assessment report; (b) design the research process; (c) conduct focused research; (d) gather key stakeholder input; (e) and facilitate informative discussions.
Website
Project Title
For a project to develop and implement a five-year strategic plan for OpenSciEd
Date
Jun. 04, 2020
Duration
6 months
Description
The success of the OpenSciEd middle school science curriculum has resulted in demand for and much needed supply of high-quality elementary and high school curricula. To address this need, OpenSciEd engaged Bellwether Education Partners to develop a fact base to inform these decisions. In addition to determining the next steps for additional curriculum development, the initiative’s Advisory Board has requested OpenSciEd to develop a five-year strategic plan. This project will help the Corporation and other key stakeholders in science education determine how to continue to support the development and sustainability of OpenSciEd. Through this renewal grant, Bellwether will work with OpenSciEd to develop: (a) a strategic vision and impact goals, (b) the organization’s science education products and service offerings, (c) the best conditions for OpenSciEd offerings, (d) potential operating and business models, and (e) an implementation strategy based on the findings.
Website
Project Title
For project support for the delivery of instructional material to families
Date
Jun. 04, 2020
Duration
4 months
Description
We are at an unprecedented period in American education where the normal operations of K-12 schools will face disruptions over the next several months of COVID-19. Schools and education organizations have had to, in very short order, grapple with an array of challenges from providing meals to students disconnected from school to developing rapid-cycle decision-making and delivering online education at a scale that was inconceivable just a few weeks ago. There is an immediate and urgent need to support students and families across the country to access quality instructional materials that work around the device-connectivity challenge and ensure that the nation’s students have equitable access to content. With support from the Corporation, Bellwether Education Partners – in partnership with parent advocacy and support organizations EdNavigator, GreatSchools, and Learning Heroes and with the National Summer Learning Association – proposes to rapidly design and launch a solution that addresses families’ critical needs by delivering hard copies of instructional materials that connects them with critical learning content.
Website
Project Title
As an emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic for the project "We the Graduates" to develop a landscape assessment and tools to inform the field around postsecondary transitions amidst the COVID-19 crisis
Date
Sep. 10, 2020
Duration
9 months
Description
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an uncomfortable truth: instead of developing a coherent ecosystem to guide students from high school into careers, our postsecondary transitions space currently relies too much on students’ resiliency to make it from high school through postsecondary education and into a secure, meaningful career. Bellwether Education Partners proposes a body of work that starts with deeply listening to current high school students and recent alumni and their families about their needs, choices and trade-offs. They then plan to conduct a landscape analysis across several cities to determine interventions that meet students’ needs. This landscape assessment will be published together with survey findings, case studies of “bright spots,” and a series of tools and guidance for policymakers and district and postsecondary leaders. This body of research will help decision-makers replicate and scale promising practices in ways that bring student voice to the forefront of program design and develop more coherent transitions between programs and systems.
Website
Project Title
For continued support of a project to align services to better serve students with interrupted education
Date
Sep. 12, 2019
Duration
26 months
Description
More than five million youth in the United States today experience education disruption related to traumatic life events and have some of the lowest educational outcomes of any student group. While they are served by multiple social service agencies, their needs are still not fully met, due in part to the deep silos that exist between systems of care in this country. With prior Corporation support as part of the Integration Design Consortium, Bellwether Education Partners developed an approach intended to lead to wholesale rethinking of the ways in which social service agencies interact with one another and with the children in their care. They worked with agencies in New Orleans, LA; El Dorado County, CA; and the state of Utah, to leverage two interrelated strategies: a tactical model for planning for reform for local leaders and the creation of field-facing materials that act as resources for approaching this problem. They plan to build on their success so far by supporting implementation of the first set of plans; engaging a second cohort of leaders; and increasing the intensity of their field-facing work.
Website
Project Title
For continued work in three sites to better serve students with interrupted education
Date
Jun. 14, 2018
Duration
12 months
Description
More than five million youth in the United States today experience education disruption related to traumatic life events such as incarceration, homelessness, frequent mobility, pregnancy, or severe mental health crises, and have some of the lowest educational outcomes of any student group. While they are served by multiple, overlapping social service agencies, their needs are still not fully met, due in part to the deep silos that exist between systems of care. This grant enables the expansion of a project, launched in 2017 as part of the Corporation’s Integration Design Consortium, to streamline care for these students in order to improve their educational outcomes. Bellwether is now working with three sites: the state of Utah, El Dorado County in California, and the Louisiana Recovery School District in New Orleans, to conduct needs assessments and implementation planning for how to better serve these students. This grant enables continued planning for each site, community of practice convenings across all sites, and the creation of field-facing publications and story-telling assets to raise awareness and share lessons with the field.
Website
Project Title
For the development of a project to eliminate silos at a state education agency to better serve students with disrupted education, and the creation of resources related to the use of human-centered design in policy development (as one of the five projects
Date
Jun. 01, 2017
Duration
12 months
Description
More than 5 million youth in the U.S. today experience education disruption related to traumatic life events such as incarceration, homelessness, frequent mobility, pregnancy, or severe mental health crises, and have some of the lowest educational outcomes of any student group. While they are served by multiple, overlapping systems, their needs are still not fully met, due in part to the deep silos that exist between systems of care in this country. Bellwether Education Partners aims to address this fragmentation in service provision by leveraging their capacity in policy analysis and strategic advising – and using human-centered design to inform policy recommendations – to lead a wholesale rethinking of the ways in which social service agencies interact with one another and with the children in their care. Their model includes the creation of a statewide agency for education transitions, streamlined data-sharing, collection of appropriate data, and support for the culture shifts that embed coordination and communication across agencies. With the support of this grant, they will identify a pilot state in which to conduct needs assessment and implementation planning for this model, in addition to creating a human-centered design policy resource kit that can be shared with the field.