Education reform has increasingly become a national priority and the federal government has increased its leverage accordingly. However, if the lessons of the last decade have taught us anything, it is that states have an enormous role to play in advancing reform agendas. States face many common challenges, including raising expectations to ensure that all students graduate from high school ready for college and their careers; that all students have great teachers and great schools; that educators have the resources they need and the flexibility and autonomy to use them well; and that schools are held accountable for the job they do.
State lawmakers determine important issues such as what level of math is required to graduate, who is qualified to teach our schools, how much money schools get and how they can spend it, and what information schools must provide to parents and the public. Decisions like these are too important to be decided without public input. In many states, education advocacy organizations (EAOs) bring a credible, evidence-based, non-partisan voice for school improvement to their state capitals. Strategic, focused, and unrelenting, these leading advocates leverage some of the same tactics used by sophisticated interest groups to turn public policy in the direction of reform, proving that the political will to change our schools can be created, targeted, and sustained.
By working through ready networks in states and then encouraging those groups to identify allies working with them, we are building a network of the most potent leaders for education reform across the country in order to:
- Support and strengthen existing state advocacy groups and incubate new ones.
- Provide support and access to policy innovations for leaders of EAOs.
- Work through EAOs to disseminate ideas and research from the PIE Network partner organizations to state policy leaders hungry for change.
- Create a more state-responsive research agenda through direct feedback from the organizations driving change in their states about how policies play out in practice.
- Capture the experiences and lessons learned by state advocates working to improve their state educational systems.
- As a result, improve equity and hasten the pace of improving student achievement.
Read Philantropedia's expert recommendations on the PIE Network
(Photo: PIE Network members Sarah Grunewald, The Rodel Foundation of Delaware; Steve Bowen, Maine Heritage Foundation.)
