2025 Eddies Awards: Best Defense

Building with leaf mural on it, a blue wash over it, and text reading "Best Defense"

The Eddies—annual, advocate-nominated and voted awards—feature strategic advocacy that is driving impactful policy change. Best Defense highlights campaigns that strategically defended important policy at significant risk and overcame significant odds using innovative tactics; sometimes, the most significant wins are actually holding the line. Nominees in this category provide models for how to deploy sharp strategies to […]

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2025 Eddies Awards: Best Collaboration

The text "Best Collaboration" is centered over the image. Image background shows an artistic mural with the Atlanta skyline in the background.

The Eddies—annual, advocate-nominated and voted awards—feature strategic advocacy that is driving impactful policy change. This Eddies category features unique coalitions of leaders and organizations who worked together to achieve a significant impact for students and families. Working in coalition can be incredibly powerful—and incredibly challenging. This category honors the hard work of coalitions that organized artfully to […]

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Spotlights on States Leading the Way

This session will highlight states’ efforts to expand high-quality work-based learning opportunities to students across the country and explore what it would take to replicate those efforts elsewhere. Join this session with Kevin Grubb (Strada Education Foundation), Laura Love (Strada Education Foundation), Alyssa Morton (Empower Schools), and Shannon Nicholas (Colorado Succeeds) to learn more, with more state leaders to be announced soon. Register to join. […]

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Building an Effective Work-Based Learning Ecosystem

Effective work-based learning systems require coordination across a number of stakeholders, including students, employers, educational institutions, and intermediaries. Join this session with Crystal Folger-Hawks (Surry-Yadkin Works), Kevin Grubb (Strada Education Foundation), Cecilia Holden (myFutureNC), and Laura Love (Strada Education Foundation) to explore how to create an effective work-based learning ecosystem that ensures students and employers have access to high-quality experiences. Register to join. […]

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Alabama’s New Funding Formula: A Conversation with Advocacy Leaders

Alabama leaders made big moves in the 2025 legislative session, passing major legislation to modernize its education finance system and direct resources where they are needed most. The RAISE Act–the first significant update to the state’s formula in 30 years–creates a new hybrid funding formula to target student needs, and includes weights for special education, […]

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Understanding Work-Based Learning Models & Why They Matter

This session will provide an overview of key work-based learning models, examine the latest research on what works, and unpack current barriers to expanding access. Join this session with Laura Love (Strada Education Foundation) and Kevin Grubb (Strada Education Foundation) to develop a stronger foundation to support informed policy and advocacy efforts. Register to join. […]

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Mastering the Charter School Program

The shifting federal landscape on charter schools can make it hard to successfully navigate federal funding opportunities. Join this session to learn more about the Charter School Program (CSP), which provides funding for the startup of new charter schools and the replication and expansion of existing high-quality charter schools serving students from pre-K to 12. Starlee Coleman (National […]

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Building Better Schools: Insights from Innovative Public Schools

Audience: PIE Network Leaders Recent research from NewSchools documents how schools in its portfolio are able to outperform traditional models to achieve exceptional academic and social-emotional outcomes. Join this conversation led by Mia Howard (NewSchools) with pioneering school founders Kristle Hodges Johnson (University High School, TN), Declan O’Connor (Discovery Polytech Early College Prep HS, MA), […]

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2024 Eddies Awards: Most Actionable Tools & Research

The Eddies—annual, advocate-nominated and voted awards—feature strategic advocacy that is driving impactful policy change. This Eddies category spotlights resources or tools that shed new light on pressing and widespread problems or solutions and that state and local advocates across the Network leveraged to make a compelling case for policy change and achieve breakthroughs. See a complete list of 2024 […]

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Calculating School Options and Education Funding

Audience: PIE Network Leaders As public investment in school choice programs rises, whare are the financial implications for states and districts? Join Marguerite Roza and Maggie Ciccio (Edunomics Lab), who will share a real-time analysis of how many public dollars are flowing through private options and discuss these trends fit into broader state revenues outlook. […]

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