A map of the experts asked how to improve U.S. schools.

Higher-education access, financial aid, and equity

Selected work

FAFSA verification; college affordability and racial inequity research

Professional network

University of Delaware; higher-ed policy and equity research community

Questions worth asking

1. What K–12 interventions most reliably improve college access for low-income students?
2. Which accountability indicators best reveal whether high schools prepare students for postsecondary success?

School leadership, principal labor markets, and district improvement

Selected work

Research on principals, turnover, and leadership effects

Professional network

Education leadership and policy research networks; university/district partners

Questions worth asking

1. Which principal-selection practices predict sustained learning gains?
2. What reduces damaging principal turnover in high-poverty schools?

Reading comprehension and literacy instruction

Selected work

Reading-comprehension instruction synthesis; vocabulary, knowledge, and comprehension studies

Professional network

Literacy and reading-comprehension research collaborators

Questions worth asking

1. How should schools combine phonics, vocabulary, knowledge-building, and comprehension?
2. What distinguishes high-quality literacy implementation from compliance?

Professor of Sociology, Brown; director, Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America; former dean, UC Berkeley GSE

Selected work

Keepin’ It Real; research on race, culture, class, and educational inequality

Professional network

Brown; Annenberg Institute; former UC Berkeley leadership; inequality and sociology networks

Questions worth asking

1. Which strategies raise achievement without reproducing stratification?
2. What makes rigorous programs credible and belonging-promoting for students?

Education-policy and quantitative-methods scholar

Selected work

Gender gaps in STEM; gifted-program identification and access

Professional network

Education policy, methods, and talent-development communities

Questions worth asking

1. How should districts identify advanced learners without biased referrals?
2. Which early indicators expand advanced-course access while preserving support?

Columbia education economist

Selected work

Charter schools, Boston choice, financial aid, and long-run outcomes

Professional network

Columbia; education-economics and school-choice research communities

Questions worth asking

1. What features of high-performing schools produce long-run benefits?
2. When does choice improve opportunity, and when does it worsen sorting?

Barnett Family Professor, Stanford GSE; affiliated with Hoover, SIEPR, NBER, and Gardner Center

Selected work

Accountability, teachers, discipline gaps, civic education, and cellphone-policy studies

Professional network

Stanford GSE, Hoover, SIEPR, NBER, Gardner Center, AERA and APPAM

Questions worth asking

1. Which accountability systems produce durable improvement instead of test prep?
2. What evidence threshold should govern school technology restrictions?

Harvard professor of education, public policy, and economics

Selected work

Student aid, college completion, income-based achievement gaps, returns to education

Professional network

Harvard, NBER, education-economics and postsecondary-policy networks

Questions worth asking

1. Which K–12 investments best improve later college completion and earnings?
2. How can data target students at risk of leaving the postsecondary path?

North Carolina State education-policy scholar

Selected work

Charters, vouchers, teacher quality, and accountability

Professional network

NC State; school-choice and education-policy research communities

Questions worth asking

1. When do choice programs improve learning rather than subsidize existing enrollment?
2. What accountability should accompany public funding of private options?

University of Washington education economist; director, CALDER

Selected work

Teacher preparation, licensure, staffing, evaluation, recruitment, and retention

Professional network

University of Washington/CALDER; teacher-labor economists; longitudinal-data partnerships

Questions worth asking

1. Which pipeline measures predict classroom effectiveness and retention?
2. How should states staff high-poverty schools without lowering quality?

Senior Fellow, Stanford Hoover Institution; education economist

Selected work

Teacher quality, accountability, spending, and achievement/economic-growth research

Professional network

Hoover, Stanford, international and education-economics policy circles

Questions worth asking

1. What spending uses have the strongest evidence for improved achievement?
2. How should states retain effective teachers while ensuring fair evaluation?

Tulane professor; director, Education Research Alliance for New Orleans

Selected work

New Orleans reforms, charter governance, accountability, closure, and recovery

Professional network

Tulane; New Orleans district/community partnerships; policy-evaluation networks

Questions worth asking

1. Which New Orleans governance lessons transfer elsewhere?
2. How can accountability avoid destabilizing communities through churn?

Harvard GSE professor; mathematics-instruction and teacher-learning scholar

Selected work

Math teaching, professional learning, classroom observation, and instructional quality

Professional network

Harvard; mathematics education, teacher learning, and instructional measurement networks

Questions worth asking

1. Which math professional learning changes instruction and outcomes?
2. How can districts select curriculum and support teachers to use it well?

Vanderbilt professor; learning-sciences and mathematics-education scholar

Selected work

Teacher collaboration, organizational learning, mathematics instruction, and equity

Professional network

Vanderbilt; learning-sciences, mathematics-education, and improvement networks

Questions worth asking

1. How can collaboration improve instruction rather than add meeting time?
2. What supports expand cognitively demanding math for more students?

Professor, USC Rossier

Selected work

School choice, privatization, teacher labor markets, housing, and educational equity

Professional network

USC Rossier; school-choice, equity, and teacher-labor networks

Questions worth asking

1. How do choice systems affect access after transportation and information barriers?
2. Which retention policies work in schools serving marginalized communities?

Harvard professor; faculty director, Center for Education Policy Research

Selected work

Tutoring, teacher effectiveness, accountability, college readiness, and learning recovery

Professional network

Harvard CEPR; state/district data partnerships; education-economics networks

Questions worth asking

1. Which tutoring models keep their effects at district scale?
2. What should leaders measure monthly to track recovery investments?

Harvard GSE professor; literacy-intervention researcher

Selected work

Summer reading, reading comprehension, family literacy, and scalable interventions

Professional network

Harvard literacy and policy networks; school and district research partners

Questions worth asking

1. Which low-cost literacy supports work outside the school day?
2. How should interventions address weak vocabulary and background knowledge?

University of Missouri education economist

Selected work

Teacher pensions, mobility, evaluation, finance, and outcomes

Professional network

University of Missouri; education-finance and teacher-labor networks

Questions worth asking

1. How should pay reward hard-to-staff assignments without creating instability?
2. Which finance reforms most improve instructional conditions?

Professor of Education and Economics, Brown; NBER research associate; former White House CEA senior economist

Selected work

Teacher working conditions, attendance, instructional time, climate resilience, educator effectiveness

Professional network

Brown, NBER, AERA, White House policy experience, district partnerships

Questions worth asking

1. Which investments improve teacher effectiveness and working conditions together?
2. How should attendance and learning time fit into recovery plans?

Associate professor, Wayne State; director, Detroit Partnership for Education Equity & Research; former NYC teacher

Selected work

Detroit education, choice, enrollment, governance, and equity

Professional network

Wayne State; Detroit schools/civic partners; Education Trust–Midwest alumni network

Questions worth asking

1. What reforms improve access and stability in fragmented urban systems?
2. How can research partnerships give families usable school-quality information?

Indiana University professor of mathematics education

Selected work

Math achievement, instruction, equity, and school-sector comparisons

Professional network

Indiana University; mathematics education and assessment research communities

Questions worth asking

1. What would a credible national math-recovery strategy look like?
2. Which changes increase reasoning without sacrificing fluency?

University of Arkansas professor; reform, choice, and governance scholar

Selected work

School choice, charter schools, civic education, governance, and leadership

Professional network

University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform; charter and choice-policy networks

Questions worth asking

1. What conditions let effective charter networks expand with public oversight?
2. Which choice-design features prevent exclusion and weak accountability?

Research Fellow, Public Policy Institute of California; former Los Angeles teacher

Selected work

Instructional time, state policy, English learners, early literacy, and underserved students

Professional network

PPIC; Stanford SCALE and policy networks; practitioner experience

Questions worth asking

1. Which policies improve early literacy for English learners appropriately?
2. How can districts increase learning time beyond simply adding seat time?

Head, University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform; endowed chair; former World Bank senior adviser

Selected work

School-based management, education finance, partnerships, learning outcomes

Professional network

University of Arkansas; former World Bank teams; international ministries and development networks

Questions worth asking

1. Which international lessons are transferable to decentralized U.S. systems?
2. How should public-private partnerships be evaluated for learning and equity?

Professor, USC Rossier; co-faculty director, USC EdPolicy Hub

Selected work

Curriculum, standards, accountability, assessment, and survey research

Professional network

USC Rossier/EdPolicy Hub; curriculum, standards, and survey-research networks

Questions worth asking

1. Which curriculum-adoption policies improve coherence while allowing adaptation?
2. How should states measure whether implementation support is usable?

Stanford professor; director, Educational Opportunity Project

Selected work

Income segregation, racial inequality, district achievement gaps, and opportunity

Professional network

Stanford; Educational Opportunity Project; administrative-data and district-policy networks

Questions worth asking

1. Which districts narrow gaps while raising average performance, and how?
2. How should schools, funding, and housing policy be coordinated?

Research professor, Georgetown; director, Edunomics Lab; former Gates Foundation economic adviser

Selected work

School budgeting, enrollment decline, fiscal transparency, and resource allocation

Professional network

Georgetown/Edunomics; district and state finance leaders; former Gates Foundation ties

Questions worth asking

1. How should districts reallocate funding amid enrollment decline?
2. Which budget reports show whether funds reach high-need students?

Historian of education and public commentator; University of Massachusetts Lowell scholar

Selected work

Beyond Test Scores; A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door; history and politics of public education

Professional network

UMass Lowell; education historians; public-education advocacy and media networks

Questions worth asking

1. Which non-test outcomes should systems track without diluting academics?
2. How can reformers build durable legitimacy for evidence-based changes?

Associate professor of education, Stanford; formerly University of Virginia and Harvard Kennedy School postdoctoral fellow

Selected work

School improvement, accountability, principals, closures, state takeovers

Professional network

Stanford; former UVA and Harvard networks; state/district improvement partners

Questions worth asking

1. Which interventions improve persistently low-performing schools?
2. What should states do after conventional turnaround repeatedly fails?

Education research-methods and policy scholar, associated with AIR

Selected work

Program evaluation, causal inference, and research use

Professional network

AIR; federal evaluation, research-methods, and policy communities

Questions worth asking

1. What evidence standard should precede districtwide scaling?
2. How can pilots yield useful answers fairly and quickly?

Education-policy researcher focused on teachers, quality, and quantitative analysis

Selected work

Educator labor markets, data, and policy evaluation

Professional network

Education-policy and quantitative-research networks

Questions worth asking

1. Which staffing policies best improve outcomes in hard-to-staff schools?
2. What teacher-shortage data should states publish?

Educational measurement and policy researcher

Selected work

Growth measures, accountability, assessment use, school improvement, recovery

Professional network

Assessment and policy networks; state/district data partners

Questions worth asking

1. How should accountability balance proficiency, growth, and non-test outcomes?
2. What assessment changes make results more useful to teachers?

Education-policy leader; governance, labor markets, unions, turnaround, and accountability scholar

Selected work

Collective bargaining, unions, turnaround, portfolio management, governance

Professional network

EPIC; Michigan and California agencies; Philadelphia and Los Angeles partnerships; REACH

Questions worth asking

1. Which labor-management arrangements improve staffing and instruction?
2. When do turnarounds build capacity rather than churn?

Texas A&M professor and education-finance economist

Selected work

Adequacy costs, finance equity, allocation, and education cost analysis

Professional network

Texas A&M; education-finance researchers and state-policy networks

Questions worth asking

1. What should adequate funding account for across student needs and labor markets?
2. Which pre-K and K–12 uses of funds preserve gains over time?

University of Michigan associate professor; policy, leadership, governance, and improvement researcher

Selected work

School/district improvement, governance, learning opportunities, and engagement

Professional network

University of Michigan; Michigan district/state improvement partnerships

Questions worth asking

1. What does rigorous and engaging learning look like at scale?
2. Which district routines help leaders troubleshoot implementation early?

Harvard GSE professor; policy scholar on accountability, choice, civic education, and public opinion

Selected work

Education Next surveys; accountability, teacher policy, charters, civic learning

Professional network

Harvard; Education Next; public-opinion and education-policy networks

Questions worth asking

1. Which effective reforms have durable bipartisan and parent support?
2. How can civic learning improve without partisan curriculum conflict?

University of Arkansas professor and endowed chair of school choice

Selected work

Voucher, charter, private-school-choice, and parent-satisfaction evaluations

Professional network

University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform; school-choice evaluation networks

Questions worth asking

1. Which voucher-design features protect learning and accountability?
2. How should test scores, satisfaction, cost, and equity be weighed together?