Education First Consulting

Please join us in welcoming our newest Principal Consultant, Priscilla Aquino Garza, PhD! Priscilla advises education funders, state education agencies and their partners on system-level strategies to improve student outcomes, with a focus on strategic school staffing, teacher apprenticeship models and college and career pathways. She joins us most recently from Educate Texas, where she served as Senior Director of Policy and Programs, and previously held policy leadership roles at Stand for Children Texas and the Texas Education Agency. Priscilla started her career as a middle school teacher, and that classroom experience still shapes how she approaches policy and systems work today. Welcome, Priscilla! 👋

Education First is thrilled to support Heartland Forward in bringing the Heartland Educator Workforce Community of Practice to life. While this collaboration focuses on supporting educators across Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, the approach can be replicated in other states. Are you working to build high-quality, innovative educator preparation programs and are interested in learning from proven models? Take a peek at the latest edition of Pulse of the Heartland to learn more. 👨🏫 Celena Siprajim, John Luczak, Susan Pham

Three winning states. $11 million in federal funds. Hundreds of thousands of students and educators benefiting. Those are the results for our partners in this year’s Competitive Grants for State Assessments (CGSA). Education First supported three out of the four winning states—New Mexico, Montana and North Carolina–with strategic coaching and grant writing in order to translate their innovative visions for improving student outcomes through meaningful assessment, accountability and data systems into clear project plans. Did you know 💡 Over the last three cycles of the CGSA program, 90% of the states Education First supported won their grant applications—totaling 10 grants worth $32 million across seven states. Learn more at the link below 🔗 ⤵️ Jennifer Vranek, Dave Powell New Mexico Public Education Department, Montana Office of Public Instruction, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction

We are thrilled to welcome our newest Senior Consultant, Kijafa Davis, to the Education First team. Kijafa brings over five years of strategic education consulting experience, most recently at TNTP, where she led statewide and district-level curriculum implementation supporting more than 400 Texas school districts in adopting high-quality instructional materials. She specializes in change management, curriculum implementation and state education grant strategy. We're excited to have her student- and community-centered mindset on our team, and eager to add more former educators to our rolodex, as we continue helping funders, states and districts turn ambitious academic goals into classroom practice that benefits educators and students. Welcome, Kijafa! 👋

Much of the data districts have to support student success is fragmented across systems that don't talk to each other. But in Washington State, districts are taking a different approach, leveraging AI along the way. We're proud to partner with Center on Reinventing Public Education, StrategicEDU and seven Washington State school districts testing new approaches for using AI to strengthen and improve data systems to better support students. Hear directly from the district leaders at the forefront of our initiative in an upcoming webinar. 🗓 K-12 Data Systems and AI: Lessons from Washington State 📅 Friday, September 18 | 12:00 pm ET / 9:00 am PT 🔗 Registration link in the comments This webinar will share early lessons from districts piloting AI-enabled solutions to data modernization, governance and infrastructure challenges If you work in K-12 technology, policy or district leadership, check it out!

Assessment systems have grown bigger and more complex over the last decade, but more testing doesn't lead to better outcomes. In his latest piece for the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) State Standard, Khaled J. Ismail digs into the data. Drawing on a review of assessment policies across 42 states and audits of nearly 70 districts, the research shows that districts testing the most do not see better results. Some of the key findings include: 🔹 In the highest-testing districts, students take as many as 88 standardized assessments before entering high school. 🔹 English learners face an average of 47 additional hours of testing compared to their peers. 🔹 The study found no statistically significant relationship between testing volume and student proficiency or growth in English language arts or math. 🔗 Read the link in our comment section for recommendations on how states and districts can bring more coherence and purpose back to their assessment systems.

Indiana is taking a bold step to ensure more students have access to work-based learning that enables them to make more informed decisions about what comes after graduation. At Ascend Indiana, we’ve been thinking a lot about what it will take to make that vision possible statewide. Some of our early modeling suggests we may need to grow from roughly 15,000 work-based learning experiences today to somewhere between 34,000 and 37,000 as the new diploma seals take hold. Education First Consulting’s recent report gets at an important piece of this. Scaling work-based learning will mean looking beyond traditional employer placements and thinking about the role schools can play in creating these experiences too. You can read the report here: https://lnkd.in/g7kcqs4i One of the smartest decisions in Indiana’s approach was ensuring that four of the approved work-based learning experiences can take place within schools. Huge credit to Secretary Katie Jenner and the Indiana Department of Education for recognizing how important that flexibility will be as access expands. Student-Led Businesses are one way schools can deliver three of those four in-school experience types. Ascend has been developing tools to help schools think through what these models can look like in practice. You can find those resources here: https://lnkd.in/gp5QRDCX

This #NationalLiteracyDay, we're asking an important question. More than 40 states have passed Science of Reading legislation. So why are teachers still asking "now what?" In our latest blog post, Partner Ila Deshmukh Towery, PhD digs into a gap that's easy to miss: screening laws tell us who's at risk, but they don't tell teachers what to do next. 📖 Read the full post: https://lnkd.in/eqtP4ZJk

Coherence is education's biggest buzzword right now. But this "fad" isn't momentary for our team here at Education First. For 20 years, coherence has been our north star in helping funders, states, districts and schools solve problems, implement new tools or develop strategies in lockstep. We know what happens without it: academics, assessment, staffing and ed tech all pull in different directions, leaving educators with fragmented priorities and students caught in the gaps. Our approach is different—we bridge philanthropy, policy and practice to bring clarity to complex education systems. We help align the people, priorities and products needed to develop thoughtful strategies. But we don't stop there. We help our partners carry these strategies forward—building the capacity, trust and infrastructure that make coherent systems possible. 🔗 Learn more about our focus on coherence: https://lnkd.in/e7RrTSKg Juan Jimenez, Jennifer Vranek, Ila Deshmukh Towery, PhD, John Luczak, Kelly Kovacic Duran, Ed.L.D, Ann Duffy, Tara Czupryk

Please join us in welcoming Tran Keys to Education First as our newest Senior Consultant 🎉 Tran brings more than 20 years of experience spanning K-12 public education, applied research and evaluation and technical assistance. Tran joins our cadre of former district leaders turned mission-driven consultants and we couldn't be more excited to welcome her to our team. Tran specializes in evaluation and continuous improvement, assessment and accountability systems and facilitation and strategic planning. Her guiding belief: evidence is most powerful when people can understand it, build shared meaning around it and act on it together. Welcome, Tran 👋