Budgets are tight, outcomes are stagnant, and states are taking on more responsibility for decisions that used to run through Washington. State leaders don’t need to be convinced that evidence matters. They’ve never lacked the will or the authority to make evidence-based decisions. What they’ve lacked is a process for doing it well.
That’s why the Alliance for Learning Innovation (ALI) is excited about the U.S. Department of Education’s new Learning Agenda Playbook, launched last month. Developed and tested alongside eight states (Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Utah, and Wisconsin), the Playbook helps state education agencies build multi-year plans for identifying their most pressing challenges and strategically directing resources to address them.
As a member of the technical working group that helped develop it, I told K-12 Dive that what stands out most is that the Playbook isn’t a check-the-box exercise that state leaders complete once and put on the proverbial shelf. It’s a living resource. It prompts state leaders to build a community of stakeholders who inform and act on the learning agenda, strengthen their internal capacity to build evidence, and develop thoughtful strategies for communicating what they learn and how they change as a result.
But a living resource needs a living system to sustain it. At its core, a learning agenda is a set of priority questions a state needs answered. Whether those questions actually get answered depends on things no playbook can supply on its own, including a shared vision to guide the agenda, partners and communities engaged in the work, a dedicated office to own it, sustained technical support, and modern data systems that can surface the right information. The eight pilot states had much of that support built in. For the Learning Agenda Playbook to deliver the same results everywhere else, the rest of the education R&D system has to keep pace.
The good news is that momentum is building at every level, from state capitals to school districts to Congress. Here’s where the Learning Agenda Playbook fits in that bigger picture, and what it will take to keep it going.
A Learning Agenda Is One Piece of a Bigger System
Developed by the National Comprehensive Center, the Learning Agenda Playbook walks states through six steps they can work through on their own, supported by a Facilitator’s Guide, a Toolbox of worksheets, a Capacity Continuum for self-assessment, and a Learning Agenda Workbook and Template. It’s a practical, well-built tool.
It also answers one of the core recommendations in ALI’s State Education R&D Playbook, developed with Education Reimagined and Transcend: that every state should have a public education research agenda defined by its own priorities. But it’s one of eight recommendations, because a learning agenda can only do as much as the system around it supports. Three of those recommendations show how a learning agenda connects to the rest of the system:
- Establish a Vision. ALI’s Playbook calls on states to establish a vision and goals that prioritize innovation and evidence-based improvement. That vision is a shared purpose that aligns the resources, roles, and programs that help make up a state’s R&D infrastructure. It also gives direction to a state’s public learning agenda by helping decide which questions are most important to answer.
- Partnerships and Networks. To be effective, R&D must directly engage the educators, students, families, and communities it aims to serve, not only in setting priorities but in doing the work. States also need to coordinate their philanthropic, research, and nonprofit partners so that individual efforts add up to larger-scale innovation. A published learning agenda gives states the shared reference point that kind of coordination requires.
- Dedicated Office & Capacity for R&D. A learning agenda can’t stay a living resource without someone responsible for owning it. That’s why ALI recommends states establish a dedicated R&D office, within the state education agency or through a university or intermediary partner, staffed by researchers whose time isn’t absorbed by compliance reporting. That office turns a learning agenda’s questions into answers by reviewing research requests against its priorities and coordinating with researchers to take them on. The federal Playbook’s Capacity Continuum helps states see whether they have the staff and expertise to do this work. Many will find they don’t yet, and that’s where the case for a dedicated office begins.
Those aren’t the only pieces. ALI’s Playbook also calls for sustained technical support, since the pilot states had facilitation built in and most states will need the same, and for modernized data systems, because a learning agenda can only answer the questions a state’s data can reach. Each recommendation strengthens the others, and together they make a learning agenda something states can sustain.
With national reading and math scores still sliding, no single level of the system can turn things around on its own. The Learning Agenda Playbook is exactly the kind of infrastructure and guidance ALI has been calling for. Now the work is making sure every state has the system behind it to turn good questions into better outcomes for students.
