Learning Policy Institute: Research and Advocacy for Equitable Education
The Learning Policy Institute (LPI) stands as an education research and policy advocacy group with a strong focus on diversity and equity outcomes in the education system. LPI champions “deeper learning,” advocating for educational approaches that prioritize real-world problem-solving skills, conflict resolution, self-management, and community responsibility, moving away from traditional rote memorization.
Funding and Focus
LPI receives funding from a variety of left-leaning grantmaking foundations, including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Yellow Chair Foundation, and Walton Family Foundation. It has also received support from MacKenzie Scott. This funding enables LPI to conduct research and advocate for policies aligned with its mission.
Deeper Learning and Social-Emotional Development
LPI is a proponent of “deeper learning,” an educational approach that rejects traditional methods such as rote memorization of facts in favor of “real-world problem-solving skills.” The emphasis is instead placed on conflict-resolution, “self-management,” and “a sense of community responsibility.”
Social Justice Humanitas Academy, a Los Angeles high school initiative launched in 2012, serves as a case study for LPI, exemplifying its core values. The students receive training in “social emotional learning” with an emphasis on understanding why a particular student exhibits substandard behavior, rather than on punishment. Teachers are taught to question the students’ underlying motives and emotional states if they fail to attend class or turn in homework assignments on time. Referring to this as a “restorative” approach based in concepts like “development of the complete individual,” “self-actualization,” and “open dialogue,” Social Justice Humanitas takes as its foundation psychologist Abraham Maslow’s table of the hierarchy of needs. The school also partners with Mission City Community Network and EduCare to assist students and parents with healthcare, food, and college admission services. LPI’s case study claimed that Social Justice Humanitas’ student population had surpassed the Los Angeles United School District’s students in meeting or exceeding state standards in some academic areas, including English language arts. However, it also acknowledged that the school was substandard in other areas such as mathematics, with only 12 percent of its student body meeting the state standard.
Advocating for Equitable Funding
Learning Policy Institute proposes changes to the next reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to reevaluate how tax dollars are distributed for education funding, stating that reliance on property taxes to determine school funding leads to inequity, while acknowledging that federal grants were mitigating some of this inequity. To address these equity gaps, LPI proposes a number of federal approaches, including the establishment of a national research center that would ensure equity programs are implemented and a federal commission on educational finance to track school spending. LPI also wrote that the next reauthorization of the ESEA should require that states track “progress toward equity.” Other solutions include an expansion of Title I funding and the Individuals with Disabilities Act.
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Addressing the Teacher Shortage
In recent years, education researchers and journalists who cover education have called attention to the growing teacher shortage in the nation’s K-12 schools. They cite a variety of indicators of the shortage, including state-by-state subject area vacancies, personal testimonials and data from state and school district officials, and declining enrollment in teacher preparation programs.
To date, the only direct estimate of the size of the teacher shortage nationally comes from the Learning Policy Institute’s seminal 2016 report, A Coming Crisis in Teaching? (Sutcher, Darling-Hammond, and Carver-Thomas 2016). The report noted that many school districts-finally hiring again after years of teacher layoffs during the Great Recession and in its wake-“had serious difficulty finding qualified teachers for their positions.” As the authors noted, school districts were challenged with not only restoring student-to-teacher ratios to pre-crisis levels but also with broadening curriculum offerings and meeting projected increases in student populations.
The teacher shortage has serious consequences. A lack of sufficient, qualified teachers threatens students’ ability to learn (Darling-Hammond 1999; Ladd and Sorensen 2016). Instability in a school’s teacher workforce (i.e., high turnover and/or high attrition) negatively affects student achievement and diminishes teacher effectiveness and quality (Ronfeldt, Loeb, and Wyckoff 2013; Jackson and Bruegmann 2009; Kraft and Papay 2014; Sorensen and Ladd 2018). And high teacher turnover consumes economic resources (i.e., through costs of recruiting and training new teachers) that could be better deployed elsewhere.
LPI pushes for debt-free college education for all students and student loan forgiveness. It also is an advocate for higher teacher pay and for federally funded teacher training, which would include a salary, a stipend, at low or no cost to the teacher.
Teacher Qualifications and Distribution
The current national estimates of the teacher shortage likely understate the magnitude of the problem because the estimates consider the new qualified teachers needed to meet new demand. Department of Education’s National Teacher and Principal Survey data from 2015-2016 to show, for all public noncharter schools, the share of teachers in the 2015-2016 school year who do and who do not hold teaching credentials associated with more effective teaching (see, for example, Darling-Hammond 1999; Kini and Podolsky 2016; Ladd and Sorensen 2016). These credentials include being fully certified (they have a regular standard state certificate or advanced professional certificate), they participated in a traditional certification program (versus an alternative certification program), they have more than five years of experience, and they have educational background in the subject of the main assignment.
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The published estimates of the increasing teacher shortage further understate the magnitude of the problem because the estimates don’t reflect the fact that the shortage of qualified teachers is not spread evenly among all schools but is more acute in high-poverty schools.
Effective Teacher Professional Development
Teacher professional learning is of increasing interest as one way to support the increasingly complex skills students need to learn in preparation for further education and work in the 21st century. Sophisticated forms of teaching are needed to develop student competencies such as deep mastery of challenging content, critical thinking, complex problem-solving, effective communication and collaboration, and self-direction. In turn, effective professional development (PD) is needed to help teachers learn and refine the pedagogies required to teach these skills.
Research has shown that many PD initiatives appear ineffective in supporting changes in teacher practices and student learning. Accordingly, the authors set out to discover the features of effective PD. This paper reviews 35 methodologically rigorous studies that have demonstrated a positive link between teacher professional development, teaching practices, and student outcomes. The authors identify the features of these approaches and offer rich descriptions of these models to inform those seeking to understand the nature of the initiatives. In this review, they find seven widely shared features of effective professional development. Such professional development: (1) Is content focused; (2) Incorporates active learning; (3) Supports collaboration; (4) Uses models of effective practice; (5) Provides coaching and expert support; (6) Offers feedback and reflection; and (7) Is of sustained duration.
Leadership and Influence
Linda Darling-Hammond is CEO of Learning Policy Institute and president of the California State Board of Education. In 2008, Darling-Hammond directed the Education Policy Transition Team under then-President Barack Obama. In June 2022, Darling-Hammond published an op-ed in Forbes magazine following the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which she condemned the idea of arming teachers with firearms to protect students.
Community Schools
This brief highlights lessons learned from New Mexico's investment in community schools. Drawing on profiles of three sites that received state implementation grants, we find that community schools implementing the key practices at the center of New Mexico's community schools framework are seeing improvement across a range of indicators, including scores and graduation rate.
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Summer Programs
Student participation in summer programming can be an effective way to address students' academic and developmental needs. When well implemented and well attended, summer enrichment programs, academic programs, and employment programs have demonstrated positive outcomes for youth in areas related to program content, including academic achievement. As federal funding for summer learning as a pandemic recovery strategy phases out, state governments face decisions about their future role in supporting students' access to quality summer learning opportunities.
Teacher Residency Programs
Claremont Graduate University (Claremont), a nonprofit, private institution in southern California, offers a flexible Teacher Education Program that is a 12- to 18-month, 100% online residency program. Claremont's residency model was launched as a pilot in 2020 with 5 residents and grew to include 34 fulltime residents in the 2022-23 academic year.
The Texas Education Agency launched the High-Quality, Sustainable Residencies Program--a grantfunded effort to establish and sustain teacher residencies--in 2021. Part of the Texas COVID Learning Acceleration Supports (TCLAS) initiative, this grant supported residency programs across the state, implemented through partnerships between school districts and educator preparation programs.
With a decade of experience in creating and running teacher residencies--numbering seven as of 2024--California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) and its partners have developed strong residency structures that allow for the variations that different communities need.
Mathematics Education
United States math achievement has long lagged behind that of other nations and has been relatively stagnant for 8th-graders on national assessments over the past 2 decades. The need to understand how teachers can better support mathematics learning is particularly acute in the wake of pandemic-era learning disruptions, which impacted already low achievement. In the United States, stagnating mathematics achievement and persistent racial and socioeconomic disparities in math performance point to a need to understand how math teachers can more effectively support the learning of each and every student. Given a growing body of research that emphasizes the impact of the classroom environment on student learning, it is crucial to explore how teachers can create more equitable and supportive math classrooms.
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