Robynne Smith

Seattle Public Schools (SPS), the largest district in Washington, seeks to eliminate persistent disparities in math proficiency between African American and non-African American middle school students. REL Northwest joined forces with SPS to provide a data-focused lens to evaluate and refine the district's strategies. As SPS considered what data it needed to inform systemic improvements, questions arose. SPS and REL Northwest have been working to answer these questions as part of the Seattle ...

In this next blog, we take a look at how REL Northwest is partnering with The Rural Alliance and member districts in Washington state to reimagine how evidence-based recommendations on technology-enhanced learning apply in rural contexts.

In this next addition to REL Northwest's blog series highlighting our partnerships and how our work makes an impact, we look to the Oregon Department of Education (ODE)'s Literacy Framework partnership. In 2021, ODE determined that updating the 2009 Literacy Framework was a key priority for state funding. The update was designed with particular attention to literacy strategies that benefit students who experience disability, students with dyslexia, and multilingual learners.

How does REL Northwest work make a difference for kids? In our nine-part blog series, you'll learn the different ways we serve students, educators, and policymakers across the Pacific Northwest. We start in Portland, Oregon, where REL Northwest is partnering with Portland Public Schools (PPS) to improve student engagement and high school graduation rates, directly addressing educational equity.

As Kate Williams, principal of Alaska's Cordova Junior/Senior High School, and her team reflected on the benefits of their current four-day school week schedule, they also wondered about its potential costs and implications. Williams asked if REL Northwest could provide her with an annotated bibliography of the available research on four-day school weeks. REL Northwest determined that her question was most appropriate for the new Ask an Expert service, which provides evidence-based informatio...