As education leaders, we want to make good policy decisions for our students. REL Central has created a collaborative network that allows education leaders to work with colleagues and research experts who understand the unique challenges of our states. We are able to use this network to find support, here and now, and to work together to address critical education issues in the central region.
With support from REL Central, educators like me and my REL Central Governing Board colleagues can explore evidence-based research strategies to understand critical education issues. From identifying that an instructional strategy can be related to student achievement to informing the development of resources, evidence we gather can be used to direct changes at the practitioner, organization, and systems levels. Under the guidance of the REL Central Governing Board, education leaders in the region are working together to identify ways evidence-based research can help tackle key education issues. We have formed 10 research partnerships, each dedicated to addressing a specific issue or set of needs in our states.
For example, support from REL Central allowed South Dakota Department of Education staff, including me, to build capacity to think through research design and processes. Over the course of two years, we were able to bring together some of our top education leaders and REL Central researchers to help us understand how student growth models could be used in our schools. From these meetings, we gained the capacity to develop a student-growth measure that is still part of our accountability system under the new federal plan. As a result of this project, we now can explain what decisions were essential in creating this model, and we have a system that will continue to be supported for the foreseeable future. We have also been able to highlight some areas where tremendous growth is happening. For example, we were able to identify schools with low proficiency rates but higher than average growth rates. Results from the model have allowed us to start conversations with staff at some of our historically lowest performing schools about which strategies are working best to help close student achievement gaps.
REL Central Governing Board meetings bring together education stakeholders from state and district agencies—some of the most invested education leaders—to tackle education issues. These meetings are important because we are able to share resources and strategies. And the supportive network is a vital component to increase the organizational capacity for addressing critical issues.
This fall, as the Governing Board meets again, key stakeholders from across the region will discuss how we best use data to support our systems to address the most immediate concerns in our region. Mental health, safety, and teacher retention are critical issues in our states, and we have an opportunity to share what we are doing now, talk through findings from related studies, and offer strategies to help our education agencies ask the right questions to bring about meaningful change.
