At REL Northeast & Islands, our work is driven by the education needs of our partners and stakeholders. We examine regional needs data and seek regular input from many sources, including our Governing Board, state and local education officials, regional education organizations, teacher and leader preparation programs, and other stakeholders committed to using and building research evidence to improve student outcomes across the region.

Currently, we collaborate with state and local education agencies on the following high-leverage topics:

• Early childhood education
• College and career readiness
• Professional development and teacher preparation for effective instruction
• Evidence-based instruction for multilingual learners
• Social and emotional learning
• Education data use in schools

We conduct our work primarily through researcher-practitioner partnerships that develop research agendas to address high-leverage needs within these four priorities. While this work responds to our local partners’ needs for research and evidence to inform policy and practice, we design our activities to benefit practitioners and policymakers across the country and to contribute to broader bodies of scholarly work and policy debates.

Our partnership activities include:

• Conducting methodologically rigorous research to answer pressing education questions in our region
• Producing concise reports that present research findings in clear and engaging ways that are accessible to broad audiences
• Providing customized training, coaching, and technical support to build our partners' capacity to use data and research
• Disseminating actionable, up-to-date research evidence through webinars and in-person events, newsletters, infographics, videos, and other outreach activities
• Coordinating and collaborating with other RELs and federally funded research and technical assistance entities
• Managing an online Ask A REL reference desk service that provides references and referrals in response to stakeholder research questions