Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University

While a Strategic Data Project Fellow at Chicago Public Schools, Meghan Lane noticed an increased demand for substitute teachers in Chicago Public Schools was leaving an average of 350 classroom substitute teacher requests unfilled each school day. The large majority of these schools were serving racially diverse and economically disadvantaged students. Lane looked to the data to understand substitute preferences, identify schools with low fill rates, and developed a stipend program to incentivize substitute teachers to work in the schools with historically higher empty classrooms.

When Tammy Tucker started a new role as math-focused curriculum specialist after a long career as a teacher and principal, she wanted to focus on the quality of teaching as a key lever for supporting student success. She brought the MQI model to her district, implementing video-based coaching cycles using the Mathematical Quality of Instruction rubric to elevate teachers’ instruction through evidence-based practices. Soon, she began noticing big changes. “The principals noticed… these teachers were different,” Tucker said. As she saw it, the teachers were “becoming a team of mathematicians” that could discuss data and change in their classrooms. At multiple levels—individual, school, district—there had been a sea change.

PIER Fellow alumna Lily An credits the fellowship with giving her the fluency needed to move between the corridors of academia and the corridors of practice, working with state partners who use data to shape the policies, institutions, and systems that affect access and opportunity. Her PIER internship with the Standards, Accountability, and Research Division at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction deepened her appreciation for the work states are doing to understand the needs of their students and demonstrated how good policy can follow good data.