Illuminations and Insights

Co-hosts of the DatabasED Podcast, Senior Product Manager Molly Stewart and Vice President of Product Rosh Dhanawade, recently interviewed Principal Researcher Michael Christian and Research Scientist I Sara Hu about how interoperability has changed their research work at Education Analytics (EA). This blog includes highlights from their episode.

K-12 has lived through many “next big things” in edtech. Some have delivered real value, especially in large-scale data collection and adaptive learning. But across states and districts, student outcome progress and gaps remain stubborn, and leaders are rightly skeptical that a new wave of AI tools alone will change that. This is not simply a failure of technology. It reflects a basic fact: no algorithm can solve challenges rooted in resource inequities or social conditions. What AI can do is help educators, policymakers, and researchers reason more clearly with the information they already have. That only works if the data are accurate, standardized, and connected, and if the people closest to students remain in charge of how those data are used. In this blog, Vice President of Data Science Dan Jarratt discusses how, in order to ensure that AI systems that are effective, auditable, and equitable for students, we must start with something more basic: open, interoperable, standardized data infrastructure that public agencies can govern and sustain.

What if schools could predict, as early as 9th grade, whether a student is on track to qualify for competitive scholarships or meet college admissions criteria? And what if those predictions could trigger timely interventions—like course recommendations, test prep, enrichment opportunities, or targeted advising—to change that student’s path? In our latest blog, Director of Services Tracy Diel, Research Analyst Manager II Julia Finch, and Research Associate Rinor Jahiu, discuss how this is the goal of EA's new predictive modeling initiative, supported by the multi-state Ed-Tech Collaboratory (ETC).

In U.S. education research, we face a persistent challenge: for the billions of dollars invested during the last 50 years, why are student outcomes in this country not improving? Working at the crux of education research, policy, and technology, EA believes the current processes and systems involved in doing research are nearing their limits. This blog, written by Director of Research & Analytics Services Molly Stewart and Chief Operating Officer Libby Pier, aims at not only examining these challenges but also identifies ways in which we and our partners in state and local education agencies, institutions of higher education, and other non- and for-profit technology groups are working on innovative solutions to these challenges.

Get to know Principal Researcher Michael Christian in the latest installment of our Day in the Life blog series. In this blog, Mike discusses his role and responsibilities on the Research team, his contributions to various growth projects at EA, and the skills he utilizes in his everyday work.

EA's Chief Operating Officer Libby Pier alongside CEO Andrew Rice, attended and presented at SXSW EDU 2025. During the conference, Libby had the opportunity to participate in engaging hands-on workshops, build community with other people within the education technology field, and facilitate a mentoring session about the intersection of EdTech and education research. In this blog, Libby reflections on the five phrases that defined her SXSW EDU experience: Unsexy Tech, Compost Memo, Mentorship, Multidimensional Infrastructure, and Community.