Annual Report 2023
The Future is Now
A Letter from Our Leadership
Amid rapid change in education and our world, one constant is the resilience and dedication of our nation’s 3.2 million educators.
They are why we have spent the past 13 years working to ensure educators can learn continuously, collaborate more intentionally, and maximize their influence on students’ lives. But, the job of the educator has rarely been more difficult.
This current moment and the near future pose new challenges: deepening learning loss, growing politicization of education, workforce transformation with the emergence of generative AI, and tightening school budgets as pandemic relief funds expire.
These truths have pushed us to stay nimble, rooted in our values, and, most importantly, accountable to what works. Over the past year, Leading Educators reached critical milestones on our path to doubling the number of students we reach by 2025 to 400,000 students each year and increasing our average effect size on student learning by 50% in math and English language arts.
Our partners continue to defy national trends and achieve scalable results by going deep on support for excellent teaching.
- Turnaround schools in Charleston County School District have doubled literacy since the pandemic, outpacing state growth and also decreasing the percentage of students in the lowest achievement levels by 11.3%.
- Baltimore City Public Schools accomplished double-digit increases in foundational reading skills proficiency last year after developing systemic professional learning and coaching focused on the science of reading.
- Districts in Detroit, Los Angeles, and Yakima undertook complex efforts to create systemic alignment and lay the groundwork for continuous learning and exponential impact far into the future.
These are just a few of many partnerships in more than a dozen states that have cultivated fertile ground for real transformation, accomplished through and alongside passionate educators.
At the same time, research and evaluation, innovation, and advocacy efforts—many done in coalition with sector peers—are building a field and the internal capacities necessary to take educational opportunity to new heights.
However, while we’ve had a tremendous impact with our partners, the shifting policy landscape and rapid pace of technology require us to think bigger and bolder than ever.
We must support the needs of teachers by advocating for more investment in the preparation, resources, and skills they need to deliver better student outcomes. At the same time, we must be at the forefront of innovation to help teachers harness the potential of new technologies—like AI and asynchronous learning platforms—to accelerate instructional improvement and mitigate the risk of malpractice.
Your partnership is critical in making this work possible. As you read this report, imagine what would be possible if we scale what’s proven to work and continue to identify new solutions through student-centered innovation.
With appreciation,
Chong-Hao Fu, Dr. LaKimbre Brown, Laura Meili, Daniel Obregon, Simone Senior, Marishka Winters & Javier Cortez Infantas
Read the Report
Our 2023 Annual Report is a journey through our major achievements from the past year. We highlight programmatic successes, growth, and lessons learned that have all been made possible with your support and partnership.
By the Numbers
For more than a decade, we’ve helped school systems transform teaching so their students are ready to thrive in a changing world.
In the 2022-2023 school year, we reached:
196,000 students
13,025 teachers
395 schools across 34 systems
Support Our Work
Want to help us meet school systems with support that enables them to usher in innovations in instructional improvement? Consider supporting our work.