A Message from Our Leadership

Amid rapid changes in education and our world, one constant is the resilience and dedication of our nation’s 3.2 million educators.

These significant shifts call all of us to recommit to our purpose. For our team at Leading Educators, one core belief has stood the test of time: well-supported educators working together have the power to make the future.

This current moment poses new challenges and opportunities: unfinished learning recovery from the pandemic years, rapid advancements in generative AI, tightening school budgets, declining enrollment, low morale, and increased political uncertainty. These complexities have pushed us to stay nimble, rooted in what students and educators need, and, most importantly, accountable to what works.

Over 2024, our partners continued to defy national trends and achieve historic results by going deep on evidence-based support for excellent teaching.

• Charleston County School District led the nation in both literacy and math recovery on NAEP.
• Harlem Community School District 5 accomplished double-digit increases in literacy after the first year of NYC Reads implementation, one of only three districts across New York City Public Schools to see improvement.
• Detroit Public Schools Community District, Los Angeles Unified School District, Omaha Public Schools, and others undertook complex efforts to create systemic alignment around the use of high-quality instructional materials and lay the groundwork for excellent practice to flourish far into the future.

At the same time, cross-sector efforts focused on empowering educators to lead in the AI era, producing innovative research, and reimaging the teaching profession laid important groundwork for new futures to become reality.

• We launched the first-of-its-kind School Teams AI Collaborative with The Learning Accelerator, bringing together 19 schools and 80+ educators to identify and spread promising AI-enabled instructional practices.
• Together with the Research Partnership for Professional Learning, we pioneered new research methods that will help the sector better understand the components of professional learning that contribute to student success.
• We continued to co-lead the Coalition to Reimagine the Teaching Role, convening thousands of leaders and influencers across the country to elevate strategic staffing models, define generational goals, and flex new policy levers.

We cannot thank you enough for your invaluable partnership and belief in what is possible. As you read this report, we hope you find renewed purpose and new inspiration to do the hard and necessary work.

In community,

Leading Educators Leadership Team