Impact by Design
Innovative research from 40+ district and school network professional learning programs reveals what reliably drives student learning—and how systems can apply those insights to sustain improvement.
Read the ReportExpanding the Knowledge Base
School systems face increasingly complex choices about how and where to spend limited resources to maximize student outcomes, and they operate from incomplete information about which investments will make a difference.
Professional learning has the potential to make a significant difference in student learning by strengthening educators’ knowledge, skillfulness, and adaptability. But how can school systems identify which professional learning initiatives will make a difference, and which will waste precious time, effort, and money?
That’s what innovative research from Leading Educators sought to uncover.
Uncovering What Works
Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis to Identify Pathways to Instructional Transformation
Improvement initiatives with strong results in one context can fall short of these goals when implemented in new contexts under different conditions. Even more, when results do not hold up, those findings are rarely made public. Consequently, when education leaders aim to sort through the evidence to make decisions about professional learning, a significant portion of the picture remains invisible.
That’s why Leading Educators pursued an ambitious analysis of more than 40 district and school network professional learning programs. The team applied Qualitative Comparative Analysis, a well-established research methodology commonly used in political science and sociology, but rarely in educational research, in conjunction with quasi-experimental research methods to understand not only which programs saw improvement but why.
Bringing together researchers and practitioners from Leading Educators with external researchers from the University of Passau, ETS Research Institute, and Civilytics Consulting in a research practice partnership, Impact By Design reflects the important role nonprofits can play in bridging research and practice.
The Findings
Twenty-one cases from 2015 to 2024 demonstrated positive student impact, meeting ESSA Tier 3 evidence standards or higher. Schools supported by Leading Educators began with clear areas of need, with scores below those of 70-93% of schools in the state.
The positive cases outpaced the gains in similar schools, experiencing an impact equivalent to 9 months of additional learning on average.
- In math, supported schools improved 8 to 34 percent, outpacing growth in similar schools.
- In ELA, supported schools improved 12 to 18 percent, outpacing growth in similar schools.
- Districts that implemented the Leading Educators’ approach systemwide gained 1 to 3 NAEP points more than comparable large-city districts.
Overall, impact was achieved at a relatively low per-student cost, ranging from $10 to $300 annually.
Why They Worked
Dive into the report to learn more about 15 common conditions that emerged in the analysis, as well as the three design characteristics that were common in all places where learning improved.
Learn MoreGrowing the field is a collective effort.
This research was generously supported by the Research Partnership for Professional Learning (RPPL), a one-of-a-kind collaborative uniting professional learning (PL) organizations, researchers, school districts, and those impacted by PL through research-practice partnerships that advance professional learning in support of every teacher and student.
We also thank our research partners at University of Passau, ETS Research Institute, and Civilytics Consulting.
Learn More from a Practitioner Perspective
Want to learn more about how promising design features looked in practice? Scaling What Works provides additional examples from programs with positive results.
