National Summit on Improvement in Education 2025

In this methods session, we describe what practical measures are and how they might be used to empower educators and students to use data to solve meaningful problems. Practical measures that are easy to use and prioritize learning from actionable data can help educators improve the quality of instruction. To emphasize this, we will share  an example of a set of practical measures designed to support teacher learning and capability to enact culturally responsive teaching. Participants will learn about the measurement development process, test this new measure in practice, and explore opportunities to integrate practical measures in their own educational system. Participants will also consider ways to center equity and justice in other kinds of practical measurement work in their own systems.

We cannot improve what we can’t measure: Share your feedback on this session.

Continuous improvement can produce more equitable student outcomes across a school and across multiple schools within a system. Tension can exist, however, between the convergence towards shared practice and consistent implementation, and the divergence of educators taking ownership and innovating in ways that lead to variation. Through building the collective efficacy of teams, leaders can balance convergence and divergence to increase impact. This session uses texts, cases, participant reflection, and discussion to investigate the balance of convergence and divergence in building teams that believe in the power of their collaboration to achieve more within and across schools.

Improvers 💜 data: Complete the Session Survey.

In this interactive session, participants will learn about our story of impact, including the improvement challenges we faced and the practices we refined to drive shifts in student outcomes. Central to our success were the internal processes of democratizing decision-making and, at the school level, the use of collaborative tools like our new classroom-level measurement tracker. Participants will engage with real data and our tools through simulations and case studies. Then reflect on how to customize tools for their own contexts, and explore actionable steps to implement.

We cannot improve what we can’t measure: Share your feedback on this session.

In this session, participants will explore the crucial role of equity and justice in the field of improvement science (IS). Participants will learn from a group of equity and justice-centered improvers about how they designed learning experiences for their team to critically evaluate and refine IS methods. The session will 1) equip participants with approaches, skills, and lenses for interrogating IS tools and methods; 2) provide a space to delve into vital connections between IS work and educational equity; and 3) help participants apply a justice-oriented framework to the design and execution of improvement projects.

Celebrate and push on the work: Give feedback on this session.