Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northeast & Islands at EDC

Challenge

Research is critical to finding out what works in education, but it takes collaboration with the real changemakers—policymakers, administrators, teachers, and families—to improve learning opportunities and outcomes for students. This approach ensures that federally funded research produces relevant findings that address urgent and emergent needs in education.

EDC fosters collaboration among teachers, education leaders, policymakers, and researchers in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Vermont through REL Northeast & Islands at EDC. Working with partners in the region, the REL Northeast & Islands team designs and conducts research, coaching, and tools focused on improving outcomes for students and addressing pressing educational priorities for states, districts, and schools. EDC also supports research for REL Midwest and REL Appalachia.

Key Activities

As 1 of 10 federally funded RELs across the country, REL Northeast & Islands at EDC addresses education challenges in its region as follows:

• Partners with state education agency leaders and school district leaders to identify high-leverage needs in education and share evidence-based strategies and interventions to address the needs
• Conducts and supports objective, rigorous research and evaluation based on regional needs, and builds capacity to move findings directly into classrooms to improve student outcomes
• Designs and delivers training and coaching to support educators in improving student outcomes
• Develops toolkits, including a forthcoming toolkit on math intervention (view related toolkit videos here), and trainings, including this course on performance assessments
• Provides analytic support that helped educators and policymakers use data to make decisions
• Disseminates evidence and research findings through clearly written, actionable, and usable resources for practitioners and policymakers, such as this fact sheet on educational assessment
• Communicates evidence-based practices with families and caregivers, such as this fact sheet on play-based learning
• Designes and shares tools, such as this continuous improvement toolkit and logic models, to help state education agencies, districts, and schools gather data to inform decision-making
• Provides resources to support schools and districts in responding to urgent needs
• Presents study findings to teachers, education leaders, state boards of education, and state legislatures

Our Impact

• REL Northeast & Islands’ work reaches educators, policymakers, and researchers nationwide, as well as 395,000 teachers and 5.2 million students in the region.
• To date, REL Northeast & Islands’ research partnership convenings, workshops, and research-to-practice and virtual coaching events have engaged over 10,000 educators, policymakers, and researchers.
• To date, staff have produced more than 60 research studies and policy tools.