Our Mission and Strategy

Please also see The ES Way and What We Believe

Education Sector is an independent think tank that challenges conventional thinking in education policy. We are a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization committed to achieving measurable impact in education policy, both by improving existing reform initiatives and by developing new, innovative solutions to our nation’s most pressing education problems. The ultimate beneficiaries of our work are students. Our mission is to promote changes in policy and practice that lead to improved student opportunities and outcomes.

Most of the organizations that come to mind when one says "education policy" either conduct research, represent constituents' interests, or advocate fixed policy agendas. Too often the research is written in language that's hard for policymakers to understand and thus they don't use a lot of it. And much of the work produced by membership organizations and traditional education advocacy groups is less than objective, leading many thought-leaders and policymakers, including the education journalists participating in a 2003 survey sponsored by the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, to lament that much of the education policy work available to them is "ideologically motivated" and so "poorly written or jargon-laden" as to be difficult to comprehend.

This lack of credibility and clarity in research and analysis hurts the cause of education improvement: policymakers make important decisions on the basis of biased information; good ideas don't reach the people with the power to implement them; and it becomes harder to create and sustain an intellectual climate that supports reform.

We have designed Education Sector to address these problems. It is a hybrid institution, formed at the intersection of research, public policy, and journalism. We believe that by marrying the methodological rigor of sound research with the communications excellence of the best journalism and the real-world impact of policy analysis, Education Sector is uniquely positioned to both make a compelling case for fundamental reform and to promote change directly with policymakers. For a fuller explanation of our hybrid model and its consequences for our operations, and to read our values statement, see The ES Way and What We Believe.

The immediate audiences for our work—the research we conduct, the advice and counsel and other analysis we provide lawmakers, our commentary, and the events we sponsor—include federal, state, and local policymakers, national, state and local education associations, educators, the press, public policy organizations, and other thought-leaders and policy actors. They have the influence necessary to leverage meaningful change for students. And we believe that they will embrace reform if they can be convinced that it is justified by thoughtful analysis and solid, independent evidence.

To achieve our goals, and to transition Education Sector from what has been a highly successful start-up enterprise to a sustainable and increasingly influential organization, we have crafted a work plan that allows us to maximize Education Sector's impact on education reform and to align our organizational resources with that plan.

Through this work, we have identified four areas of education policy that we believe afford Education Sector the greatest opportunities to leverage change on behalf of students over the next two years:

• K–12 Accountability 

• Educational Choice

• Teacher Quality

• Undergraduate Education

An Integrated Approach to Reform

American education is, of course, a sprawling enterprise, presenting us with a nearly endless number of possible topics to address. We selected these four "policy pillars" because they have a number of qualities that we believe increase our capacity to leverage reform:

• They are timely; policymakers are turning attention to them.

• There are opportunities in each area to make substantial research and analytical contributions and thus move policy debates in new directions.

• The pillars offer opportunities to leverage change on a wide scale through changes in public policy.

• They lend themselves to innovative ideas.

• We believe that funders will support work in these areas.

• And they align with the knowledge and expertise of Education Sector's staff, board of directors, and senior fellows.

Our four pillars also reflect our organizational belief in high-quality, publicly financed education, in high standards, in performance-driven systems and the importance of high-quality and timely information to such systems, in the potential of entrepreneurialism and innovation to spur improvement in education, in the value of educational options, and in the importance of basing education policies and practices on sound empirical evidence.

The four policy areas are thus in many ways mutually reinforcing. There is a natural coherence to them.

The theme of informed educational options, for example, is present in both our K-12 and undergraduate work, and our focus on fair and accurate school-performance information is an important part of both our accountability and choice work. Certainly the existence of reliable performance information is likely to lead to more effective school-choice systems, in the same way that both choice systems and information systems can help make the teaching profession more performance-based, at both the K–12 and undergraduate levels. Our work plan reflects the fact that issues such as choice, accountability, and teacher quality transcend the boundaries of K–12 and undergraduate education.

We believe that the coherence of our 2008–09 work plan—our effort to ensure that the topics we tackle are interrelated and are tied to a clear plan to increase our organizational effectiveness—sets us apart from other organizations and greatly increases Education Sector's ability to promote improvement in American education. We plan to re-evaluate both the number of our policy pillars and their subject matter at least every two years.

To enhance the likely impact of our work, we have developed theories of action in each of the four policy areas. They identify long- and short-term goals, key audiences and beneficiaries, signature products and areas of impact, signs of success, risk assessment, and measurement indicators. Education Sector team members are responsible for achieving the projects' goals.

We also recognize that there are emerging policy debates and research topics that lend themselves particularly well to Education Sector analysis but that are outside of our four policy pillars. We recognize the value of these targets of opportunity to our organizational brand and we have reserved about 15 percent of our organizational capacity to respond to them. Each of these projects must represent a significant opportunity for impact.