For , Lower Lab, an Upper East Side Gifted & Talented school was ranked number one by US News. Also in the top 10 were four citywide G&T programs. Each school exclusively accepts students who have been designated as “gifted.”

Rounding out the top 10, however, are Success Academy – Bushwick and Success Academy – Bensonhurst, public charter schools that accept students by lottery, while also prioritizing English Language Learners (ELL).

On the surface, these schools couldn’t be more different. Number one, , has only 13% of students qualifying for Free or Reduced Price Lunch (FRL), and 1% ELLs. Number 10, , conversely,  has 65% of its students qualifying for free or reduced price lunch, and 26% who are English language learners. 

But the selective G&T schools and the unscreened charter schools have one characteristic in common: An expectation that their students can succeed.

The book, describes an experiment where “researchers falsely told teachers some of their students had been identified as potential high achievers. The students were in fact chosen at random.”

At the end of the year, the “students that were chosen were more likely to make larger gains in their academic performance,” with those “7-8 years old gaining an average of 10 verbal IQ points.”

This study concluded that “when teachers expected certain children would show greater intellectual development, those children did show greater intellectual development.”

At the G&T schools, teachers have every reason to believe their students are capable of performing at the highest levels.

Parents have seen this firsthand.

“I strongly believe that when teachers are told their students are gifted, they begin to treat them as gifted — and this changes everything,” asserts mom Natalya Tseytlin. “In a gifted classroom, if a student struggles, teachers don’t assume it’s because of laziness or inability; they respond with patience and extra attention. In a regular class, that student might not receive the same support or challenge, because the teacher sees the child as average. 

Tseytlin said her son started his first grade gifted and talented program with limited English skills. But because his teacher offered consistent support and believed in him, he excelled. 

“Today he is performing at the same level as his peers,” she said.

“I don’t think the expectations at (my child’s) G&T school are so high that only gifted kids can meet them,” another parent, who only asked to be identified as M.K. opined. “Regular schools don’t ‘push’ kids enough to reach their potential. Those G&T schools that do push, get results because most kids are capable of this level of learning without being ‘gifted.’ If teachers treat students as capable, students will indeed meet expectations.”

The belief that all students can perform at a “gifted” level is sacrosanct at Success Academy.

“Success Academy is Gifted for All,” CEO Eva Moskowitz affirms. “When adult expectations are high, our scholars — mostly low-income, Black and Hispanic — can meet the highest academic standards.”

The same is true at Harlem Academy, a kindergarten through 8th grade private school for students whose potential might otherwise go unrealized. 

“It’s tough to decouple the influence of high-quality programming from high expectations,” concedes Head of School Vinny Dotoli, “but authentically challenging students is central to the ethos of our school. When great teachers set ambitious goals and provide the structure and support to reach them, it almost always makes a lasting difference in student achievement.”

Parents with children in schools where high expectations aren’t the norm would love to see changes. 

“I have a daughter in a dual language program in East Harlem,” Maria McCune relates. “A neighbor who used to attend our school changed his daughter to a G&T program at another school in East Harlem. He immediately noticed a difference in the quality of instruction and in his daughter’s performance (MUCH improved). I participate in my daughter’s School Leadership Team and I have seen the apathy teachers there exhibit. It is concerning. When I tried to provide feedback about improving the educational experience, teachers/staff often became defensive. It is this that leads me to want to pursue G&T for my daughter.”

For Tiffany Ma, the solution is obvious. “Our second grader that transferred into G&T writes much neater and does her homework much more happily since she’s in an environment where academics and homework is valued by other classmates and parents. We should expand G&T programs. It’s regular programming that shouldn’t exist.”

Yet New York City seems headed in the opposite direction. Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani has vowed to get rid of elementary school G&T programs  that begin in kindergarten. He would wait until students enter third grade, even though the research referenced above specifically mentioned children 7 and 8 years of age( i.e. second graders), as being the biggest beneficiaries of high expectations. , as well. 

This move would lower the academic standards and expectations of all schools, which deeply concerns parents like McCune. She fears “Children like my daughter may be left as collateral damage of an educational experience that falls short of setting them up for significant academic success.”

The top schools in NYC have repeatedly demonstrated that high expectations are key to helping all students reach their full potential.

We need more such schools, be they public G&T, charter, or private. And more teachers who believe in all our kids.

And yet, systematic and regular use of data is at the heart of successful schools. In a from Education Reform Now, we surveyed 53 principals, assistant principals and superintendents across Colorado, Massachusetts, Texas and Georgia to understand the strategies central to the success of their high-performing, high-poverty spotlight schools. Despite a wide range of geographies and school models, all of them agreed: Data is key.

While DQC’s polling indicates that most teachers struggle to access and mobilize the data they need, 100% of the leaders from the “spotlight schools” we surveyed agreed that data and assessments are very important for professional development. This highlights how these schools have invested in building data literacy so that all their educators understand what the data means and how to use it to help students succeed. 

During follow-up interviews, “data” was the most frequently mentioned word, with administrators describing extensive use of both academic and non-academic data to shape a wide range of decision-making.

But what does effective data use actually look like in practice? Here are five ways schools are leveraging data:

1. Daily instruction

Quick and can be used to briefly assess students at the end of lessons to gauge their understanding of the material covered. This serves as live data to help teachers adjust instruction in real-time. At IDEA Carver Academy in San Antonio, Texas, administrators design end-of-lesson quizzes — exit tickets — to monitor content mastery consistently across classes. Teachers discuss the data with one another during daily “exit ticket huddles” to determine appropriate instructional adjustments.

2. Interventions

Implementing tests to evaluate student learning throughout the year allows educators to identify which children need extra help, inform how they are grouped, shape instructional priorities during intervention blocks and monitor progress.

Several spotlight schools in Massachusetts leverage data cycles to shape WIN (“What I Need”) time — a type of small-group instruction. Nicole Mack, executive director of Conservatory Lab Charter School in Boston, uses “June data to start the first round of interventions during the second week of school. …Then we do five intervention cycles across the course of the year, where our administrative team does the review of our data to identify the kids that should go into the different interventions,” such as tutoring or extended learning time.

In Texas, administrators are guided by Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (), which serve as specific, detailed standards that are aligned with the state’s standardized exams. At Ortiz Elementary in Brownsville, Principal Julie Peña says, “We monitor data on a regular basis to help identify the TEKS that have not yet been mastered and plan targeted instruction. … If students are missing a TEKS, then we regroup the students and we make sure that we’re giving them lessons that are geared toward learning those skills. So if a student is falling behind, they are asked to participate in tutorials, they are asked to come on Saturdays and they’re given the reviews targeted to what it is that they’re missing.”

3. Professional development

Both academic and non-academic data can be leveraged to pinpoint professional development sessions that address key shortcomings, evaluate the effectiveness of these sessions and identify educators who may benefit from further coaching or support. For example, at IDEA Carver Academy, administrators collect data through “cultural and instructional observations” each week using the — a benchmarked tool designed to objectively evaluate what teachers are doing well and how they can improve, Principal Laura Flack says. These rubrics, alongside classroom climate, exit ticket and disciplinary data, are then “reviewed, and professional development is created to address areas of need across the campus.”

4. Chronic absenteeism

As schools navigate unprecedented levels of chronic absenteeism, it is vital to collect detailed data to properly identify, diagnose and monitor the issue. For example, Rocky Mountain Prep charter schools in Denver have teams that collect attendance data each morning and call the families of each student who is absent. Teachers are notified of the total absences for the day, how many students came to school after their parents were called and who teachers should follow up with.

5. Student and family empowerment

Data isn’t just a tool for educators — it also empowers students to take an active role in their learning and helps parents better support their children’s academic growth. At Eastside Elementary School in Grady County, Georgia, Principal Chiquila Wright reports that students have one-on-one “data talks” with their teachers to discuss their interim test scores. Families are engaged through trainings that teach parents how to “understand their child’s assessment scores and how to support growth at home.”

Data is not a new concept. However, it is one that is too often underutilized in education. Children cannot learn and schools cannot thrive based on subjective observations and good intentions alone. The data revolution is already here, and it’s time students reaped the benefits.

When teens and young adults with disabilities in California’s Poway Unified School District heard about a new opportunity to get extra help planning for life after high school, nearly every eligible student signed up.

The program, known as , aimed to fill a major gap in education research about what kinds of support give students nearing graduation the best shot at living independently, finding work, or continuing their studies.

Students with disabilities finish college at much lower rates than their non-disabled peers, and often struggle to tap into state employment programs for adults with disabilities, said Stacey McCrath-Smith, a director of special education at Poway Unified, which had 135 students participating in the program. So the extra help, which included learning how to track goals on a tool designed for high schoolers with disabilities, was much needed.

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Charting My Path launched earlier this school year in Poway Unified and 12 other school districts. The salaries of 61 school staff nationwide, and the training they received to work with nearly 1,100 high schoolers with disabilities for a year and a half, was paid for by the U.S. Department of Education.

Jessie Damroth’s 17-year-old son Logan, who has autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and other medical needs, had attended classes and met with his mentor through the program at Newton Public Schools in Massachusetts for a month. For the first time, he was talking excitedly about career options in science and what he might study at college.

“He was starting to talk about what his path would look like,” Damroth said. “It was exciting to hear him get really excited about these opportunities. … He needed that extra support to really reinforce that he could do this.”

Then the Trump administration pulled the plug.

Charting My Path was among more than 200 Education Department contracts and grants terminated over the last two weeks by the Trump administration’s U.S. DOGE Service. DOGE has slashed spending it deemed to be wasteful, fraudulent, or in service of that . But in several instances, the decision to cancel contracts affected more than researchers analyzing data in their offices — it affected students.

Many projects, like Charting My Path, involved training teachers in new methods, testing learning materials in actual classrooms, and helping school systems use data more effectively.

“Students were going to learn really how to set goals and track progress themselves, rather than having it be done for them,” McCrath-Smith said. “That is the skill that they will need post-high school when there’s not a teacher around.”

All of that work was abruptly halted — in some cases with nearly finished results that now cannot be distributed.

Every administration is entitled to set its own priorities, and contracts can be canceled or changed, said Steven Fleischman, an education consultant who for many years ran one of the regional research programs that was terminated. He compared it to a homeowner deciding they no longer want a deck as part of their remodel.

But the current approach reminds him more of construction projects started and then abandoned during the Great Recession, in some cases leaving giant holes that sat for years.

“You can walk around and say, ‘Oh, that was a building we never finished because the funds got cut off,’” he said.

DOGE drives cuts to education research contracts, grants

The Education Department has been a prime target of DOGE, the chaotic cost-cutting initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk, now a senior adviser to Trump.

So far, , many of which were under the purview of the Institute of Education Sciences, the ostensibly independent research arm of the Education Department. The administration said those cuts, which included multi-year contracts, totaled $881 million. In recent years, the federal government has spent just over $800 million on the entire IES budget.

DOGE has also that conduct research for states and local schools and shuttered four equity assistance centers that help with teacher training. The Trump administration also and that often work to improve instruction for struggling students.

. The Trump administration said the terminated Education Department contracts and grants were worth $2 billion. But some were near completion with most of the money already spent.

An NPR analysis of all of DOGE’s reported savings — though the Education Department is a top contributor.

On Friday, a federal judge issued an injunction that that might violate the anti-DEIA executive order. It’s not clear whether the injunction would prevent more contracts from being canceled “for convenience.”

Mark Schneider, the recent past IES director, . But even many conservative critics have expressed alarm at how wide-ranging and indiscriminate the cuts have been. Congress mandated many of the terminated programs, which also indirectly support state and privately funded research.

The canceled projects include contracts that support maintenance of the Common Core of Data, a major database used by policymakers, researchers, and journalists, as well as work that supports updates to the What Works Clearinghouse, a huge repository of evidence-based practices available to educators for free.

And after promising not to make any cuts to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card, the department canceled an upcoming test for 17-year-olds that helps researchers understand long-term trends. On Monday, Peggy Carr, the head of the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees NAEP, was .

The Education Department did not respond to questions about who decided which programs to cut and what criteria were used. Nor did the department respond to a specific question about why Charting My Path was eliminated. DOGE records estimate the administration saved $22 million by terminating the program early, less than half the $54 million in the original contract.

The decision has caused .

In Utah, the Canyons School District is trying to reassign the school counselor and three teachers whose salaries were covered by the Charting My Path contract.

The district, which had 88 high schoolers participating in the program, is hoping to keep using the curriculum to boost its usual services, said Kirsten Stewart, a district spokesperson.

Officials in Poway Unified, too, hope schools can use the curriculum and tools to keep up a version of the program. But that will take time and work because the program’s four teachers had to be reassigned to other jobs.

“They dedicated that time and got really important training,” McCrath-Smith said. “We don’t want to see that squandered.”

For Damroth, the loss of parent support meetings through Charting My Path was especially devastating. Logan has a rare genetic mutation that causes him to fall asleep easily during the day, so Damroth wanted help navigating which colleges might be able to offer extra scheduling support.

“I have a million questions about this. Instead of just hearing ‘I don’t know’ I was really looking forward to working with Joe and the program,” she said, referring to Logan’s former mentor. “It’s just heartbreaking. I feel like this wasn’t well thought out. … My child wants to do things in life, but he needs to be given the tools to achieve those goals and those dreams that he has.”

DOGE cuts labs that helped ‘Mississippi Miracle’ in reading

The dramatic improvement in reading proficiency that Carey Wright oversaw as state superintendent in one the nation’s poorest states became known as the “Mississippi Miracle.”

Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast, based out of the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University, was a key partner in that work, Wright said.

When Wright wondered if state-funded instructional coaches were really making a difference, REL Southeast dispatched a team to observe, videotape, and analyze the instruction delivered by hundreds of elementary teachers across the state. Researchers reported that teachers’ instructional practices aligned well with the science of reading and that teachers themselves said they felt far more knowledgeable about teaching reading.

“That solidified for me that the money that we were putting into professional learning was working,” Wright said.

The study, she noted, arose from a casual conversation with researchers at REL Southeast: “That’s the kind of give and take that the RELs had with the states.”

Wright, now Maryland state superintendent, said she was looking forward to partnering with REL Mid-Atlantic on a math initiative and on an overhaul of the school accountability system.

But this month, termination letters went out to the universities and research organizations that run the 10 Regional Educational Laboratories, which were established by Congress in 1965 to serve states and school districts. The letters said the contracts were being terminated “for convenience.”

The press release that went to news organizations cited “wasteful and ideologically driven spending” and named a single project in Ohio that involved equity audits as a part of an effort to reduce suspensions. involve reading, math, career connections, and teacher retention.

Jannelle Kubinec, CEO of WestEd, an education research organization that held the contracts for REL West and REL Northwest, said she never received a complaint or a request to review the contracts before receiving termination letters. Her team had to abruptly cancel meetings to go over results with school districts. In other cases, reports are nearly finished but cannot be distributed because they haven’t gone through the review process.

REL West was also working with the Utah State Board of Education to figure out if the legislature’s investment in programs to keep early career teachers from leaving the classroom was making a difference, among several other projects.

“This is good work and we are trying to think through our options,” she said. “But the cancellation does limit our ability to finish the work.”

Given enough time, Utah should be able to find a staffer to analyze the data collected by REL West, said Sharon Turner, a spokesperson for the Utah State Board of Education. But the findings are much less likely to be shared with other states.

The most recent contracts started in 2022 and were set to run through 2027.

The Trump administration said it planned to enter into new contracts for the RELs to satisfy “statutory requirements” and better serve schools and states, though it’s unclear what that will entail.

“The states drive the research agendas of the RELs,” said Sara Schapiro, the executive director of the Alliance for Learning Innovation, a coalition that advocates for more effective education research. If the federal government dictates what RELs can do, “it runs counter to the whole argument that they want the states to be leading the way on education.”

Some terminated federal education research was nearly complete

Some research efforts were nearly complete when they got shut down, raising questions about how efficient these cuts were.

The American Institutes for Research, for example, was almost done evaluating the impact of the , which aims to improve literacy instruction through investments like new curriculum and teacher training.

AIR’s research spanned 114 elementary schools across 11 states and involved more than 23,000 third, fourth, and fifth graders and their nearly 900 reading teachers.

Researchers had collected and analyzed a massive trove of data from the randomized trial and presented their findings to federal education officials just three days before the study was terminated.

“It was a very exciting meeting,” said Mike Garet, a vice president and institute fellow at AIR who oversaw the study. “People were very enthusiastic about the report.”

Another AIR study that was nearing completion among first and second graders. It’s a strategy that helps schools identify and provide support to struggling readers, with the most intensive help going to kids with the highest needs. It’s widely used by schools, but its effectiveness hasn’t been tested on a larger scale.

The research took place in 106 schools and involved over 1,200 educators and 5,700 children who started first grade in 2021 and 2022. Much of the funding for the study went toward paying for teacher training and coaching to roll out the program over three years. All of the data was collected and nearly done being analyzed when DOGE made its cuts.

Garet doesn’t think he and his team should simply walk away from unfinished work.

“If we can’t report results, that would violate our covenant with the districts, the teachers, the parents, and the students who devoted a lot of time in the hope of generating knowledge about what works,” Garet said. “Now that we have the data and have the results, I think we’re duty-bound to report them.”

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

When schools closed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact was deep and long lasting. In Maryland schools, test scores fell to an all time low, particularly in math.

In 2021, counties received funds to provide high-dosage (intensive) tutoring to students to close gaps caused by school closures. This funding ensured that students consistently engaged in targeted, supplemental instruction at least two to three times per week for 30-45 minutes per session.

In fall 2021, the Reach Together Tutoring Program (RTTP), a partnership program of the George and Betsy Sherman Center at the University of Maryland Baltimore County collaborated with Baltimore City Public Schools to provide high-dosage tutoring that helps students access and master rigorous, grade-level mathematical concepts.

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The partnership was not new. In fact, UMBC staff and students have long worked with educators to not only support professional development and community programming, but also to educate, develop, and place UMBC graduates in teaching positions in Baltimore through the Sherman Scholars Program. Our growing partnership with city schools, ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund) funding, and our access to college students, allowed us to scale our previous efforts.

The program supports students in second through eighth grade who are selected based on diagnostic assessment scores. RTTP participants scored in the bottom quartile, which equates to two or more grade levels below where they should be. Tutoring occurs during the school day utilizing the “personalized learning” block, in order to minimize disruption to the core curriculum.

What makes RTTP unique is the hiring of UMBC students as math coaches. Math coaches work with a small group of students two to three times a week during the academic year for approximately 24 weeks. Using an acceleration model, coaches focus on high-leverage foundational skills that align to grade-level content. They receive extensive preservice and ongoing training highlighting cultural competency, mathematical mindsets and student engagement.

Our mission is simple: “We will facilitate purposeful math experiences that enhance each student’s math identity and accelerate their learning trajectory.”

In 2021, we were in four Baltimore City Schools serving 355 students and had 85 UMBC math coaches. Fast forward to today and we just completed our third year of programming in nine Baltimore City schools (Arundel Elementary, Cherry Hill Elementary Middle School, Lakeland Elementary Middle School, Westport Academy, Park Heights Elementary, Dickey Hill Elementary Middle, Fallstaff Elementary Middle School, Bay Brook Elementary Middle and Curtis Bay Elementary) serving 644 students.

Since 2021, UMBC math coaches have completed 45,586 tutoring sessions. This spring we partnered with the city schools to increase capacity and serve more students through the with a focus on grades six-eight. We are looking forward to expanding to 10 schools in school year 2024-25.

Is it working? We partnered with faculty from UMBC’s Public Policy and Education departments to complete a two-year program evaluation. Results indicate that participants of RTTP made greater progress when looking at test score gains and percentile gains from beginning of year to end of year when compared to non participants. Student survey data indicates that 85% of students felt more confident in math after participation in RTTP, with one eighth grade student from Cherry Hill saying, “I could get help, and if I got it wrong, they didn’t put me down.”

But there’s more. RTTP has not only supported students in Baltimore City, but has created a lasting impact and shifted career trajectories for UMBC students. Math coaches are undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students from all majors, races, genders, and ethnicities.

We increased from 85 math coaches in school year 2021-22 to over 165 in school year 2023-24, when more that 1,100 UMBC students applied to be a math coach. Candidates from the Sherman Scholars Program participate in RTTP as part of their academic learning experience, giving them a hands-on opportunity to engage with students prior to beginning their teacher internship year.

Over the last three years, we have had several math coaches decide that they wanted to become teachers. They earned a master of arts in teaching and are now teaching in schools where they tutored.

Rehema Mwaisela is one such scholar who, after her first year as a math coach in her junior year at UMBC, said, “Before I was math coach in Baltimore City, I thought I wanted to be a mathematician, or just keep with math in grad school, but now I know my place in math is empowering Baltimore City scholars as much as I can with mathematical knowledge.”

She now teaches at Westport Academy. RTTP has created an exciting space where community engaged scholarship and partnership intersect and the impact is complex and far-reaching.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org. Follow Maryland Matters on and .

A new case study released in June highlights  as a leader in improving student success and closing racial equity gaps.

, from the , documents changes implemented at Forsyth Tech under the leadership of president Janet Spriggs. Forsyth Tech used strategic planning to improve the student onboarding experience, which has resulted in higher completion rates and closed racial equity gaps.

“By focusing on the student experience and implementing strategic changes in our advising and support services, we have made significant strides in improving completion rates and closing equity gaps,” Spriggs said. “We are proud of the progress we have made and remain committed to ensuring that all students at Forsyth Tech have the support they need to succeed.”

When Spriggs became president of Forsyth Tech in 2019, three-year completion rates were behind the national average. Only 12% of Hispanic/Latino students and 6% of Black students graduated within that three-year span. The goal highlighted in the case study was to improve student success by making significant changes to the student onboarding, enrollment, and advising processes through what they called the “Student Experience of Onboarding” project.

Forsyth Tech used the strategic planning process to tie changes in onboarding to broader institutional goals. Spriggs promoted a campus culture that was “open to change and driven by data rather than by adherence to the status quo,” the case study said. Researchers said the president’s collaboration with key stakeholders across campus brought the college together to implement the changes.

The case study is part of a larger series of case studies that accompany a . Each case study highlights “leader moves” that promote systemic institutional change.

The Forsyth Tech case study highlights several leader moves made by Spriggs to improve student success. One such move was to create a shared vision with expectations and pacing.

The college’s mission is to meet students where they are, and Spriggs used this mission to create a shared vision around making the college “student ready” rather than saying students were not “college ready.” As part of this shared vision, Forsyth Tech restructured student support services to proactively reach out to help with enrollment and registration. 

According to the case study, data collection was an important part of implementing change. As part of the “sensemake and learn” leader move, Forsyth Tech grew their capacity for data collection and tracking on campus to help keep stakeholders aware of student performance as well as equity gaps.

The case study highlights the leadership context, which it defines as the internal and external factors that “shape a leader’s change landscape” and influence their decision-making. Being a community college with a mission to serve students from all backgrounds helped Spriggs get buy in from faculty and staff for the project, she said. 

The case study also identified two levers, which it defines as opportunities to amplify change.

The first lever Forsyth Tech used was the strategic planning process, which they leveraged to get buy in for the project. The second lever was external partnerships. Forsyth Tech collaborated with the , , and the National Academic Advising Association (), which helped validate the new onboarding and advising approaches.

According to the case study, the overall completion rate at Forsyth Tech improved to 31% as a result of this project. In terms of closing equity gaps, the completion rate gap for Black students decreased by 15 percentage points, and Hispanic/Latino students are now completing at higher rates than white students.