A Powerful Link Between Research and Practice

April 15, 2019

The PIER Fellowship at the Center for Education Policy Research is yielding far-reaching impact — and changing the way education policy leaders are trained.

In Oklahoma, every 4-year-old child has the opportunity to attend public preschool — but that doesn’t mean they do. In 2017, Partnering in Education Research (PIER) fellow Emily Hanno began to search for the reasons why. With research heavily favoring preschool as a way to improve students’ academic, cognitive, and emotional capabilities, Hanno’s work would have far-reaching implications.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, PIER fellow Andrew Bacher-Hicks was facing another critical question, this time about teacher retention. He wanted to find out what New Jersey teachers who started their careers five years ago were doing today. To answer this question, he found himself in the New Jersey Department of Education (DOE), linking data from various sources to provide insight on the career pathways of the state’s teachers. Like many decision-making organizations in education, the New Jersey DOE had long had these data but lacked the capacity to fully utilize them.

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