Key Initiatives
Actionable Evidence
Working to improve outcomes by promoting “actionable evidence” that is timely, credible and practical, and is equitably produced.
There is broad agreement that too much education evidence is disconnected from practice. Well-designed and well-conducted research often languishes on shelves, unused by educators administrators or policymakers, while untested programs and practices are adopted. School districts and nonprofits sometimes wait years for study results that offer little practical guidance, or guidance that is too late to be useful. Researchers are routinely rewarded for peer-reviewed publications regardless of their practical or policy relevance, but less reliably rewarded for producing evidence that is timely, credible and useful to practitioners.
Those least well served by the status quo in education are also most harmed by our failure to build, share, and use evidence well. Persistent racial and economic segregation leads to disparities in educational experiences and outcomes for students of color and students experiencing poverty. The effects of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic are expected to exacerbate educational inequities along racial and economic lines for years to come.
Led by Project Evident with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Actionable Evidence Initiative seeks to engage stakeholders in the education sector to accelerate the development of evidence and solutions that can improve outcomes for students who are Black, Latino/a/x, or experiencing poverty. It seeks to empower and equip the broad range of leaders and practitioners who directly shape the experiences of students and families to build and use evidence in service of equity — primarily by supporting researchers, technical assistance providers, funders, and policymakers to adopt actionable evidence approaches that prioritizes practitioners learning and decision making and centers on community needs and voices.
Actionable Evidence Initiative Activities
Actionable Evidence Framework
Developed with a community of researchers, practitioners, funders, and policymakers to promote a shared understanding of the principles that define actionable evidence.
Case studies
A series of case studies that illustrate how researchers, practitioners, funders, and policymakers are exemplifying principles of the Actionable Evidence Framework.
Actionable Evidence network
We are building a network of researchers, technical assistance providers, funders, practitioners, and policymakers to facilitate knowledge sharing and dissemination of best practices, insights, tools, and use cases to promote more wide-spread use of actionable evidence.
matching practitioners to researchers
We are testing solutions to help practitioners identify and connect with researchers who support actionable evidence approaches.
Actionable Evidence Initiative Advisory Committee
- Isaac Castillo, Director of Outcomes, Assessment, and Learning, Venture Philanthropy Partners + Raise DC
- Dr. Lashawn Richburg-Hayes, Vice President for Education, Insight Policy Research
- Dr. Janelle Scott, Professor, UC Berkeley
- Dr. Jason Snipes, Director of Research-Practice Partnerships, WestED
- Dr. Vivian Tseng, Senior Vice President, Program, William T. Grant Foundation
Join Us
We welcome your participation in our growing network if you are:
- Interested in more actionable, practitioner-driven evidence building in K-12 education and
- A K-12 researcher, evaluator, tool developer, or technical assistance provider;
- A practitioner (SEA, LEA, school, or nonprofit leader) who serves Black and Latinx students and/or students experiencing poverty; or
- A funder seeking to support actionable evidence building to better serve Black and Latinx students and/or students experiencing poverty.
To learn more about the initiative or to nominate researchers or practitioners that we should highlight, please complete our interest form or email actionableevidence@projectevident.org.