Public Impact

Other Innovative Ideas

Scaling up the best parts of learning pod staffing

New from Public Impact and the Center on Reinventing Public Education:How could the best aspects of learning pod staffing be scaled up? “Pandemic pods” created new opportunities for adults interested in supporting children’s education. In these pods—established by families, school districts, and microschools—teachers had the chance to work with much smaller groups of students than […]

Research Maps Supports Needed to Sustain Learning Pods

When Covid forced students to learn from home in spring 2020, families were left largely on their own to figure out how to fill the gaps in school structure and supports, leading to the emergence of learning pods. Some of these small learning communities continued into fall 2021, either because of continued pandemic uncertainty or […]

Will Learning Pods Be Only for the Rich?

By Bryan Hassel and Sharon Kebschull Barrett; first published in Education Week. To exhausted or worried parents deciding whether to send their children into school buildings this fall, “pandemic pods” may look like an appealing way out. Keeping their boys and girls at home learning alone may be better for physical health but not for […]

Bringing Indiana Teacher Pay, Prep Up to Snuff

How much does Indiana need to catch up to surrounding states on teacher pay? The short answer? $658.1 million—that’s the cost of bringing Indiana teacher pay to the regional median. In a thorough look at the teacher crisis in Indiana written by Public Impact’s Stephanie Dean, Stand for Children Indiana and Teach Plus make the […]

Charter-Like Freedoms for District Schools: A New Path

Across the United States, school districts have a new option for their schools—“autonomous district schools”—that gives schools the freedoms of charter schools and districts a way to grow high-quality, innovative schools and diversify public school options at scale. Like charter schools, autonomous district schools are freed from innovation-inhibiting state and district policies, allowing talented educators […]

ESSA Opportunities for Excellence: New Real Clear Ed Column

In a new column for Real Clear Education, Public Impact’s co-directors, Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan Hassel, highlight the opportunities through ESSA for state leaders to achieve excellence: State and district leaders have a great new opportunity under the 2015 federal Every Student Succeeds Act: more flexibility in spending the funds they receive than in […]

Connecting Smart Cities

For several months now, Tom Vander Ark has been issuing rich installments in his Smart Cities series, building a detailed map of where innovations in learning are happening. Here, we profile an organization connecting Smart Cities–the Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust)–and its work helping city-based organizations support the emergence of high-quality blended learning.