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Leading Educators

@leadingeducators

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We help leading school systems nurture excellence in every classroom so all students are ready to thrive in a changing future.

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What do we know about what works for students—and what do we still need to learn?

That question has grounded the trajectory of our newest leader, Bailey Cato Czupryk, who joins Leading Educators as our first Chief Research and Design Officer.

Bailey will lead an ambitious learning and design strategy focused on what students need to thrive now and beyond 2030. She’ll work across portfolios to connect what we’re learning from evidence and alongside school systems to what we build next—testing promising ideas, strengthening our literacy and mathematics work, and helping determine which emerging services are ready to scale.

Bailey brings deep experience to the work from the classroom and across the landscape. She most recently served as Chief Program Officer at Gradient Learning and previously held leadership roles for nearly 15 years at TNTP, where she was the lead author of The Opportunity Myth.

As the conditions surrounding teaching and learning change, we believe we have a responsibility to build from what the field knows while learning, with equal discipline, what students and educators will need next.

We’re thrilled to have Bailey leading that work. by @leadingeducators

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2 months ago

Every tool starts with a problem worth solving.

The best AI solutions don't begin with the technology. They begin with listening for the need.

What challenge is slowing your team down? Where are staff spending time on repetitive work instead of the people they serve? What could your organization do if you had more capacity for the work that matters most?

That's where the Economic Mobility AI Accelerator begins.

Together, we'll help nonprofit organizations serving communities in California that focus on economic mobility turn real challenges into practical AI solutions—supported every step of the way by technical coaches and a community of peers.

✨ Fully funded participation
✨ $20,000 implementation grant
✨ A working AI solution designed around your organization's priorities

If your organization is ready to build what's next, applications are open through August 15.

🔗 Link in bio. by @leadingeducators

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2 months ago

As AI tools become more common in classrooms across the country, educator teams and students are becoming more confident in their discernment. They are having rich dialogue about appropriate and effective use, grappling with how to vet their tool options, and collaboratively determining what belongs in a lesson (and what doesn’t).

But one level up, in the systems that govern procurement, data privacy, and staff capacity, the picture is murkier.

Districts now manage more than 2,700 distinct edtech tools each year, and 80% say they are prioritizing the implementation of generative AI. Yet very few systems have a shared way to decide what any of it should actually accomplish.

That's the gap Leading Educators built the Value Add of Technology for Leadership (VATL) framework to close. It's a free, research-based companion to our recently updated Value Add of Technology on Teaching framework—built for the leaders responsible for the decisions teachers can't make alone: procurement, governance, capacity mapping, and AI readiness.

⚡ Get started at leadingeducators.org/vatl. by @leadingeducators

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3 months ago

"Curriculum and HQIM is a powerful tool. Coherence is a powerful strategy. But it is not the outcome. The outcome is powerful, transformative learning for all of our kids."

Today at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit, our CEO, Chong-Hao Fu, spoke about the system-wide infrastructure needed to ensure every student is prepared to thrive in a future we cannot yet fully imagine. by @leadingeducators

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6 months ago

Every new technology makes big promises. For school systems navigating AI in the classroom, the central question is deceptively simple: What value can this technology actually bring to teaching and learning?

Our revamped Value Add of Technology on Teaching framework helps educators answer that question with a clear, instruction-centered lens. It identifies three ways technology can strengthen teaching and learning:

Do More → When technology frees up time, educators can focus more deeply on instruction.
Do Better → Technology can strengthen how students understand ideas, practice skills, and demonstrate their thinking.
Do New → Technology can expand what’s possible in learning experiences and collaboration.

These lenses help teams move beyond tool hype and focus on what matters most: instructional quality. Get started with concrete practices today at: http://leadingeducators.org/vatt by @leadingeducators

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7 months ago

Last month, we wrapped the in-person design sprint for the Economic Mobility AI Accelerator, bringing together an extraordinary group of workforce practitioners from across California.

For the past three months, this cohort has been grappling with a difficult but necessary question: how do workforce organizations actually use AI to improve economic mobility, not just study it?

The design sprint marked an important shift from exploration to building. Teams worked through real operational challenges inside their organizations—prototyping tools, pressure-testing use cases, and identifying where AI can meaningfully improve how workers navigate fragmented systems, access services, and move into quality jobs.

A few reflections from the week:
• The real innovation is happening inside frontline organizations. Workforce practitioners understand the constraints workers face and where systems break down, which makes them uniquely positioned to design practical AI applications.
• The opportunity is less about replacing human services and more about scaling them. Many of the most promising ideas focused on using AI to extend the reach of trusted intermediaries, helping workers navigate complex training, benefits, and employment systems.
• The sector is ready to move from conversation to experimentation. There is growing appetite among workforce organizations to build and test tools themselves, rather than waiting for technology vendors to define the solutions.

We're grateful to the cohort organizations who leaned into this work with openness and urgency:
Merit America
Opportunity Junction
Canal Alliance
JVS SoCal
JobTrain, Inc.
Center for Employment Opportunities
Braven
First Place for Youth
Rivet School
Building Skills Partnership
La Cocina - Nonprofit Kitchen Incubator
EDvance College
GROWTH SECTOR
Upwardly Global
Per Scholas
Step into a Job! (Bay Area Medical Academy)
Opportunity@Work

The next phase will focus on continuing to prototype, test, and share what we are learning about how AI can be applied in ways that expand—rather than erode—economic mobility.

Thanks to our participants and collaborators Leading Educators, Playlab, and Arathi Ravier cons taken in Convene by @leadingeducators

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7 months ago

Today, we’re excited to share the second edition of the Value Add of Technology on Teaching framework, updated and upgraded for the age of AI.

Educators and leaders face new questions as artificial intelligence influences classrooms:

⚡How might technology add real value to teaching and learning?
⚡When might it unintentionally disrupt deep thinking or quietly introduce new risks?

The new Value Add of Technology on Teaching is designed to help teams find clarity and focus, centering what has always mattered about excellent instruction: human work and collaborative learning.

It offers a practical lens for understanding how technology can deepen thinking, strengthen instructional quality, and preserve professional judgment.

Don’t wait to get your copy! →
https://leadingeducators.org/vatt by @leadingeducators

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7 months ago

AI is already changing what teaching looks like. It’s showing up in planning, grading, student writing, and classroom routines, often faster than systems can respond.

The question is no longer whether AI will shape K–12 education. It’s how to best harness it so that it strengthens thinking rather than simply making work move faster.

Next week, we're releasing the second edition of the Value Add of Technology on Teaching framework–updated and upgraded for the age of AI–to help educators navigate new instructional decisions with clarity. Antoinette Melvin, the lead designer, reflects:

"Imagine a science educator is supporting students who are struggling to balance chemical equations. She finds a PHET simulation that shows atoms as small colored circles representing different elements. When manipulating the numbers, students can see the same number of atoms on both sides of the reaction.

In this way, a tool can help make an invisible process visible, strengthening sense-making without lowering rigor.

The value comes not from the tool itself, but from the educator’s ability to diagnose the learning need and choose the right support that enhances student thinking. AI can support that work, but it cannot replace the judgment that makes it effective."

This is just one example of what's possible with a clear instructional lens.

▶ For an early look at what's coming, visit leadingeducators.org/vatt. by @leadingeducators

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7 months ago

As artificial intelligence influences how educators and students learn and think, we're supporting peer organizations across the sector to better understand possibilities, identify strategic use cases, and get hands-on practice using our AI Impact Cycle.

Sandra Jin, a Senior Director of Innovation at Leading Educators who is leading a number of "AI accelerators" with philanthropic support, says a participant recently compared the AI learning experience to the difference between being in a library and a nightclub.

"We can only learn so much about AI by reading, observing, or listening to podcasts. At some point, we have to leave the library and step into the nightclub, where people are actually moving, experimenting, and trying things out." by @leadingeducators

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7 months ago

What does it actually take to move student outcomes and experiences at scale?

Our new report, Scaling What Works, highlights three professional learning design features that are common among schools that improve faster than their peers:

1️⃣ Leaders learn alongside teachers. Aligned focus drives aligned results.
2️⃣ Professional learning is subject-specific. Teachers make the biggest gains when support matches the demands of their curriculum.
3️⃣ Coaching is sustained and role-specific.
At least eight hours per year per role made a measurable difference across settings.

Across 40+ cases, when these conditions were in place, student learning improved — even in schools starting well below state averages or facing complex instructional demands.

🔗 Explore the findings at leadingeducators.org/resources by @leadingeducators

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a year ago

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a year ago

You won’t want to miss this! Our CEO, Chong-Hao Fu, talks with Alex Sarlin on the newest episode of the Edtech Insiders podcast about the future of learning.

As AI enters classrooms alongside high-quality instructional materials, the central question is clear: Will it help teachers lead deeper learning—or follow a script? Chong-Hao stresses that technology must serve educator expertise, not replace it.

Reflecting on early efforts to design curriculum-based tools alongside Playlab and leading curriculum developers, he explains:

“If a teacher just asks AI, ‘Hey, can you shorten this lesson? Can you create more problems? Can you make these problems more real-world? In those things, AI is doing almost all the lifting and all the thinking for the teacher. And it's not necessarily helping us as educators to internalize the content. What we know from cognitive science is that you actually learn more when you're asked questions, and you have to do the active retrieval and the meaning making."

What to listen for:
⚡ Why coherence is the engine for systemwide improvement in schools
⚡ How AI can make teachers pilots, not passengers
⚡ The essential “future-ready” skills AI can’t replace — and how students are already building them
⚡ Stories from Charleston, Harlem, Denver, and beyond about what’s working right now

“We’re at an inflection point where people are asking: ‘What is the purpose of education? How do we design a future-ready system for our kids?’ There’s space now, more than ever, to think bigger and differently.”

🔗Listen to the episode and get the highlights at the link in our bio. by @leadingeducators

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a year ago