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New from ERS

Now is the Time to Act: Tough Times as a Catalyst for Change

ERS has many resources to help urban districts navigate tough economic times and use all resources- both existing and stimulus- to reach the ultimate destination: improved student achievement.

Realigning Resources for District Transformation: Using American Recovery & Investment Act Funds to Advance a Strategic Education Reform Agenda

This paper, written with the Center for American Progress, gives state and district leaders 15 concrete ways to use stimulus funds for long term transformation.

A Grand Bargain for Education Reform

ERS wrote a chapter in A Grand Bargain for Education Reform on the Strategic Professional Development review, a process that facilitates the school district efforts to allocate scarce professional development resources to the district's most pressing priorities in ways most likely to improve student performance.

Using Stimulus Funds to Build a Bridge to Better Practice

This Education Week Commentary by Karen Hawley Miles surfaces strategies that district leaders can use to make tough choices during this tight budget environment that also make a downpayment on critical reforms.  

Teaching Quality: The First Priority

ERS brief on how to allocate resources to improve the quality of teaching.  

By Design Not Default: Optimizing District Spending on Small High Schools

Paper and tool that helps leaders understand and manage the drivers of small school spending.

Our Mission

Our mission is to transform urban school systems by helping leaders strategically use resources to dramatically improve student learning.

Our Approach

A school system can be a vehicle for excellence and equity, but only if school leaders are willing to make hard choices, think strategically, and invest to build systems and structures.

ERS is a non-profit organization that works closely with leaders of urban public school systems to rethink the use of district and school-level resources, supporting strategies for improved instruction and performance.

ERS’s unique strength is in our action research. Our working partnerships with school systems bridge research and practice, as we support our clients with diagnostic analyses tailored to their district, web-based tools, research and training, and together outline strategies that are actionable and transformational both within and beyond the districts in which we work.

Read about our approach to working with school districts.

Our Practice Areas

ERS’s work and research have identified several areas in which school systems effectively leverage their resources to improve instruction, forming the basis for our five practices areas: 

Learn more about each of our practice areas:

• Professional Development and School Support
• School Funding Systems
• School Level Resource Use
• School Performance Management
• School System Design