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Evidence Matters | Understanding the School-to-Prison Pipeline: How Discipline and Academic Inequality Shape Student Outcomes Evidence Matters | Understanding the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Practices that Work
March 31, 2026 What if a single school disciplinary decision could shape the rest of a student’s life? For thousands of young people across the United States, that’s the reality. A suspension, an arrest, or...
Continue ReadingEvidence Matters | Catching Kids Upstream: How Afterschool Programs Reduce Crime and Risky Behavior
by Amy Keely and Cathy Stevens When we talk about youth crime and risky behavior, the conversation often centers on consequences—what happens after something goes wrong. But what if we focused instead on prevention? What...
Continue ReadingEvidence Matters | Expanding our Understanding of the School Day
by Cathy Stevens When thinking about education in America, we naturally think about the traditional school day from roughly 7 a.m.-3 p.m. Often overlooked, but also critical to children’s success and development are afterschool and...
Continue ReadingEvidence Matters | Understanding the School-to-Prison Pipeline: How Discipline and Academic Inequality Shape Student Outcomes
Education is often described as a pathway to opportunity, opening doors to careers, personal growth, and long-term stability. For many students, school provides the support and resources needed to build a strong future. However, researchers...
Continue ReadingEvidence Matters | Discovering Estonia: Lessons from a Nation Deeply Committed to Education
by Angela Baum This spring, I had the privilege of joining The Riley Institute’s field study to Estonia, a small Baltic nation often celebrated as a global leader in education. We set out to learn...
Continue ReadingEvidence Matters | Two Paths, a Shared Future: What the U.S. and Estonia Can Learn From Each Other – Part II
As we mentioned in our last post, Estonia has become a global model for educational excellence. With its consistently high scores on international assessments like the Programme for International Assessment (PISA), strong digital literacy, and...
Continue ReadingEvidence Matters | Two Paths, a Shared Future: What the U.S. and Estonia Can Learn From Each Other – Part I
by Kelly Gregory, Catherine Schumacher, and Susie Shannon When you fly into the Estonian capital of Tallinn, first you see the woods. These vast swaths of green quickly give way to huge gray blocks of...
Continue ReadingEvidence Matters: Rediscovering Childhood Through Estonia’s Whole-Child Approach to Education
by Wendy Thacker When Did Being a Kid Stop Being Just Being a Kid? Remember the days of Kool-Aid mustaches, PB&J sandwiches from someone else's mom, and playing outside until the streetlights turned on? When...
Continue ReadingEvidence Matters: Exploring the Baltic Tiger
September 5, 2025 Since gaining its independence from Russia in 1991, Estonia has risen to the top of educational rankings, both in Europe and around the world. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is...
Continue ReadingEvidence Matters: Is the Summer Slide a Slippery Slope?
July 10, 2025 When the school bell rings for the final time signaling the beginning of summer, kids across the country race into the sunshine ready for a break. But some parents and teachers worry...
Continue ReadingEvidence Matters | An Examination of Standardized Testing in the United States – Are We Passing the Test? Part III
May 22, 2025 As we highlighted in our last post, while the U.S. administers a variety of standardized tests to students each year, historically, we have underperformed other countries on common measures of student academic...
Continue ReadingEvidence Matters | An Examination of Standardized Testing in the United States – Are We Passing the Test? Part II
April 28, 2025 As we highlighted in our last post, the U.S.’s PISA scores demonstrate a significant gap between its students from impoverished backgrounds compared to higher socioeconomic students, and this gap is larger in...
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