Research and Development in America’s Schools: How School Systems Drive Sustainable Improvement and Innovation

Research and development (R&D) in education plays a critical role in improving teaching and learning by enabling school systems to investigate challenges, test solutions, and adapt practices to local contexts and student needs. When led by school systems, R&D supports more agile, responsive, and sustained improvement by grounding innovation in evidence and experience. This report includes insights from our direct work supporting schools in building R&D capacity accompanied by a landscape analysis that examines how school systems across the country are building and implementing R&D to strengthen improvement and innovation efforts. It also includes tools for school systems to assess their utilization of R&D practices and provides insights and recommendations on how to deepen the use of R&D to accelerate and advance innovation. The report highlights the conditions school systems can shift to sustain system-level R&D, the practices that support effective implementation, and examples of how R&D is being put into action across varying contexts.