SRI has worked in close collaboration with state and local education leaders in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia to help improve teaching and learning.
Ten Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs) across the United States support state and local educators to use evidence and data to address the needs that they identify as being most consequential for improving student learning. For the past eight years, while operating REL Appalachia, SRI has closely collaborated with state and local education leaders in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. We have worked with these leaders to understand their most pressing challenges and to identify research- and evidence-based solutions to improve teaching and learning. REL Appalachia served a highly rural region and approximately 40 percent of the lab’s funding supported projects that addressed the needs of rural schools and districts.
RELs delivered objective, non-partisan, research-based solutions to pressing educational needs identified by state and local collaborators.
Since they were established in law by Congress in 1965, the RELs have provided educators from all communities, including the smallest and most remote, with access to the most current and most rigorous research relevant to their local needs. All REL products are free and publicly available on the U.S. Department of Education’s web site. The REL program operates according to strict rules requiring researchers to work closely with state and local community leaders to identify needs and challenges, design solutions that are based on rigorous research, and deliver products and services that will help educators to leverage these insights to improve teaching and learning.
REL Appalachia collaborated with state and district leaders on a wide range of projects that had made substantial progress toward meeting our partners’ goals for improving schools and schooling for students, families, and educators.
The unexpected cancellation of the REL contracts halted these projects before states and school districts could reap the full benefit of the federal government’s investment. Some of these projects included:
Improving mathematics achievement
- REL Appalachia collaborated with the Kentucky Department of Education to support the implementation and evaluation of the Mathematics Achievement Fund (MAF), a program established by the Kentucky state legislature to improve mathematics instruction in selected Kentucky elementary schools. REL Appalachia developed a coaching observation tool to support the training and supervision of elementary mathematics coaches and designed an annual program evaluation to monitor program outcomes and support mid-course corrections in program delivery. After two years, 80% of MAF schools improved their performance on Kentucky’s annual mathematics assessment, and as a group MAF schools had outpaced the statewide average 2-year gain in mathematics test scores. REL Appalachia was in the process of developing a video-based training series to support the scaling of this successful coaching model to 51 elementary schools serving approximately 28,000 Kentucky students.
- To accelerate mathematics learning in early childhood classrooms, REL Appalachia translated expert, research-based recommendations from a What Works Clearinghouse practice guide into a toolkit for early childhood educators. The toolkit included lesson plans and classroom activities, professional learning modules (including videos of exemplary math lessons), and tools for school leaders to use in supporting the adoption of the new lessons. Initial feedback from Virginia educators in pilot tests was overwhelmingly positive, and REL Appalachia was testing the impact of the toolkit on students’ mathematics achievement in 68 Virginia classrooms during the 2024-25 school year.
Supporting college and career readiness
- REL Appalachia collaborated with a network of mostly rural Tennessee districts to improve students’ college and career readiness. One project provided training and aligned instructional materials to middle and high school teachers to teach employability skills (such as communication and problem-solving) that support career success. REL Appalachia was also evaluating a program that supports students to plan career pathways, develop employability skills, and engage in career experiences hosted by local employers and colleges.
Helping community college students stay in school
- REL Appalachia was collaborating with a statewide community college system and multiple community college campuses on two projects focused on improving student retention, course completion, and degree and certificate completion. Community college leaders partnered with REL Appalachia to address post-pandemic decreases in persistence and graduation. One project focused on understanding efforts to connect students with critical services and public benefits. The other helped faculty to create more supportive instructional environments.
Supporting family engagement
- Approximately 2.4 million children nationwide live with grandparents or other kin, and the number in the Appalachian region is rapidly increasing. For nearly two years, REL Appalachia hosted a community of practice for educators and others in our four-state region who support grandfamilies and kinship caregivers. The REL facilitated quarterly meetings to build a shared understanding of available research on how best to meet the needs of grandfamilies and kinship caregivers, to provide a forum for attendees to share what they are doing to support these families across states, and to collect and monitor relevant data. A culminating event would have convened school, district, and community organization leaders across the region to share the work of the community of practice and support participants in identifying meaningful improvements for their local contexts.
We have worked shoulder-to-shoulder with educators and education leaders in the Appalachian region to support and amplify their local efforts and we look forward to the opportunity to serve our state and local partners again.
