New Work in Budget trade-offs and Transforming Teaching

ERS continues to develop our suite of tools for large urban districts. The new initiatives support smart long-range budgeting, including distributing School Budget Hold’em and a “new generation” of tools around teacher compensation and spending on professional growth. The work is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. We are also grateful to the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Noyce Foundation for their continuing support allowing us to respond effectively to the growing demands for our work.

New ERS Leadership and Staff

ERS welcomes newly appointed board member Peter Gorman, Senior Vice President of News Corp’s new Education Division and former Superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Gorman joins our extraordinary board of directors including Uri Treisman, Professor of Mathematics, University of Texas at Austin, Marcia Blenko, Partner, Bain & Company, Ellen Guiney, Executive Director, Boston Plan for Excellence and Willis Hawley, recent Dean of the School of Education Professor Emeritus of Education & Public Affairs, University of Maryland.

We also have brought on new talented team members: DAVID BLOOM, Robert Daigneau, Cory Edmonds, Zlati Shishkova, and Joe Trawick-Smith are streamlining the coding and analysis of client data. Genevieve Quist Green will help with our research and district partnerships and Kira DeVaul joins our administrative team. 

New District Partners and State-level Work

In 2011 ERS worked closely with Duval County, Syracuse, Baltimore and Prince Georges County. More recently we have added Denver, Washington DC, Newark, and the state of Georgia to our growing number of partners. Our partnership with Georgia represents the first time we’re approaching our work from the state perspective and we are eager to see the implications and potential for impact. In Denver, we recently presented finding to the board. 

“The time is now,” states ERS President and Executive Director Karen Hawley Miles. “It is through the evolving work of our teams in partnership with districts and with the consistent support of our funders, advisors, and collaborators that we are trying to seize this moment to support district leaders in making the tough choices that could lead to a time of transformation and accelerating student performance in our nation’s schools.”