Since 1997, Mass Insight’s research agenda has focused on probing education reform issues in ways that would lead directly to informed policymaking, improved practice, and increased student achievement.

We have taken our cues for this research largely from our partners in the field – superintendents, school leaders, and teachers. Our Building Blocks Initiative for Standards-Based Reform (2001-present), for example, grew out of our educator-partners’ need for an efficient way to learn about and adapt the most effective strategies of their most successful peers. Building Blocks now provides a free on-line knowledge base that the U.S. Department of Education selected as a model for its own promising practices initiative.

Our Keep the Promise initiative (2002-6) generated the nation’s first multi-year, extended look at the impact of standards and accountability on the behavior and attitudes of at-risk high school students, and on the effectiveness of urban districts’ efforts to provide the extra help these students need. Raising Math Achievement in Massachusetts (2003) helped catalyze a broad statewide response in Massachusetts to lagging student achievement in math. Most recently, The Turnaround Challenge (2007) is providing a framework for states, districts, schools, and external partners to use in addressing the problem of chronically under-performing schools.