High-quality curriculum, aligned professional learning, data collection and analysis, state support, and sustainable funding. These are all important pieces to the puzzle of strong instructional practice, and people frequently ask for examples of places where they all fit together to support student progress. While we can easily point to cases where some or even most of the puzzle is taking shape, we recently learned of one where there are no missing pieces.

Recently, K-12 funding news has been dominated by the coming “fiscal cliff.” With pandemic relief funding running dry and public school enrollment dropping in most states across the country, there is good reason for handwringing. So it’s easy to miss – we almost did – the massive investments that some states are making in K-12 education this year.

There’s a rule of thumb in improv comedy that performers are supposed to take a “Yes, and…” approach to a skit. Even if they had a different vision for how the action should play out, the comedy works better when performers accept contributions as they come in and build on them.