Educators face a dilemma of staying up-to-date with evidence-based practices while dealing with superficial ideas. Continuous improvement methods can help in testing new ideas but if seen as add-ons, they may not yield sustained improvement. This brief describes the CORE Districts’ five-driver model that deepens educators’ ownership and sustains improvement over time.

This brief is one in a series aimed at providing K-12 education decision makers and advocates with an evidence base to ground discussions about how to best serve students during and following the novel coronavirus pandemic. Learn more about the EdResearch for Recovery Project and view the set of COVID-19 response-and-recovery topic areas and practitioner-generated questions here. The central question of this brief is: How can schools and districts monitor students’ social and emotional well-being across the year?