A teacher-led capacity and implementation institute focused on what American schools are failing to build.
Read Our FrameworkThree interconnected challenges showing up in classrooms every day. Public schools are our best chance to address them together.
Students cannot read. Not "reading below grade level." Cannot read. 73% score "proficient" on state tests. 31% on NAEP. That's not a measurement gap. That's a standards-and-signals gap.
Starting, sustaining, finishing: all under siege. Working memory overwhelmed. Environments have become more hostile to attention, and schools can redesign for protection.
Students can't tell what's true. And they've stopped trying to find out. But epistemic skills can be taught — and the evidence says they should be.
These forces don't cause the three-capacity crisis, but they accelerate it — and any serious response must account for them.
31% of students chronically absent nationally in 2021-22. Less time in school directly reduces the practice that builds every capacity — and the students absent most can least afford it.
Teachers are the delivery system for every intervention. Turnover, staffing shortages, and initiative churn degrade implementation regardless of how good the policy looks on paper.
The device environment is engineered to capture attention — the very resource executive function exists to manage. You cannot build sustained attention in an environment designed to destroy it.
American schooling is not merely struggling with achievement. It is struggling to reliably build the capacities that make achievement, judgment, and democratic life possible.
Each brief addresses one face of the three-capacity crisis with specific, actionable recommendations for Virginia policymakers.
What Virginia's proficiency numbers actually mean — and what they hide. A closer look at the standards-and-signals gap and why honest measurement is the first step toward real improvement.
Read the briefVirginia has created a policy contradiction. EO-33 accepts that attention matters, but funding still treats screen access as presumptively beneficial. Something has to give.
Read the briefBuilding democratic reasoning in Virginia classrooms — because epistemic capacity is teachable, the evidence base is strong, and the democratic stakes are rising.
Read the briefWhy single-issue reforms consistently underperform — and what a linked-capacity approach looks like. Read our founding white paper.
Read the frameworkTeaching is intellectual work that requires constant judgment, not script-following. Policy should come from practice, not conference rooms.
Most "achievement gaps" are funding gaps. No amount of reform solves resource scarcity. Address the inputs before debating the pedagogy.
Screens aren't neutral. The burden of proof should be on ed-tech to demonstrate benefit, not on teachers to justify its absence.
The ability to say "I don't know yet" and keep investigating is fundamental to democratic citizenship. Schools should teach it.
Teacher-led means the people writing these briefs teach. Present tense. The perspective comes from lived experience, not site visits.
Read our full philosophy