The Washington Student Achievement Council's (WSAC) Regional Partnerships (RP) strategy invests in cross-sector partnerships that are committed to increasing local postsecondary attainment through geographically and culturally responsive approaches. In this first installment of the RP Learning Brief Series, the Washington Student Achievement…

Partnerships funded by the Washington Student Achievement Council's (WSAC) Regional Challenge Grant (RCG) are only in their second year of funded work. Still, early evidence makes clear the impact of these disciplined investments. Financial aid application rates, high school graduation rates, and even college retention rates--these critical…

Community-led solutions to educational challenges "can and will" sustainably increase the number of Washingtonians with education and training after high school. This framework demonstrates how the authors measure short- and long-term outcomes to capture partnership impact and population-level change. Washington Student Achievement…

This appendix contains programmatic updates regarding the Washington Student Achievement Council's (WSAC) regional partnership work: (1) Strategic Involvement; (2) Long-Term Outlook Based on the 2025 Biennial State Budget; (3) Upcoming Report on Regional Partnership Outcomes for the 2024-25 Academic Year; and (4) Reapplication and Investment…

This appendix provides summaries of work for Research Challenge Grant (RCG) partnerships. Each partner section includes a theory of change and a summary of impact. There are thirteen partners included in this appendix.

The Regional Challenge Grant (RCG) seeks to intentionally grow the scale of its work by awarding funds to additional regional partnerships. This document includes five new partnership recommendations for Council consideration as a result of the 2024 Request for Letters of Interest.

The Washington Student Achievement Council's (WSAC) Regional Partnerships (RP) strategy invests in cross-sector partnerships that are committed to increasing local postsecondary attainment through geographically and culturally responsive approaches. In this second installment of the RP Learning Brief Series, the Washington Student Achievement…

Passed in 2022 with bipartisan support, Senate Bill 5789 established the Washington Career and College Pathways Innovative Challenge Program with a $6 million initial investment in the first year and a $16 million appropriation in the 2023-2025 Washington state biennium budget. The program awards competitive grants to existing and new…

The Washington Student Achievement Council (WSAC) works collaboratively with place-based, cross-sector partnerships seeking to increase postsecondary attainment in their communities. The Regional Challenge Grant (RCG) is a key mechanism in WSAC's broader Regional Partnership (RP) approach to invest in partnerships that self-identify strategies to…

The Washington Student Achievement Council's (WSAC) regional partnership model of state investment is in its third academic year, and the positive impacts are accumulating. This report unpacks four key areas where regional partnerships are designing, piloting, and implementing strategies with direct impacts on learners' access to education and…

Substance use among youth remains a major public health and safety concern. One fundamental way to address youth substance use prevention is to keep young people on a positive trajectory by engaging them in positive activities from early years of their childhood. In this article, the author offers a best practice analysis of systematic review…

This paper summarizes the results of a study of the local consequences of implementing statewide minimum competency tests. For American education to be the best in the world, the use of statewide and nationwide standardized testing as a primary policy tool for stimulating reform must be discontinued. Second, school district responses to such…

This paper presents a set of general observations about state-sponsored school improvement initiatives with data from several sources. One major source is the Research for Better Schools, Inc., Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), implementation study, "Facing the Challenge: Selected Programs and Practices of the Urban Initiative's Operation School…