Task Board and Open Thread #1

Understand our highest-priority projects and share your ideas

The past week has been overwhelming, humbling, and incredibly exciting. We’ve heard from deans, microschool founders, school board members, and teachers who went back to study policy because they felt something important was missing. We’ve seen everything from people passionate about excellence in vocational education to those who want to understand and build within comprehensive theories of excellence. We’ve chatted with advocates who fought against the degradation of some of the best schools in the country, with pioneers who built serious and effective technological solutions, with legal professionals focused on building out an excellence-focused legal advocacy framework, and with parents who want something different for their kids.

More than ever, it’s clear that this movement can and should succeed. Educational excellence is blessed to have an energetic cluster of dedicated people each focused on hacking away at one part or another of an enormous problem. We have much work to do, from defining excellence with precision to identifying the best levers to pull to achieve it.

What comes first? This is the first edition of our ongoing community task board that lists our highest-priority projects and solicits and directs volunteers to the different core, specialized teams working on them. We’ll release periodic updates in subsequent posts, outlining the progress of each project and presenting new goals as they come up.

Task Board Overview:

To summarize, we currently have five (5) core teams, each working on a specific problem.

1. Policy

2. Gifted Regulations

3. Logic Tournament

4. Legal

5. Ohio

See details below.

Project 1: CEP Official Policy Doc

Goal: Write our foundational policy paper presenting a clear alternative to the equity-over-excellence paradigm with input from Jack, Lily, and community.

• Current Status: Core team assembled.

• Deadline: End of March (but ongoing)

• What We Need: No further volunteers needed unless you are extremely compelled towards this project!

• Min. Commitment Level: ~10 hours/week through end of March.

• Skills: Anyone who likes to parse through copious amounts of education-pedagogy and policy information welcome.

Next Steps: Send an email to centerforedprogress@gmail.com, with the headline “Volunteer: CEP Official Policy Doc".

Project 2: Gifted Regulations Map

Goal: Collect data on how gifted programs are administered by each state.

• A volunteer will then use this spreadsheet to create a crowdsourced website with choropleth maps to visually communicate at what level excellence-related policy is managed nationwide.

Context: As an example, the Code of Maryland Regulations has Sec. 13a.04.07, which outlines all of the requirements that must be adhered to by the individual LEAs (Local Education Authorities) within the state. This is the overarching governing regulation, though each state has a different composition of districts, regulations, and oversight bodies. We need this for every state!

• Current Status: Compiling data.

• Deadline: End of March (but ongoing)

• What We Need:

  • 1-3 core team members each working on multiple states

  • OR 1-3 one-time volunteers per state

• Min. Commitment Level: Research and fill in all relevant regulations for one (1) state.

• Skills: Internet research.

Next Steps: Send an email to centerforedprogress@gmail.com with the subject line “Volunteer: Gifted Regulations Map.” Or, leave a comment below with your findings, following this template.

Project 3: Logic Tournament

Goal: Write questions for a logic tournament hosted by a CEP fellow.

Context: CEP Senior Fellow Sebastian Garren has run a regional Logic Tournament for the past two years and is looking to grow it and create this year’s question set. The questions were originally based on Raymond Smullyan’s puzzle books. The idea behind the tournament is to pull the culture we want to see into existence, using prizes and honors as incentives.

Last year, Sebastian wrote all questions himself. This year, he wants to include more Computational Linguistics style questions and other topics that appeal to more than just math kids, with a goal of attracting kids who wouldn’t show up for a math olympiad and to write questions that are dripping with theme and humor.

• Current Status: Ongoing.

• Deadline: 16 March

• What We Need: Volunteers to help write three levels of questions for the team round and the solo round. Question levels: 5th-6th grade, 7th-8th grade, 9th-11th grade. To see last year’s quiz for example questions, join the CEP Discord server or reach out to Sebastian directly.

• Min. Commitment Level: Any contributions welcome.

• Skills: Capacity to write themed, creative, and interesting logic questions.

Next Steps: Send an email to sebastian.garren@johnpaulprep.org with the subject line “Volunteer: Logic Tournament” and/or join the Discord to coordinate with the logic tournament team.

Project 4: Building Pro-Excellence Legal Arm

Goal: Draft a master plan for the battles and strategies a pro-excellence legal advocacy organization should take on. Identify 2-3 urgent ongoing disputes in which legal and policy advocacy might make an immediate difference.

• Current status: Core team in place.

• Deadline: Not set.

• What We Need: Need 3-5 people with legal experience to advise and help structure this branch of CEP.

• Skills: Legal background or familiarity with education law and policy

Next Steps: Join the Discord and chat in any of the open legal/policy channels. If especially serious and committed, send an email to centerforedprogress@gmail.com with the subject line “Volunteer: Legal Advocacy.”

Project 5: Ohio White Paper

Goal: Use the research from our CEP Official Policy team to write a ~5 page “Excellence in Education” proposal/white paper for state officials in Ohio, identifying specific regulatory and funding interventions at the state and local level that will execute on America’s desire for a radical paradigm shift in education.

• Current status: Preliminary research.

• Deadline: Not set.

• What We Need: One (1) team leader to take ownership of this project, to begin preliminary research now and commit to 5-10 hours a week starting March 31st. (After our Policy team finishes their first draft.)

• Skills: Interest/experience in education policy research, especially the Ohio education ecosystem.

Next Steps: Join the Discord and chat in any of the open legal/policy channels. If especially serious and committed, send an email to centerforedprogress@gmail.com with the subject line “Volunteer: Legal Advocacy.”

Other Post and Research Ideas

Below are some ideas for other posts we’d love to help you write and publish. We have a preference for concrete, action-oriented posts that point to specific directions for improvement—but we do want to create space for a broader range of discussions and debates.

• A review of America’s selective high schools (eg Lowell, Stuyvesant, Thomas Jefferson). Where are they located? Which and where face attacks? Which are still going strong?

• Specific, detailed autopsies of failed policy initiatives at the district or state level

• Experiences from the trenches: explanations from educators about what has worked, what hasn't, and why

• Histories or case studies of exceptional learners or programs, particularly with granular detail on implementation, costs, and outcomes

• International comparisons, particularly with countries that focus more on ability grouping

• Analyses of curricula especially able to accommodate student variance

• Develop the role of AI in education. How can/will AI catalyze change in education?

Have a pitch? See something you think we should cover, or you want to cover for us? Reach out to centerforedprogress@gmail.com.

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In addition, while we can’t offer paid positions yet, we’ve heard from a number of people who would be eager to join or affiliate with CEP as fellows, interns, heads of sponsored projects, or in some other capacity. We’re working on formalizing these various role structures, but in the meantime please reach out to us if interested. We want to boost your projects and your ideas.

Particularly because Lily and Jack are only available part-time until the summer, anyone who is invested in this project and has ideas worth accomplishing has the opportunity for particularly meaningful contributions early. Show us a useful idea, show how it’s aligned, and offer to lead it! Looking for an excuse to do meaningful work? This is it. CEP is almost infinitely scalable, and we will never run short of problems to solve.

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Interested in getting involved?

• Join our Discord server.

• Fill out our volunteer form.

• Donate.

• For other ideas, email us at centerforedprogress@gmail.com.