Committed to Neutrality in Our Work
LearnPlatform is a for-benefit research organization committed to expanding equitable access for all students to the teaching and technology that works best for them. While best known for our edtech effectiveness systems used by local education agencies, statewide edtech effectiveness clearinghouse and related services, we also engage with philanthropy and partners and, after years of testing, recently launched evidence services for solution providers.
As the entire U.S. education system works together to modernize learning environments, the need for actionable, practical and trustworthy evidence is critical. Determining when and how solutions are working in varied contexts is critical to inform decision making at every level. It’s also important that the information, analysis and findings are trustworthy and reliable.
Here are the steps we take to ensure our work in this area—with both providers and practitioners—is unbiased, safe and trustworthy.
Research Basis and Methods
All of our research, analysis and frameworks are led, executed or reviewed by trained and published researchers, data scientists and psychometricians. This includes our founding researcher, Dr. Daniel Stanhope, our research director, Dr. Mary Styers, and our entire Research Team.
Validity Committee
Since our founding, LearnPlatform has maintained an external Validity Committee, composed of experts from the field. They provide technical guidance and checks and balances on our efforts. While committed to the same mission, the noted experts who have made up this committee have no incentive to misstate, under-inform or create bias in our efforts.
Technology and Architecture
The design of our architecture, technology and systems has always focused on the same mission and goals. Our work for evidence is not merely the “analytics” of counting things, but rigorous research methodologies automated for efficiency to democratize access. Our technology and systems are designed to avoid or eliminate bias, misrepresentation or over- or under- statement of results. They are designed to be:
System/Platform Agnostic: Our system receives and analyzes data with/from any and all systems/major platforms. We work diligently to ensure any solution provider or practitioner has an easy path to provide source data.
Outcome Agnostic: Our system analyzes data toward any relevant success metric, not just test scores or high stakes assessments.
Intervention Agnostic: This work is about empowering everyone to improve – not about picking winners and losers. No intervention is perfect. Our systems are designed so educators can analyze data and make decisions based on findings.
Data Use and Privacy Policies: Learn more about how our data minimization strategy, confidentiality, terms and conditions, and other data privacy commitments support our neutrality at our Privacy Center.
Aligned with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), EDGAR and WWC
Our team actively engages with the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences and others to ensure alignment, receive guidance and support the levels of evidence outlined in ESSA, the SEER standards, WWC standards, etc. In short, we don’t make the rules – we play by them and help others do the same.
Cost-effective
Traditional third-party research has been too expensive for most to access, leading to a bias in research – few school districts have their own research teams, and only the largest companies can afford such research. For districts and states, our free services, tools and cost-effective subscriptions are affordable for any organization and actually show significant academic and financial return. Our evidence services for providers make reaching ESSA compliance in weeks affordable and practical for any sized provider, reducing the financial and effort cost of third-party research to a fraction of traditional models.
Accessible
We don’t hide findings in long, hard-to-understand, academic reports that are only read by postgraduate researchers or accessible in pay-to-play journals. We provide easy-to-read visualizations and standard frameworks, and test our findings to ensure practitioners serving students can easily consume, understand and apply the findings.
Business Model
We are not paid more or less if the products, research, implementation or interventions we analyze on behalf of our customers show positive or negative results. We take a formative approach to research in which everything from breaking down logic models to focusing on both small and large impacts is seen as a learning process. We work with our customers to focus on the journey, identifying both the positive findings alongside opportunities to learn and improve. In fact, we go to great lengths to be upfront with our customers when results don’t match their expectations, and discuss ways to move forward using the findings. While not every finding may end up as a front page case study, every finding does have the opportunity to point the way forward.
Contracts Structure, Bylaws and Governance
Our legal terms, bylaws and governance are designed to remain neutral. Organizations that provide data to us do so for specific purposes and retain ownership of their data. Analyses, reports and evidence based on combined data are owned by LearnPlatform with non-transferable licenses to the participating parties to ensure ease of use, but not misuse or misstatement, from their evidence.
As far as we know, LearnPlatform is unique in providing a purpose-built system and tools for education evidence for all sides of the market. As such, we feel compelled to do so with neutrality and transparency.
Updated: February 2022