School improvement is complex and difficult, especially in comprehensive support and improvement schools, which concurrently struggle with multiple challenges. To guide state education agencies (SEAs) in supporting schools, this report summarizes SEA resources, insights from technical assistance providers, and effective practices from the literature to form a national picture of state supports for evidence-based comprehensive school reform.

State Supports for Evidence-Based Whole School Improvement

Ashley Woo, Rebecca Herman, Emma B. Kassan, Srikant Kumar Sahoo, Phoebe Rose Levine

ResearchPublished Jul 15, 2025

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School improvement is complex and difficult, especially in comprehensive support and improvement (CSI) schools, which concurrently struggle with multiple challenges. To guide state education agencies (SEAs) in supporting schools, this report summarizes the resources that SEAs have identified and developed, insights from national technical assistance (TA) providers, and effective practices highlighted in the research literature to form a national picture of state supports for evidence-based comprehensive school reform. A separate annex, Profiles of State Supports for Evidence-Based Whole School Improvement, contains more detailed information about the approaches taken by each state and the District of Columbia.

The aim of this guide is to enable SEAs, faced with increasing responsibility and decreasing resources, to improve their supports for schools undergoing comprehensive reform. SEA leaders can compare their own school improvement efforts with those of other SEAs and national trends to identify any current gaps in their supports — and garner ideas on how to enhance their supports. SEA leaders can also use this report to identify extant resources, reducing the need to reinvent the wheel. This report will also be useful to organizations that support SEAs, such as TA providers, to identify where their support is most needed.

Key Findings

  • SEAs provide a mix of supports to help schools identify and select evidence-based practices (EBPs) for whole school improvement, such as frameworks identifying school improvement focuses, lists of approved or suggested EBPs, evidence clearinghouses, and guidance on selecting EBPs.
  • SEAs provide professional learning to schools and local education agencies (LEAs) to promote whole school improvement, although these supports are not always specifically geared toward CSI schools. Conversely, when SEAs provide TA directly to schools and districts for school improvement, they tend to prioritize CSI schools.
  • Common barriers to school improvement include difficulties in selecting promising EBPs, confronting the complexity of schools, limited staff capacity, and resistance to change.
  • TA providers supplement SEA efforts with direct supports to schools by contributing their outside perspectives and expertise and tailoring supports to align with emergent needs.
  • SEAs can help schools take advantage of TA providers by publishing lists of approved providers. Only about one-quarter of states provide such lists. Few SEAs provide guidance on selecting and working with TA providers.

Recommendations

  • SEAs should make their school improvement resources easy to access. States might consider consolidating their presentation of resources to make them easier to find on SEA websites and providing guidance on which resources are best used for which purpose.
  • Given their potentially larger role in supporting evidence-based school improvement and already strained capacity, SEAs should identify the niche where their efforts will make the greatest difference at the lowest cost. SEAs are well positioned to join forces with their peers or with national organizations to develop resources that meet a common need and that might be beyond their own capacity to develop.
  • SEAs can draw on the capacity of external TA providers and state-specific regional service agencies to support schools and LEAs. Signaling the value of TA providers and providing evidence of their success can help increase schools' and LEAs' buy-in to working with TA providers — a challenge expressed by TA providers themselves.
  • SEAs should ensure that their school improvement supports fit together coherently. States can improve understanding of their policies and resources by using a coherent framework that serves as a throughline across supports.

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Woo, Ashley, Rebecca Herman, Emma B. Kassan, Srikant Kumar Sahoo, and Phoebe Rose Levine, State Supports for Evidence-Based Whole School Improvement. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2025. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3775-1.html.
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This report is based on research funded by the Gates Foundation and conducted by RAND Education and Labor.

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