The Devil Is in the Implementation

In 2015, Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act, empowering states with a degree of latitude they hadn’t had for more than a decade, when the No Child Left Behind Act went into effect. But, according to Professor Tom Kane, faculty director at the Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) at Harvard University, many states didn’t know what to do with this new level of autonomy. “There’s been a vacuum in leadership between states and the federal government,” he says. That vacuum has potentially contributed to a decade-long slump in national student achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress assessment, known as NAEP. 

Last year, CEPR announced an initiative to fill the void: States Leading States (SLS). In November, they revealed the first cohort of states: Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Texas. 

Kane says the initiative is building on work that was happening organically, with states taking notice of each other’s successes, and trying to replicate them. Take the “Mississippi Miracle,” in which Mississippi climbed from 49th in the country in fourth-grade reading scores in 2013, to ninth in 2025. Since Mississippi began its ascent, more than 40 states have implemented legislation focused on the science of reading. 

“That’s what States Leading States is all about: to try to fan the flames,” Kane says. “Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once referred to states as like the laboratories of democracy. That analogy only holds if somebody’s measuring the effects of the experiments.” 

It’s exactly the kind of work that attracted CEPR executive director Christina Grant to Harvard. In her previous post as the state superintendent of schools in Washington, D.C., she saw firsthand the benefits of partnering with researchers to isolate what was — and wasn’t — working. “The devil is in implementation, and right now we just celebrate when it works, but we don’t go back and necessarily say what happened,” Grant says. 

Less than a year after announcing the first cohort, States Leading States has already begun to release findings. “We are trying to move all of the work as fast as we can because it is so important for states to get these lessons,” says Scott Sargrad, Ed.M.’08, SLS’s senior director. 

The first report, published this spring, is a national evaluation of the impact of Yondr Pouches — neoprene pouches used to lock away devices during the school day — on academic achievement. 

Cell phones are an urgent topic: While states could select any policy to examine with the SLS initiative, three — Ohio, Illinois, and Delaware — chose cell phone policies as they each consider statewide bans. Kane says there’s widespread speculation that smartphones contributed to academic decline in the United States and other countries and that the achievement slide coincided around 2015 with explosive smartphone growth, which gave students unprecedented social media access. The ability to look at policies curtailing cell phone use across states will be powerful, Kane says: “ I think it will be the strongest evidence yet on the impacts of reducing or eliminating social media use during the school day on student achievement, and not just student achievement, but some measures of student mental health as well.” 

This report will be followed by one on a statewide summer tutoring program in Alabama. “Looking at data from Alabama will help states figure out how to invest in summer programming moving forward,” Sargrad says. 

SLS is also already convening conversations between state leaders. For example, officials in Indiana and Texas have connected about outcomes-based contracting, where payment is tied to measurable results. SLS also includes support from CEPR’s Strategic Data Project in organizing data systems. This fall, several SLS states will have data fellows embedded in their education departments. 

And SLS’s impact is poised to extend beyond its inaugural nine-state cohort. Leaders from across the country have expressed interest in learning from the current research projects, as well as in joining future cohorts. “We’re building as we grow,” Grant says. “With the right level of investment over time, we would love to be able to say that we do this work in every state in the union.” 

As states implement more policies with even modest proven impacts on achievement, their results will compound to achieve massive results: a reason for optimism after years of what Grant calls “doom and gloom.” 

“Every single day, kids are waking up and putting on their little backpacks and they’re coming to school, and they are expecting us to get it right,” Grant says. “It’s our job to leverage research and evidence to get it right for that child, and we should be excited about that. We should be excited about celebrating when it goes well and then being really curious and inquisitive when it doesn’t, so that we can course correct and make a new path forward.”