Research & Design: Jefferson Pestronk

In most sectors, ongoing research and design (R&D) is at the center of a continuous improvement effort. Ed.L.D. student Jefferson Pestronk plans to spend his career making sure that education has its own successful models for R&D.

Pestronk, who most recently served as director of special initiatives in the Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII) at the U.S. Department of Education (ED), has observed that in education, the R&D cycle too often is slow and uncoordinated, leaving the sector starved for critical innovation.

“Right now, there is a huge divide between the research that happens in places like universities, whether it’s basic research or evaluation of best practices, and what actually happens in schools,” says Pestronk.

While he notes that the slow cycle time problem is not exclusive to education — it’s seen in medicine and throughout industry — Pestronk suggests the problem is particularly acute in education.

“The lag between when something is discovered in education and when it makes a difference is much too long,” he says.

While at ED, Pestronk focused on a range of projects exploring what R&D could look like and how ED could help build new knowledge. His work included overseeing the design and execution of the Investing in Innovation (i3) program, which has awarded competitive grants to support the development of innovative and evidence-based practices, programs, and strategies in education.

He also led ED’s efforts to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Education (ARPA-ED), designed to seed projects with potential “to transform teaching and learning in ways similar to how the Internet, GPS, and robotics have transformed commerce, travel, warfare, and the way we live our daily lives.”

Although he knew he always aspired to work on social issues, Pestronk’s interests in education grew out of his time post-college working as a consultant at the Parthenon Group. There, he worked with a number of education clients, including several of the nation’s largest school systems.

“Working with the New York City Department of Education made a huge impression on me,” he says. “My own K–12 public education was fine. But in New York, I saw the other end of the spectrum — and the transformational potential of innovation.”

In deciding to apply to the Ed.L.D. Program, Pestronk says his motivations were simple. In order to help drive innovation in the sector, he needed to know more.

“Consultants and federal government staff are required to make decisions based on the best information they can get their hands on. Those experiences pointed out to me certain areas where I wanted to expand my knowledge,” he says. “I wanted to explore the relationships between core topics in education like the history of schooling, how it created the teaching and learning we see today, and how we can use what we know about child and adult development to improve our education system.”

He also hopes to deepen his existing knowledge in areas like cognitive science which he believes will be “foundational elements of education moving forward.” However, for Pestronk, the most compelling reason to choose Ed.L.D. was the network of leaders he would be joining.

“Building deep relationships with extraordinarily talented individuals who will spread out across the education sector was the greatest attraction,” he says. “The education sector is far too broad for any individual to cover all aspects, so having close friends in diverse positions to call on and lean on will be critical.”