SERP Institute

Bridging Research, Practice, and Design in Education

The Strategic Education Research Partnership generates innovative, scalable solutions to our schools’ most pressing problems through sustained collaborations among education researchers, practitioners, and designers. We work to improve the learning and engagement of all students and to give teachers and students greater agency.

Featured Items

SERP Annual Report, 2025

“SERP’s progress reflects the commitment of educators, researchers, district partners, funders, and staff who contribute their expertise and trust to long-term collaborations.“


Suzanne Donovan

SERP Founding Executive Director

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Unlocking Success for Struggling Adolescent Readers

This EdWeek Webinar brought together educators from across the country to share how they’re supporting students who are reading below grade level and building stronger engagement and comprehension in middle and high school classrooms.

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K-2 Literacy Professional Resources

New research-based online courses and companion resources designed to support highly effective literacy instruction are now available.

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A SERP Success Story

This lively nine-minute video documents how SERP's free WordGen Weekly program started this New York City middle school on a path from struggling and under-enrolled to laser-focused on academic language, evidence-based argumentation, and critical analysis.

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More SERP Resources

Featured Blog Posts

SERP Stories: Looking Back at Season 1

By Kala Jones, Ph.D. • July 6, 2026
I started the SERP Stories Podcast with a research question. What does it look like when research and practice truly work together? Clean. Answerable. The kind of question you can build a season around.

Adolescent Readers Are Finally Having Their Moment

By Emily Hayden, Ph.D. • June 25, 2026
This spring, I had the privilege of meeting educators from across the state of Minnesota at a series of invited vendor fairs. Their message was consistent and clear: they are searching for evidence-based strategies and materials that support effective literacy instruction for students in grades 6 and up who are still developing the complex reading skills needed for academic success.

Supporting Multilingual Learners Through Rigorous Literacy Instruction: What’s New in STARI

By Christine Dahnke, EdLD • June 18, 2026
I’m not a natural language learner. I studied Spanish for six years before living in Spain finally made me bilingual, and I’ve never forgotten how it feels to sit in a room where the language is moving faster than you can hold onto it.

STARI Spotlight - Saying Yes to STARI: How One NYC High School Teacher Built a Reading Intervention Class her Students Actually Love

By Emily Hayden, Ph.D. • June 9, 2026
When Natasha Balkcom's principal asked if she'd like to teach a reading intervention class at her New York City high school, the answer came easily. After several years teaching English to 9th and 10th graders at Metropolitan Soundview High School, Natasha knew the need was real and she was ready to meet it.
Student reading a whole book.

Read books. Whole books.

By Margaret Troyer, Ed.D. • May 18, 2026
According to Tynesha Banks, a New York City teacher, many students enter her seventh grade class never having read an entire novel. When she guides them through reading a whole novel, she says, “they feel success in that, like I actually read this entire book, and I understood what was going on, and I was able to finish it from start to finish.”
K-2 Literacy Professional Learning

New K–2 Literacy Professional Learning Resources: Built With Teachers, for Teachers

By Wafaa Ahmed • April 28, 2026
For more than two decades, SERP has been well known for its work in adolescent literacy , partnering with educators to design and study instructional approaches that support students during the often neglected middle and high school years.

20

SERP tools are now available as free educator resources, and the collection is growing quickly!


1,200+

teachers and administrators have helped with SERP research and design work.

30+ 

school districts have engaged in collaborative problem-solving in SERP Partnerships.

50+ 

school districts have participated in SERP product evaluations.

35

major research institutions represented among researchers who have participated in SERP partnerships.

10

RCT studies have been completed by SERP-recruited teams, leading to dozens of publications and new research instruments.

52,000+

educators are registered users of SERP products. Visitors to product websites now exceed one million.

$60 million+

raised in grants.

Video Showing Locations of Product Downloads

Watch how the use of SERP materials has  expanded throughout the nation over the last five years.

Our Funders

Abell Foundation
Burroughs Wellcome Fund
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Goldman Sachs Foundation
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Haan Foundation for Children
Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Dept of Education
Intel Foundation
Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation
John S. and Catherine L. Reed Foundation
Koshland Foundation
Leon Lowenstein Foundation
National Academy of Sciences
National Science Foundation
Office of Innovation and Improvement, U.S. Dept of Education
Robert Noyce Foundation
S.D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation
Simons Foundation
Spencer Foundation
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation