Illuminations and Insights

This past school year brought a defining question to the forefront of K-12 education: How can we harness the rapid rise of artificial intelligence in ways that are responsible, equitable, and useful to education leaders, students, and their families? We asked five leaders from across Education Analytics to reflect on what they observed working alongside our partners, and what that could mean for the path ahead. In this blog, they share key takeaways from the 2025-26 school year.

Get to know Research Analyst II Jeremiah Mackin-Alonzi in the latest installment of our Day in the Life series. In this blog, Jeremiah describes his day-to-day tasks like running statistical models in R or building roster dashboards, how his attention to detail aids in his code writing, and how he spends his time exploring Madison outside of work.

Online and in face-to-face conversations, confusion and uncertainty are swirling around marketing strategy, and the ed tech sector is not immune. Amid anxiety and excitement over the latest wave of AI models, communications practitioners are wondering about two things: what they need to learn themselves and how to best support their organizations with messaging. How can communicators in the ed tech space best position their companies amid the noise? In this blog, Director of Brand & Communications Marlena Holden addresses this question by describing three areas that ed tech communicators should focus on for the rest of the year to build external trust in their company and strengthen their brand.

Get to know Senior Data Engineer Angelica Lastra in the latest installment of our Day in the Life series. In the blog, Angelica describes her journey from designer to engineer, the joy she finds in fixing broken code or untangling data pipeline, and the wisdom she would impart on her younger self about her career.

Get to know our Director of Internal Data & Analytics, Annie Nielsen, in the latest installment of our “Day in the Life” series. In the blog, Annie shares insights into her role leading the development and maintenance of EA’s internal data model and analytic infrastructure, her journey from the Analyst team to the Business Operations team, and her passion for streamlining systems to make work easier for her colleagues.

In this blog, CEO Andrew Rice reflects on the new vision document from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), Reimagining the Institute of Education Sciences. In the blog, Andrew shares how strongly the vision resonates with the work EA's been building toward for years—especially the call to move education data from a static snapshot to a continuous stream. Real modernization requires shared, durable software. It requires governance, engineering capacity, and cross-state collaboration through models like state consortia. It requires equipping researchers with data engineering skills alongside statistical expertise. Andrew reflects on what it will actually take to make the IES vision a reality—and why this moment matters.