Bellwether Community Guidelines

Why We Have Guidelines

Bellwether exists to transform education to ensure young people — especially those furthest from opportunity — achieve outcomes that lead to fulfilling lives and flourishing communities. That mission depends on productive conversation: with educators, policymakers, families, researchers, and anyone engaging with our work.

Our team includes former teachers, school leaders, and policy experts who show up online to share research, debate hard questions, and learn from the field. We want our comment sections to reflect the same standard we hold ourselves to internally — curious, honest, and respectful, even when we disagree.

These guidelines apply to comments, replies, and messages across Bellwether’s LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Threads, and Bluesky accounts.

What We Welcome

• Disagreement, argued in good faith. Push back on our research, question our conclusions, bring a different perspective — that’s exactly what makes this work better.
• Questions. If something in a report or post isn’t clear, ask. Our experts are glad to clarify or point you to more context.
• Firsthand experience. Educators, students, families, and district leaders often know things our reports don’t capture. We want to hear it.

What We Don’t Allow

We’ll remove comments and, where needed, restrict accounts that include:

• Harassment or personal attacks: We have zero tolerance for targeting other commenters, our team, or anyone else based on who they are rather than what they’ve said.
• Hate speech or discrimination: Content that demeans people based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or veteran status.
• Threats or incitement to violence: This includes direct threats against a person or group, as well as language that encourages or glorifies violence against others. We take these seriously and may report credible threats to the relevant platform or authorities.
• Spam, scams, or unrelated promotion: This includes bots, phishing links, and repeated off-topic advertising.
• Misinformation presented as fact: We hold our comment sections to the same evidentiary standard we hold our own publications to. We may remove clearly false claims about our work or about verifiable facts, and we’ll often follow up with sources or corrections rather than deleting first.
• Sharing private information: We have zero tolerance for disclosing sensitive or private information about students, staff, or other individuals without consent.
• Vulgar or profane language: We’re a professional space that welcomes people across the education field, and we ask that comments stay appropriate for a workplace or classroom audience.
• Explicit, graphic, or otherwise inappropriate content: This includes sexual content, graphic violence or gore, and material that’s disturbing or inappropriate for the general audiences who engage with our channels.

How We Handle It

• We review comments regularly, not instantly. A delayed response is not a determination on whether a comment does or doesn’t meet the standards above. Nor is it an agreement or a disagreement.
• We may hide, remove, or restrict replies that violate these guidelines. Repeated violations may lead to a blocked account.
• Disagreeing with Bellwether’s research or recommendations is never, on its own, a reason for removal.
• We reserve the right to update these guidelines as our channels and community grow, and we’ll post changes here when we do.

A Note From Our Team

Nothing here is meant to shut down debate — the opposite, actually. We believe some of our best work is formed by active debate, engaging questions, and constructive criticism. We want to make sure everyone engaging with Bellwether’s work, including our own experts, can do it without wading through noise or hostility to get there.

Questions about these guidelines, or think we made the wrong call on something? Reach out at contactus@bellwether.org. We mean it when we say we want to hear from you.

Last updated: September 2026