Conditions and Position

We offer our partners rigorous analysis of how the education ecosystem — from politics to policy to market forces — affects their work, and concrete plans to shape those conditions to advance their mission.

Policy Development and Analysis

We analyze legislation, statutes, and regulations to increase understanding, identify policy implications, and craft recommendations that will help improve opportunities for students.

This work includes:

Providing objective, clear, and easy-to-digest qualitative and quantitative analysis of specific policies and broader trends, both directly to our clients and for the field.
Translating complex policy analysis into accessible field-facing publications — tailored for policymakers, practitioners, advocates, and researchers — that deepen understanding and point toward opportunities to strengthen policies and implementation. This includes ghostwriting engagements that supplement the in-house capacity and expertise of our clients.
Offering policy advising, partnering with public agencies, advocates, and other clients to revise and strengthen policies, proposals, and advocacy and implementation plans.

Bellwether Education Partners - Program Evaluation

Ecosystem, Market, and Landscape Analysis

We research and synthesize the size, gaps, trends, collaborators, and competitors within segments of the education sector.

This work includes:

Creating landscape analyses to help partners accelerate their impact by giving them a clear understanding of knowledge, policy, and political and organizational factors shaping their priority issues.
Mapping where organizations stand on key issues to identify opportunities for collaboration and alignment.
Gathering and vetting existing research and analysis to build a foundation for clients interested in starting something new or expanding their impact.
Analyzing needs, trends, gaps, and opportunities across target populations or service areas to understand where the organization is best positioned to create value.
Examining models, strategies, innovations, and performance of similar organizations to identify differentiators, best practices, and strategic positioning opportunities.

Facilitation

We create opportunities for learning, connection, and productive debate among leaders across the sector.

This work includes:

Leading and facilitating meetings of leaders in the field to provide a forum for learning, debate, and collaboration on shared goals.
Serving as neutral conveners for place-based groups of stakeholders, often generating materials for knowledge-building and structures to support groups to make decisions. We do this work for both public working groups, ensuring compliance with all applicable transparency rules and laws, as well as for informally convened groups.
Partnering with funders to bring together grantees for shared discussion, idea generation, and the development of aligned agendas.
Designing and delivering cohort-based opportunities for planning, capacity-building, and best practice sharing.

Our Work in Action

Nebraska Working Group: We supported a multi-agency working group in Nebraska to develop an approach to improve data-sharing for students under the jurisdiction of the juvenile court. The final report includes recommendations to revise policies and practices within all participating state agencies as well as changes to state law regarding credit accrual and graduation. Each state agency adopted those reforms through a Memorandum of Understanding, and the Nebraska Legislature unanimously approved the statutory changes.

El Dorado County’s Youth and Family Commission: We partnered with El Dorado County, a small, rural community in Northern California, over a two-year period to better support students who are experiencing significant barriers to their education due to foster care placement, homelessness, involvement in the juvenile justice system, unmet mental or physical health needs, or other drivers of chronic instability. Through this work, we supported the county in creating the El Dorado County Commission for Youth and Families, and published a case study providing background on El Dorado County’s work and lessons learned for other districts.

A+ Education Partnership (A+): Bellwether partnered with A+, an Alabama-focused education advocacy group, to build a proposal for school funding reform and support legislative engagement on the topic. After A+ participated in our school finance training, the organization partnered with Bellwether to develop a school finance policy proposal informed by financial modeling and research. We supported A+ as they facilitated a legislative task force on school funding. This task force report informed the creation of the Renewing Alabama’s Investment in Student Excellence (RAISE) Act, a new state law enacted in 2025 that provides additional funds to districts based on student needs.

Partner With Us

We partner with a wide range of clients — from large-scale foundations to school districts to nonprofits to mission-driven companies. Let’s work together to transform education.

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