Welcome to our insights and resources page.
Planning your school or education system’s approach to AI?
We’ve spent the past year reviewing frameworks and research related to AI in education as well as change amidst disruption. To support you, we have developed a chatbot that draws exclusively from the most well-supported sources and relevant sources including OECD, UNESCO, and the Brookings Institution as well as leading academics from the University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon, and others.
We invite you to ask your questions here.
Although we have carefully curated our resources, we ask that you remember to activate your wonderful human intelligence and validate any information shared with the references listed.
What is international assessment and why does it matter?
International assessments such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) serve as key indicators of the quality of a country's education system. PISA, conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), evaluates 15-year-olds' abilities in reading, mathematics, and science every three years, providing a global benchmark for educational success. TIMSS assesses students in grades four and eight in mathematics and science, helping to track trends over time, while PIRLS focuses on reading abilities of fourth graders. These assessments collectively highlight how well education systems are preparing youth not just academically, but also in terms of their critical thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for navigating the complexities of modern societies and economies.
The insights gleaned from PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS are invaluable for policymakers, educators, and stakeholders in identifying strengths and areas for improvement within their educational frameworks. Countries use these data to compare their students' performance against international standards, allowing them to enact targeted reforms that enhance teaching practices and curriculum designs. By aligning education systems more closely with the demands of the global workforce, these assessments help ensure that youth are better equipped with the necessary skills to contribute effectively to society and the economy. This alignment not only aids individual countries in fostering a capable workforce but also supports global economic stability and development.
Try our BETA PIRLS Simulator 1 and Question Generator.
The next administration of the PIRLS assessment will be in Spring of 2026 and will assess the literacy levels of students in 4th Grade or Year 5 in the British System. The assessment is comprised of an equal mix of questions testing students’ comprehension while reading for information and literacy experience. In addition, 60% of questions will address higher-order thinking skills, while 40% of questions will assess basic recall and evaluation of information.
To support schools, we are excited to roll out our first BETA AI tool to create interactive question sets for your students: an interactive crime-scene investigation (CSI) literary experience.
Bear with us as the instructions are a little tricky. Remember, this is a BETA tool.
First, draft the topic you would like for your question set below. We used “Earth Science” and it generated this CSI experience.
Second, you will see HTML text. Click the copy link and copy this to your notepad (Windows). Then save with your preferred title and as a .html. Ours is test.html. Then go into your files and open. It will appear as an html webpage. The html code can be copied into a microsite for students to explore, as we have done with our sample.
If you would like this to be scored, we recommend completing the activity yourself and then copying the content into a Microsoft or Google form.
Support for instructional coaches
We subscribe to the 70:20:10 learning and development model. 10% of formal learning like training requires double the amount of guided support and 7 times the amount of time in application to be successful.
In schools, instructional coaching is the 20% of guided practice that unlocks the full potential of the 70% of application teachers do in classrooms every day. At Verdant, we've drawn on over two decades of experience coaching educators and training coaches to design practical, research-based tools that make that practice count. Explore our complimentary guide for literacy coaches - designed to support focused, effective, and sustainable improvement in teaching and learning.
Download our guide for literacy coaches.
Insights from the field
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Embracing the long haul of reinventing education
Creative destruction can be seen more easily in industries with lower barriers to change than education — entertainment, for example (the demise of the video store vs. the rise of streaming). Education was ripe for disruption before COVID-19. Emerging technologies supported new platforms for learning and news ways of using data to support learning.
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What matters most in school improvement
We use several frameworks and resources for our work, along with our combined 60+ years of experience: Millions Learning (Brookings Institution); Drivers of Student Performance MENA (McKinsey); Creating Communities of Innovation (Harvard Project Zero); How the World’s Most Improved System’s Keep Getting Better (McKinsey); the Play to Win Strategy (Lafely, et al); elements of design thinking; and a few clips of Mo Saleh playing football.
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Challenging the war for talent
Nevertheless, many internal talent development programs are grounded more in the stability of the past than the ambiguity of the future. For organizations and the people who drive them to thrive in the future, the very idea of talent needs to change. Employee evaluation programs and the talent pools that result are notoriously biased and inaccurate. They are also typically focused on maintaining existing ways of working and limited to a small percentage of top performers.
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My boys were home for spring break recently, and having claimed not to have gamed at all with their friends while at boarding school, they immersed themselves in playing with their friends online. Along with the familiar shouts of excitement from their room came the equally familiar sound of my husband complaining that they game too much. It drives me crazy too sometimes, until I remember that the boys have pretty balanced lives overall.
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Financial literacy: The missing puzzle piece for future entrepreneurs
As a mother and educator, I often find myself reflecting on my children’s futures. I believe in the importance of encouraging them to be entrepreneurial, creative, and innovative. I also want them to learn to be responsible and careful with money. Like many of their friends, my kids could write a Dragons’ Den pitch in their sleep. Their pitch would show their creativity and reasoning skills, as well as their undeniable persuasive powers honed over the years of asking for 10 more minutes of Xbox time. But would they be able to manage investment if they received it?
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We need to talk about second grade.
Over the past academic year, the return to in-person learning has revealed the social and educational limitations of online and hybrid learning. Helping children learn to interact with others again, supporting them as they process trauma, and providing intervention have become the hallmarks of this wave of crisis learning. Second and third-grade students are particularly at risk.