EL Education was born out of a collaboration between The Harvard Graduate School of Education and Outward Bound USA. What started as a concept has grown into a movement. Our mission, now as then, is to create classrooms where teachers can fulfill their highest aspirations and students achieve more than they think possible, becoming active contributors to building a better world.
Five years after the publication of Leaders of Their Own Learning, EL Education is back with a new companion guide to help you tackle the common challenges of student-engaged assessment. This unique, student-centered approach to assessment equips and compels students to understand goals for their learning and growth, track their progress toward those goals, and take responsibility for reaching them.
Purchase BookEL Education announced the release of the second edition of EL Education’s 6-8 Language Arts curriculum, available for the 2020-21 school year. Like the first edition that EL Education authored for EngageNY, the second edition is the result of deep collaboration with teachers, students, and literacy experts.
A rigorous evaluation of the Teacher Potential Project by Mathematica Policy Research finds that higher student literacy achievement results from combining EL Education’s top-rated English Language Arts curriculum with actionable professional learning for teachers.
Your Curriculum Companion explores the foundations of the EL Education K–5 Language Arts Curriculum curriculum, including the principles and research it was built on and the instructional practices that make it unique. The book is designed to help teachers “look under the hood” at practices embedded throughout the curriculum.
Purchase bookEL Education’s open-source literacy curriculum is downloaded more than 8.7 million times across 44 states. A new K-5 edition is released in collaboration with Open Up Resources.
In his book Helping Children Succeed, author Paul Tough describes two schools in the EL Education network—Polaris Charter Academy in Chicago and Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School (WHEELS) in New York City (part of the NYC Outward Bound Schools network)—as places where the environment and experience of school builds character and cultivates success for all students.
View StoryIn its first-ever review of English Language Arts curriculum, EdReports.org (EdReports), a national nonprofit that independently reviews instructional materials, gave the middle school curriculum created by EL Education a nearly perfect score.
Learning that Lasts presents an accessible new vision for classroom instruction that sharpens and deepens the quality of student learning. The book shares what works in some of the nation’s most successful public schools— EL Education schools that are beating the odds to create remarkable achievement—located primarily in urban and rural low-income communities.
Purchase BookEL Education’s open-source Grades 3 through 8 English Language Arts curriculum is downloaded more than 4 million times. It receives the highest ratings by EQuiP (Educators Evaluating the Quality of Instructional Products) and the States of Connecticut and Washington. The curriculum is now used in 39 states and the District of Columbia.
View Curriculum
Using exemplars has long been a cornerstone practice of EL Education’s work and so EL adopts the new name to clearly describe what the site contains and promotes. It also correlates directly with the "High-Quality Student Work" Dimension of Student Achievement.
Launch the siteDenver Public School District chooses EL as a partner to provide the curriculum for grades 4 through 8 in 2015-16. The district uses EL Education’s ELA Common Core curriculum for approximately 18,000 students and EL's professional learning for more than 600 teachers and administrators.
Expeditionary Learning launches its new name, “EL Education.”
EL makes its signature practices available through the release of a bestselling book, Leaders of Their Own Learning:Transforming Schools Through Student-Engaged Assessment. More than two dozen teachers contributed to the book, which includes case studies and classroom videos of the practices in action.
Purchase Book
Shortly thereafter, EL releases Transformational Literacy , a great companion to EL's grades 3-8 ELA curriculum that deepens understanding about the Common Core instructional shifts, curriculum decisions, and includes videos to support teachers’ learning.
Purchase bookEL Education’s school network comprises more than 150 schools in 33 states, serving 4,000 teachers and 53,000 students. EL Education expands beyond its school network to offer professional development to school districts nationally, focusing on literacy and assessment.
U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama joins an EL high school in Washington, D.C. for its College March to the post office, an annual EL tradition for high school seniors to mail college applications and for younger students, school communities, and families to celebrate their progress.
U.S. President Barack Obama recognizes Washington Heights, New York’s EL Education school student Estiven Rodriguez, in his State of the Union Address. He spotlights EL’s “great teachers” and the school’s College March .
New York City recommends EL Education's English Language Arts curriculum for selection by principals across the city in Grades 3 through 8.
EL Education is awarded a $12 million Investing in Innovation grant from the federal government to demonstrate a nationally scalable model of professional learning for teachers.
In a statistically significant study, Mathematica Policy Research finds that EL middle school students gain an additional ten months of learning growth in math and seven months in reading after three years.
New York State commissions EL Education to develop a model Common Core-aligned, open-source curriculum for English Language Arts and Literacy in Grades 3 through 8.
In collaboration with Harvard University, EL Education launches the Center for Student Work (now known as Models of Excellence), the world's largest online, open-source collection of exemplary student work.
Launch The Site
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visits King Middle School in Portland, Maine, and spotlights an EL program in which students tackle 8- to 10-week field projects. Duncan remarks, “Expeditionary Learning is how kids want to learn.”
View StoryIn 10 new EL high schools, 100% of graduating seniors receive college acceptance letters.
U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama visit Capital City Public Charter School in Washington, D.C. The President remarks that EL’s focus on college- and career-readiness represents “how our schools should be.”
View Story
EL partners with districts and charter boards to open new college-preparatory high schools in low-income communities, using start-up professional development funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
American Youth Policy Forum finds that EL Education ranks in the highest tier for service-learning among 28 national school models; key elements include “students applying their knowledge and skills to real life projects,” and “developing students’ civic skills.” The National Staff Development Council identifies EL as the only program of 26 studied to meet all 27 standards for high quality professional development.
EL builds a new approach based on focused literacy instruction, working with Denver’s Public Education &
Business Coalition and other national experts to support schools within and beyond the network.
A Rand Corporation study shows that EL schools implement the model “deeply and with fidelity.” The study suggests that EL's strong structures enable it to scale its model for learning across the country.
View Study
New American Schools funding ends, and EL’s partnerships are contracted directly through districts and schools.
New American Schools renews EL’s funding, and 10 EL schools open in New York City, Boston, Portland (ME), Denver, and Dubuque.
The Harvard Graduate School of Education joins Outward Bound USA to create a new model of schooling: Expeditionary Learning. The EL model receives start-up funding by the New American Schools federal initiative. Only the top 1% of proposals received funding.
