We’ve helped 17 states and counting transform their education systems

There’s no shortage of smart people or programs in education. So why is it so hard to make progress on the most pressing challenges?

Those of us who’ve worked at the state level know it’s one thing to have a good idea; it’s another thing to turn that idea into tangible results for students everywhere. Too often a program works at a school or district but never expands to the whole state, or a game-changing policy gets snagged in the thicket of implementation before reaching classrooms.

At Watershed Advisors, we support you from vision through implementation so you can materially improve the lives of kids.

Watershed Impact in Action

Unifying Early Childhood Education

We’ve helped five governors across the country provide unified early childhood care and education to make it easier for families and providers in their states to find one another, dramatically increasing the number of kids nationwide who have access to fully funded early childhood education.

Boosting Early Literacy

 In Virginia, we served as an embedded partner with the University of Virginia and the Virginia Department of Education to increase the number of K-3 students who are proficient readers.

Streamlining State Education Grantmaking

As state leaders in Louisiana, we simplified the state’s planning and budgeting processes into one “Super App,” which drove faster adoption of state instructional priorities. Now, we’re helping Arkansas and New Mexico do the same thing.

Building Workforce Pathways

In Missouri and Texas, we helped the nonprofit RootEd Alliance place college and career counselors in rural high schools and increase community college enrollment by more than 10% statewide.

Scaling High-Impact Tutoring Programs

Our team helped launch and grow Accelerate, a nonprofit dedicated to making high-dosage tutoring available to kids nationally, during the school day. Accelerate’s grantees are supporting more than 65,000 kids in over 30 states.

Case Studies

BRINGING GOOD IDEAS TO LIFE

Good ideas almost never scale within the massive and fragmented American child care, education, and workforce systems. In order to find their way to the communities and families who need them, good ideas need an advocate within the system, someone who knows the system and understands how it can work to bring good ideas to life.