Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. High-performing school leaders have a substantial impact on student achievement. Studies that aim to isolate the impact of leaders on student test scores find that moving from a low- to a high-quality principal can mean several additional months of learning. And the impacts are larger for low-income students. But can schools do anything to boost the quality of their school leaders? Or are the traits that lead to better leaders too difficult to predict or develop and the best leaders too hard to retain? To help answer these questions, the Wallace Foundation funded and provided […]

Claire Fiddian-Green is the President & CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. In 2014, more than 1,100 Hoosiers died as a result of drug poisoning – greater than the number of fatalities from car accidents – with prescription opioid misuse and heroin use responsible for a majority of these deaths. In response to the growing crisis, in 2015 the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation established a goal of reducing opioid use disorder, including prescription drug misuse and heroin use. The number of opioid-related overdose deaths continued to climb nationwide in the following years, reaching upwards of 2,400 deaths in Indiana alone. In 2017, the opioid crisis was formally declared a […]