The Learning Agenda Playbook, Explained

In September 2026, the U.S. Department of Education released a Learning Agenda Playbook to help state education agencies decide what they need to learn, gather the evidence, and act on it. Here’s what’s in it, why it exists, and what it means for the districts that will be asked to help.

What is the Learning Agenda Playbook?

The playbook was developed by the National Comprehensive Center, part of the federally funded Comprehensive Center Network, with the research firm Westat, and released through the Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. It gives state education agencies a structured way to put their strategic plans into action: choose a small number of priorities, figure out what they don’t yet know, and collect the evidence needed to make decisions about policy and funding.

The playbook describes a learning agenda as an ongoing organizational tool rather than a one-time project. It comes with a facilitator’s guide, a workbook of planning templates, a self-assessment called the Capacity Continuum, discussion guides and slide decks, and case studies from the states that tested it.

It is voluntary. The playbook notes that the Department does not mandate or prescribe the practices it describes.

Why did the Education Department release it now?

The playbook arrives as the Department shrinks its own role. As K-12 Dive reported, the Department has laid off about half its workforce, granted several states waivers from some federal accountability and fiscal requirements, and signed 14 interagency agreements moving program work to six other federal agencies. Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education Kirsten Baesler described the playbook as a way to help states ask and answer their own questions about their strategic goals.

Not everyone is convinced states are ready. Education organizations, civil rights advocates and Democratic lawmakers have raised concerns that states lack the capacity to replace the expertise the federal government provided. Heather Boughton of the Alliance for Learning Innovation noted that most state education agencies don’t have dedicated research and development departments, which makes partnerships with local stakeholders, researchers and other state agencies more important.

Which states piloted it?

Eight states tested the resources over the past year: Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin. Their case studies show how differently the process can be used:

• Idaho focused on student well-being, including mental health, behavior, safety and engagement.
• Georgia focused on retaining special education educators.
• Kansas worked to unify school improvement efforts that had been running as separate silos.
• Wisconsin examined what information it actually had about its four-year-old kindergarten programs.
• Tennessee set out to turn knowledge held by individual staff into a lasting agency asset.
• Arkansas studied its statewide system of support, including its education service cooperatives.
• New Hampshire used the process to inform literacy policy and legislation.
• Utah refined learning questions about supporting school leaders.

What are the six steps?

The playbook recommends a cross-functional team, an outside facilitator (often from a Regional Comprehensive Center or Regional Educational Laboratory), and three to six months to develop an initial learning agenda, with team meetings at least monthly.

Step 1: Align priorities. The team reviews strategic plans, statutory requirements, board and legislative priorities, and performance data, then selects one to three priorities. Candidates are weighed on alignment with policy, potential impact, the agency’s authority to act, urgency, and feasibility.

Step 2: Prepare communication and constituent engagement. The team plans how it will involve staff, boards, legislators, districts, educators and families at each stage. The playbook describes five levels of engagement: inform, consult, validate, co-design and support implementation.

Step 3: Identify key knowledge gaps. The team maps each initiative with a logic model, inventories existing data and evidence, and separates what it knows from what it assumes. Only gaps that affect real decisions move forward.

Step 4: Develop learning questions. Gaps become one to three questions per priority. Good questions are actionable, focused, timely, feasible, comprehensive and relevant, and each must connect to a specific upcoming decision.

Step 5: Implement an action plan. For each question, the team decides how evidence will be gathered — data analysis, implementation reviews, constituent engagement, evaluations or studies — and whether the data already exists or needs to be collected. It assigns owners, timelines and partners, and reviews progress quarterly or at milestones.

Step 6: Accelerate learning into action. Findings inform decisions to fix implementation or to expand, refine or discontinue programs. The team shares what it learned through briefings, public reports and dashboards, and revisits the agenda regularly.

The playbook’s Getting Started guide and step-by-step pages cover each stage in more detail.

What does the playbook mean for school districts?

Districts aren’t the audience for the playbook, but they are central to it. A state can’t answer questions about student well-being, school safety or educator retention without information that districts hold. State agencies working through the process are likely to:

• Ask districts for input on priorities and feedback on draft learning questions
• Request data and examples from the field while they inventory evidence and plan how to fill gaps
• Invite districts to help interpret findings and test changes before they’re rolled out

Districts that can pull consistent, dated records quickly will have more influence over what their state learns and decides.

We cover how to prepare in Is Your District Ready for Your State’s Learning Agenda?

Where does incident and case data fit?

Several of the priorities states are likely to consider — student well-being, safety, discipline, civil rights — depend on records of what was reported in schools and what was done about it. That information often lives in fillable PDFs, spreadsheets and email inboxes, where a district struggles to report on it and a state can’t see it at all. When a learning agenda team inventories its data in Step 3, this is frequently where the gaps show up.

For example learning questions and the district data each one needs, see Student Well-Being Data: What State Learning Agendas Need.

For how states can see patterns across districts without seeing individual students, see State Visibility Into District Incident and Case Data.

Key takeaways

• The Learning Agenda Playbook is a voluntary, six-step process for state education agencies, released in September 2026.
• It helps states pick one to three priorities, identify what they don’t know, and gather evidence to guide policy and funding decisions.
• Eight states piloted it: Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin.
• Initial development typically takes three to six months with an outside facilitator.
• Districts will be asked for input and data, especially when states take on priorities like well-being and safety.

Sources

1. K-12 Dive, “Shrinking Education Department Offers State Decision-Making Playbook”, September 11, 2026
2. Comprehensive Center Network, Learning Agenda Playbook
3. Learning Agenda Playbook, “Getting Started”
4. Learning Agenda Playbook, “Step 1: Align Priorities”
5. Learning Agenda Playbook, “Step 2: Prepare Communication and Constituent Engagement”
6. Learning Agenda Playbook, State Case Studies