Research
Five institutions. One consistent finding.
Independent research from Brookings, the Wallace Foundation, Chiefs for Change, and Education Resource Strategies has documented the same organizational conditions for years. ISEE was built to measure them daily.
Source documents
What the research confirms.
These institutions spent years documenting the same organizational conditions. ISEE does not replicate this research. We built a diagnostic instrument around the conditions it identified.
Chiefs for Change, 2023
79% of superintendents say their jobs are often or always stressful. Political intrusion is the leading source. There has been nearly complete turnover in the superintendency in urban America since the pandemic.
Read the report ↗Wallace Foundation
71% of superintendents believe the superintendency is in a state of crisis. Nearly seven in ten say their boards interfere where they should not. Two-thirds believe boards would rather hire a superintendent they can control.
Read the report ↗A.J. Crabill, Council of the Great City Schools
Every superintendent contract should include an independent executive coach, someone outside the chain of command who can provide an outside third-party voice, helping them get clear about what is working and what is not.
Read the full interview ↗Brookings Institution, 2022
Too often, districts look for simple technical solutions to complex adaptive problems. Districts cannot focus only on academics and ignore the organizational conditions that determine whether any strategy actually works.
Read the article ↗Education Resource Strategies
New superintendents must understand how resources are currently allocated and whether that reflects the district's actual values and strategy, then identify the shifts that have the best potential to improve student outcomes.
Read the toolkit ↗What this means for ISEE
These sources validate the conditions STELAR measures, not STELAR itself. The conditions STELAR measures are the conditions the research says matter most. Outcome validation begins with the first pilot engagement.
Schedule a strategy call ↗STELAR validation map
The research confirms this is the problem. STELAR is what we built to measure it.
Each STELAR dimension maps directly to conditions documented by independent research institutions. The alignment is a finding about parallel discovery, not institutional endorsement.
Ethical framing
ISEE cites this research accurately and draws the connection between documented conditions and our diagnostic instrument. We do not claim these institutions endorse ISEE. We do not claim the research validates STELAR against student outcomes. What we can say, and it is enough, is that the conditions STELAR measures are the conditions the research says matter most.
How to use this in a conversation
If a superintendent asks how we know STELAR works, the honest answer is: the six conditions STELAR measures have been independently documented by Brookings, Wallace, ERS, and Chiefs for Change. We built a daily measurement instrument around those same conditions. The first pilot is where we begin building outcome validation.