About Education First Consulting
Education First
is a mission-driven education consultancy partnering with funders and system leaders in all 50 states to turn innovation into impact. We know that making progress in public education is hard. We also know it’s possible–because we’ve made it happen.
Education First exists to help education funders and system leaders turn innovation into impact for educators and students, especially those furthest from opportunity. For more than 20 years, we’ve built coherence, capacity and trust with our partners to advance their ideas, investments and policies.
Insight and ideas are essential, but they are not enough. We understand the opportunities and obstacles that grantmakers and education leaders navigate daily. We create vetted solutions that can survive leadership transitions, funding cycles and political shifts.
Our approach is different from other consultants:
We build our clients’ capacity to solve the most-pressing challenges in public education.
Our team are education experts who blend superior analysis, project management and facilitation to develop strategies that create clarity and coherence out of complexity.
As a result, the solutions we co-design are usable, durable and owned by those who must carry them forward.
Our Equity Commitment
We recognize that in order to pursue our own organizational mission at Education First, we must approach our work by studying gaps and inequities, asking tough questions about structural racism and more deliberately engaging diverse voices in problem-solving. We’ve been building our own skills to deliver solutions that center racial equity, with particular attention to equitable ways of thinking and working, and we are committed to helping our clients do the same in projects that have a goal of increasing equity at their core. Within Education First, we have committed to building a race equity culture – creating the conditions to adopt antiracist mindsets and actions.
We believe:
Black lives matter
. We are collectively responsible to amplify and support Black students, families and leaders.
People are experts in their own experience
. We cannot effectively support our clients to problem solve and innovate without centering the people they aim to serve.
Racism and inequity were designed, and can be redesigned
. People make up the systems, policies and processes that govern our experience, and we must support our clients to explore their role in reimagining what could be possible.
For greater detail about our Equity Commitment, please visit our
website
.
Education First actively engages our team with a robust
Race, Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (RIDE)
strategy to build our staff and organizational capacity to lead on issues of equity and to increase diversity, equity and inclusion at all levels of the firm. As a proud equal opportunity employer, we strongly encourage applications from candidates of all races, national origins, ages, religions, creeds, veteran or disabled statuses, sexual orientations, gender identities or gender expressions.