Partnering to Transform Learning
Success in today’s rapidly changing world depends more than ever on students’ ability to think critically and approach challenges with curiosity and collaboration. Skills like innovation, resourcefulness, and systems thinking aren’t “nice to have” anymore, they’ve become essential. Student-centered learning plays a crucial role in building these abilities. When classrooms shift from teacher-directed instruction to environments where students actively engage with content, something amazing happens: students take ownership of their learning. Their sense of agency grows, and so does their long-term success.
But that naturally raises a big question for educators and administrators: How do we know our student-centered practices are actually creating the learning conditions our students need most?
That’s where Empowered’s partner, PERTS (Project for Educational Research That Scales), comes in. Created at Stanford University in 2010 to bridge the gap between student motivation and the day-to-day realities of classroom practice, PERTS builds on the foundational “growth mindset” work of Carol Dweck and others. In 2017, they launched Elevate to help teachers in grades 6–12 create learning conditions that boost student engagement and accelerate learning. Today, Elevate has grown substantially. During the 2023–24 school year, Elevate was implemented by 2,300 educators and 63,000 students in 271 middle and high schools across 94 school districts.
The Impact of Elevate
With Elevate, educators can measure and build classroom learning conditions that catalyze student engagement and improve learning outcomes.
One helpful feature of Elevate is that it focuses exclusively on learning conditions and instructional practices. That means educators teaching diverse subjects find that using Elevate to improve their teaching see meaningful improvements.
- One math teacher using Elevate saw her students earn twice as many As and Bs as the previous year.
- Another teacher reported that average test scores in her Honors Physics class jumped from 77% to 91% after completing just three Elevate cycles.
These aren’t isolated stories. They reflect what happens when students feel seen, heard, and supported in ways that research shows truly matter.
How PERTS Works
Elevate is a three-step continuous improvement program in which educators partner with their students to create classroom learning conditions that increase motivation, accelerate learning, and foster healthy personal development.
STEP 1: Student Survey
PERTS has identified nine learning conditions that boost student engagement and improve learning outcomes. Students complete a short, 5–10 minute online survey focused on one or more of these conditions—things like Classroom Community, Meaningful Work, or Well-Organized Class.
Teachers typically see the greatest overall growth when they complete four cycles, though educators completing a minimum of three cycles see meaningful improvement.
STEP 2: Reflection and Debrief
During this step, PERTS provides educators with self-reflection questions that help them to consider all feedback their students provide, whether that feedback is positive and encouraging, if it indicates displeasure and potential issues, or a mix of both. Educators then conduct an open-discussion debrief during which they encourage students to suggest ways to improve that learning condition or those conditions that were covered in the survey.
This step is incredibly validating for students. Many share that being asked for honest feedback and then actually seeing their teacher respond changes how they view the class.
STEP 3: New Practices
After the conversation, educators choose specific practices to integrate into their teaching. They can pull ideas from PERTS’ resource library or brainstorm strategies directly with students.
Bring PERTS to Your School
For individual teachers and groups of up to ten teachers, Elevate Basic offers a free version to run several student surveys throughout the year, review clear class-level reports, and access PERTS’ self-service portal full of helpful how-to resources. Because Elevate naturally asks educators to be reflective and a bit vulnerable, PERTS encourages teachers to try it alongside at least one colleague. Collaborating in this way strengthens both the experience and the impact on students.
Schools or districts ready for a deeper, more sustained commitment often choose the Comprehensive Elevate Program, which adds tailored training, ongoing coaching, access to a national network, and the guidance of a designated PERTS partnership manager.
PERTS encourages schools to adopt Elevate gradually across three years. As educators experiment with survey cycles, student partnerships, and instructional changes, Elevate becomes a sustainable part of the school’s growth culture—rather than “one more initiative.”
Useful Links
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