Learning Heroes

A research-and-advocacy nonprofit focused on closing the gap between what parents perceive about their child's academic progress and what assessment data actually shows. Conducts national survey research, runs multi-city parent-engagement campaigns, and partners with state and district report-card redesign efforts. Their core thesis — parents systematically over-trust grades and under-trust standardized scores — anchors the perception gap framing.

Key research

  • B-flation: How Good Grades Can Sideline Parents (with Gallup, Nov 2023) — the canonical statement of the perception gap. See source page.
  • The Engagement Advantage (with TNTP, March 2026) — schools with stronger pre-pandemic family engagement had lower chronic absenteeism and higher academic performance post-pandemic.
  • Centering Families in the Future of Education (Oct 2025) — ten-year synthesis.
  • The Parent Journey (May 2023) — parents of children with learning differences.
  • The Teacher & Principal Lens (Oct 2024, NeuroEquity Research Collaborative).

Campaigns

  • Go Beyond Grades — multi-city parent-engagement campaign run in NYC, Chicago, Houston, Sacramento County, and Tarrant County. Designed to translate the perception-gap research into local action.

Notable partnerships

  • Gallup — survey research partner.
  • National PTA — see National PTA entity page. Both organizations also partner with Smarter Balanced on parent reporting research, making PTA a hub.
  • HCM Strategists — multi-state report-card redesign partnership across South Dakota, Texas, New Mexico, and Massachusetts (plus additional states via CCSSO technical assistance). See case study source.
  • TNTP, UnidosUS, Univision, National Urban League, The Wallace Foundation, Understood.org, Overdeck Family Foundation.

Tools and frameworks

Parent-Teacher Planning Tool, Puzzle to Plan Family Worksheet, Learning Differences Playbook, Out-of-School Time Playbook, plus campaign-specific communication toolkits.

Follow-ups

  • Deeper ingest of the individual research artifacts (Engagement Advantage, Centering Families, Parent Journey, Teacher & Principal Lens) if they become focal.
  • Whether the UnidosUS and Univision partnerships involve bilingual / non-English achievement reporting specifically. (The HCM/Edge multi-state report-card research did not address bilingual reporting; the SBAC × PTA 2022 study did include a Spanish-speaking focus group but did not segment results.)
  • Whether Learning Heroes has published any direct follow-up evaluating uptake or comprehension outcomes from the HCM-partnered state report cards.