We believe every learner deserves to be understood as a developing human being—not simply measured by a single test score. Working alongside teachers, schools, universities, and communities, we investigate how learning actually develops and how educational evidence can improve teaching, assessment, and opportunity for every student.
The SchoolWorks Lab is an independent educational research organization dedicated to understanding how learning develops and how teachers recognize that learning in real classrooms.
Our work combines classroom observation, educational evidence, developmental assessment, and emerging technologies to answer one fundamental question:
How can we better understand learning while it is happening?
Current areas of research include:
Our research is conducted through active pilot schools where teachers help us investigate new approaches under authentic classroom conditions.
Educational innovation cannot happen in a laboratory alone.
It must happen where learning actually occurs.
The SchoolWorks Lab partners with teachers, students, schools, universities, and educational organizations around the world to investigate how better educational evidence can improve teaching and learning.
Current pilot partnerships include:
Together these pilot schools represent diverse learners, educational settings, and teaching practices united by one common purpose:
Helping every learner reach their full potential.
The Pathfinder Research Model is the primary research platform used by The SchoolWorks Lab.
It allows teachers to document classroom evidence, organize observations, analyze patterns of student learning, and contribute to ongoing educational research.
Rather than replacing teacher judgment, Pathfinder helps teachers make their professional observations more visible, more organized, and more useful for improving instruction.
Founder and President
Rob is the visionary leader, driving strategic partnerships, overseeing product development, and ensuring alignment with educational research and versatile intelligence frameworks. He also works with policymakers at national research forums, state departments of education, and legislators in Washington, DC. Southworth is the founder and president of The SchoolWorks Lab (SWL), an education non-profit created in 2002 to provide high-quality research to effect change and improve access, inclusion and equity for every student in K-12 schools.
For more than four decades, I have dedicated my career to one central question:
How do people actually learn?
My work has taken me from the classroom to school leadership, educational consulting, assessment design, research, and educational innovation. Throughout that journey, I have remained convinced that education must move beyond simply measuring what students know to understanding how learning develops and how teachers can intentionally accelerate that growth.
I am the founder and President of The SchoolWorks Lab, Inc., where I lead the development of Pathfinder, a research-informed instructional intelligence system that combines assessment, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and the science of learning to help teachers make better instructional decisions while reducing workload. Pathfinder is built upon our framework of Versatile Intelligence and Assessment (VIA), which views intelligence as dynamic, developmental, and educable rather than as a fixed score.
My current research explores how pattern recognition, representational change, insight (the “A-Ha” moment), memory, and feedback contribute to meaningful learning. I believe that learning is not simply the accumulation of information—it is the continual reorganization of knowledge into increasingly coherent and transferable patterns of understanding. This emerging Theory of Learning serves as the foundation for our work in instructional intelligence, continuous assessment, and AI-supported teaching.
SchoolWorks Lab is currently implementing Pathfinder through pilot programs in the United States, Australia, and India, with additional demonstration sites focused on scalable implementation models. These pilots are designed to answer a practical question that matters to every educator:
Can better evidence about learning help teachers make better decisions, improve student achievement, narrow the achievement gap, and make teaching both more effective and more efficient?
Throughout my career, I have worked with educators, schools, districts, universities, nonprofit organizations, and educational leaders to design systems that improve learning rather than simply document it. I believe that technology should never replace teachers—it should strengthen their professional judgment by providing timely, meaningful insight into student learning.
Today, my work sits at the intersection of educational leadership, cognitive science, assessment, artificial intelligence, and learning research. My goal is to build practical tools grounded in sound research that help teachers understand learning more clearly and help every student reach his or her full potential.
Every intelligence has a path. Our mission is to help educators find it.
Founder and President, The SchoolWorks Lab, Inc.
Rob Southworth is an arts education scholar-practitioner, collaborating with schools, school districts, and community-based organizations. He also works with policymakers at national research forums, state departments of education, and legislators in Washington, DC. Southworth is the founder and president of The SchoolWorks Lab (SWL), an education non-profit created in 2002 to provide high-quality research to effect change and improve access, inclusion and equity for every student in K-12 schools. SWL has been awarded multiple U.S. Department of Education and state funded arts education grants for research and evaluation, totaling $1,245,000. He writes and publishes weekly blogs on school reform, assessment, creativity and arts education issues.
Southworth was a political science and theater major in college. He started his career in education as an apprentice teacher at Shady Hill School in Cambridge, MA, and then taught technical theater and acting at Colorado Academy—producing 9 plays a year. He worked in professional theater at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. When he attended the Experienced Teachers Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he brought the idea of performance assessment with him. Theater had confirmed his belief that experiential learning opportunities, such as the arts, support creativity as students demonstrate what they know and can do. Through his work with the National Center for Restructuring Education Schools and Teaching, and teaching in graduate schools of education, he honed his ability to improve teacher learning. In his role as the Chief Academic Officer for a successful K-3 arts integrated literacy school, he turned his vision – of building teacher capacity to grow and make a difference in the lives of disadvantaged students – into reality.
Chief Academic Officer involved with all aspects of academic planning and operations for The Foundations School, a new K-3 independent school offering small classroom sizes, free tuition (85% of students qualify for free and reduced lunch), and a central focus on arts integration and literacy (opened January 2021).
President and Principal Investigator for research and evaluation projects that provide achievement gap insights useful to policy makers, the field of education, and the general public. SWL provides arts integration program evaluation, assessment, student achievement and teacher professional development services. Major research and evaluation projects include:
New Hampshire Department of Education (2019); NYC Department of Education (2008–09); Theater Communications Group (2006-10); Theatre Museum (2004–06); Empire State Partnerships (2003–09); New York State Council for the Arts (2002-08); San Diego Public Schools – Literacy Institute (2001-03); NYC Community School District 2 (1998–99); School of the Future (1995-2001); Rockefeller Brothers Fund (1996); New York State Education Department (1994-96); and more.
Teachers College, Columbia University, Adjunct Assistant Professor, C&T Depart. (1998-2004)
Bank Street College of Education, Adjunct Professor, Principal’s Institute (1998-2002)
Adelphi University Graduate School of Education, Adjunct Professor, Manhattan Center (1996–99)
Ed.D., Teachers College, Columbia University. Curriculum and Teaching Department. Advisor: Linda Darling-Hammond, Ed.D. Dissertation: Teacher Opinion of Student Assessment (1999)
C.A.S., Harvard Graduate School of Education. Experienced Teachers Program. Advisor: Eleanor Duckworth, Ph.D. (1990)
M.Ed., Tufts University. Masters in Secondary Education (1990)
Massachusetts Teacher Certification. Certification in Social Studies, Grades 7-12 (1983)
Shady Hill School. Teacher Training Program. Apprentice Teacher, Grades 5 & 8 (1983)
A.B., Dartmouth College. Political Science. Academic citations for English and Theater (1981)