Site Launch: New EducationSector.org at the Top of Its Class

The smell of a freshly-sharpened pencil. The untouched page of a wide-ruled notebook. The click of a lunchbox.

Don't you ever miss school?

Though many of us look back on school fondly, the current United States education system is facing a multitude of challenges. Education Sector places a high value on the institution of education and the relevance of the classroom.

It works to ensure that education policies are brought to the forefront of the nation’s radar and provides innovative solutions to some of the most pressing educational problems. It is the one independent think tank that diligently works to improve and increase educational opportunities for students of all ages. Through this mission, Education Sector has established its expertise in key issue areas — including educational choice, human capital, K-12 accountability, and higher education — and has gained credibility as an independent leader in the field, and on Capital Hill.

Two weeks ago, with the help of Forum One Communications, an entirely refreshed version of EducationSector.org was launched.

The team at Education Sector wanted the newly-designed site to be a more modern tool that would make information easier to consume and exhibit their work in a visually appealing manner. Furthermore, they wanted to encourage their audiences to return by delivering more dynamic content and keeping them engaged and interested while on the site. The site is designed primarily for policymakers who follow the latest dialogue within the realm of Education, but also caters to broader audiences such as students, teachers, and parents who wish to be informed on the latest educational policies, trends, and issues.

As for the site itself, the new EducationSector.org has been enhanced dramatically since its creation in 2005. The navigation and page layouts have been simplified for making content easier to find, while also decreasing the site’s verbiage for a cleaner look and feel.  

Information throughout the site has been organized and grouped within tabbed filters, so that Education Sector’s reports, commentary, and, most notably, Charts You Can Trust, can be searched for and browsed effortlessly. Charts You Can Trust is a new feature to Education Sector, allowing users to look up data by issue of interest or through a key word search.

Forum One successfully migrated all of the content from the former CMS, Orgitecture, to the new Drupal instance.

Education Sector was designed with an intuitive interface enhancing the exemplary content. Contrasting their cool corporate color palette of blue and teal, Forum One incorporated warmer hues giving the site a more inviting personality, and making links and buttons more noticeable. The token trademark of the new site is the organization’s favorite symbol, a red apple, found on the home page above the primary navigation.

The Drupal content management system serves as the technological underpinnings of the site. There are many benefits to this open-source platform, including enabling publications to be appropriately tagged with related issues, and allowing for articles to live in multiple places. For example, a post about higher education that appears on an expert's page will also show up on a publication or report detail page discussing higher education. This helps users discover related content, even if they didn't know they were searching for it.

Drupal has the capacity to also allow for the integration of Education Sector’s Quick and the Ed blog, set up on WordPress, an easy-to-use blogging platform. In the next few week, look out for the launch of their updated blog, which is simultaneously being enhanced to match the new redesign.

Take a look at the site, bookmark it, and check back regularly for the latest developments in education. Since many of us harbor those fond memories of the classroom, we should value the experience for future generations and stay involved and informed on current and emerging issues in Education.

Sarah Hassaine contributed substantially to this blog post.