We use data and analysis to understand your outcomes, and reverse-engineer them back to the policies, practices, and choices that produced them — so you can make real change.
Our clients are governments, agencies, and mission-driven organizations that own the consequences of the policies they write — and need independent analysis to make a defensible decision.
If a policy consistently produces a certain distribution of results — who benefits, who is missed, at what cost — that pattern is a description of what the policy actually is, not a departure from it. The gap between stated intent and observed outcome is where the real design lives.
Our work begins from the outcomes and walks backward. What components of the system — rules, formulas, incentives, defaults, discretion — combine to produce the results you see? Which ones are load-bearing? Which ones would change the output if they moved?
Complex policy problems persist not because leaders are indifferent, but because the way the problem is framed rarely matches the way it is experienced on the ground. Statewide averages, broad strategies, and competitive grant programs often reach the system as a whole while bypassing the specific districts, schools, and populations that generated the concern in the first place.
The Components Approach changes the unit of analysis. Instead of managing a headline problem, we decompose it into distinct, measurable sub-problems — each one a component that names who is affected, where in the system the inequity occurs, what policy or practice drives it, and what action can address it.
Grounded in a pattern that recurs across records or outcomes, not a one-off observation.
Names a specific population and locates the problem in a specific part of the system.
Maps to at least one policy or program lever that could plausibly change the condition.
Implies a trackable metric that would change if the condition improved.
Traditional finding: "There are disparities in access to advanced coursework."
Component-based finding: Students at one campus enroll in AP courses at a rate 23 points lower than at another. The largest gaps are among Black male students and English learners. The primary driver is a scheduling structure that limits AP access to students who completed specific prerequisite sequences — a gatekeeping mechanism not present at the comparison campus.
Decomposition is not an academic exercise. It is how we make a complex problem workable — so leadership can see which parts of the system are load-bearing, which metrics reveal whether conditions are changing, and what sequence of actions is most likely to move the outcome.
Policy systems share the same underlying anatomy: eligibility, allocation, accountability, discretion, enforcement. The vocabulary changes; the analytical method does not.
K–12 finance and accountability, educator workforce, access and completion, multilingual learners, special education, early childhood.
Zoning, subsidy formulas, tenant protections, siting decisions, and the composition of who ends up housed.
Investment allocation, mode share, access to opportunity, fare and pricing structures, and safety outcomes.
Permitting, pollution standards, resilience funding, and the distribution of exposure and remediation.
Eligibility and enrollment design, provider payment, and the on-the-ground experience of accessing a benefit.
Program integrity, procurement, permitting, and other administrative systems that quietly shape every downstream outcome.
Every engagement produces a sequenced action roadmap — not a shelf report — that tells leadership what to address, when, and how.
Comprehensive equity audits for school districts and public systems, using the SDS Triangle framework to disaggregate data and identify the systemic drivers of disparities.
Qualitative and quantitative policy research for agencies, foundations, and evaluators — from large-scale data analysis to stakeholder engagement.
Component-based strategic plans for public agencies, with theory-of-change development, logic models, and metrics-informed program portfolio reviews.
Hands-on guidance through the messy middle of implementation, with readiness assessments, structured review cadence, and coaching.
The Components Approach is domain-agnostic — it structures how we break any complex policy problem into workable parts. When the problem is educational inequality specifically, we use the Segregation · Discrimination · Signaling framework — developed by Dr. Etai Mizrav in peer-reviewed research (Educational Policy, 2023) — as the diagnostic lens that reveals which components a district's inequality is actually made of.
Mizrav, E. (2023). Segregate, Discriminate, Signal: A Model for Understanding Policy Drivers of Educational Inequality. Educational Policy, 37(2), 554–581.
Metrics-informed, component-based strategy to address teacher shortages. Analyzed shortages at the local level, identified schools and subjects most affected, and built evidence-collection tools for MDE staff to target interventions.
Transformed how the agency allocates resources and measures success on educator workforce — from activity-based reporting to outcome-based measurement with targeted, geography-aware interventions.
Full district-wide equity audits (PI-led) using the SDS Triangle framework, producing sequenced roadmaps that name the specific policies and practices producing disparities.
Founder · Policy Components
Etai is a researcher, professor, and consultant working at the intersection of policy implementation, public policy, education policy, and inequality. Policy Components is the practice he founded to bring the Components Approach to public agencies — a methodology for breaking complex, persistent policy problems into distinct, measurable sub-problems that can actually be managed. Every project we take on, in every domain we work in, runs through that lens.
He teaches at Northeastern University, has worked with school districts and government offices across the country, and has partnered with state and international agencies on the technical aspects of policy implementation. He has developed a range of data tools and analytic frameworks used by public systems, and is a frequent presenter at national conferences and policy forums.
Prior to founding Policy Components, Etai served as Manager of Policy at the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), and has since supported governments — U.S. and international — on the implementation questions that determine whether a policy actually reaches the people it was designed to help.
"We have personally seen the transformation of our agency leaders as they use the Policy Components tools in their work."
"It was so nice to have such experienced consultants working on this. They are really very knowledgeable as well as thoughtful about how to push the thinking forward on equity issues. They also mentored our team through the project, pushing our thinking and helping us to be better."
Everything we publish serves the same purpose: making the components behind a policy problem legible so leaders can act on them. Below, the peer-reviewed models and public tools alongside short essays written from active engagements.
Peer-reviewed model for understanding the policy drivers of educational inequality.
Read →AIRExcel-based diagnostic used by dozens of states and districts to identify diversity gaps across the educator career continuum.
Read →Flipping the readiness paradigm: designing programs that can succeed in the highest-need schools, rather than requiring schools to be ready for programs.
Available on requestWith Dan Goldhaber. Simulation evidence on how progression through the teacher pipeline affects workforce diversity.
Available on requestApplied use of the SDS Triangle to identify systemic drivers of inequality across state and district contexts.
Available on requestIf you want different results, the place to start is understanding the components that produce the ones you have. We help organizations trace outcomes back to the policies, practices, and choices behind them — and figure out what to adjust. A short note about the result you want to change, the people you're trying to reach, and your rough timeline is enough to begin.
Washington, D.C. Open for work across the United States and internationally.