Substrate Map.
The topographical view of K-12. The five interventions A-E live on the /advocacy/k12 hub; this page shows the full landscape they sit within. 64 substrates across 7 families, at policy-design granularity. The 10 causal-bottleneck substrates — the upstream layers that determine whether every later argument is sane or distorted — are flagged with the accent border and the star marker.
Each substrate links forward to the intervention(s) currently engaging it (chips A-E). Substrates with no current intervention are open candidates for Phase 2 K-12 expansion.
The most important pre-political substrates are not the most visible ones. They are the ones that determine whether every later argument is sane or distorted.
The 10 bottleneck substrates in priority order. Each one is a prime intervention target for substrate-engineering advocacy. Everything else is downstream.
- (01)Construct substrate — What the system believes it is measuring: learning, growth, readiness, safety, equity.
- (02)Validity substrate — Rules for which interpretations are justified from which measures.
- (03)Data-quality substrate — Accuracy, completeness, timeliness, and auditability of records.
- (04)Opportunity-to-learn substrate — Whether students had access to the resources needed to meet expectations.
- (05)Metric-use substrate — Which metrics are allowed for diagnosis, transparency, accountability, funding, sanction.
- (06)Funding-formula substrate — How money flows to districts and schools.
- (07)Decision-rights substrate — Authority over curriculum, staffing, budget, discipline, scheduling, intervention.
- (08)Teacher-pipeline substrate — Recruitment, preparation, licensure, induction.
- (09)Curriculum substrate — What content is taught and in what sequence.
- (10)Implementation substrate — The system's ability to turn policy into practice.
Showing all 64 substrates across 7 families. Bottleneck flag = ★ + accent border.
Each intervention engages multiple substrates. Each substrate may be engaged by multiple interventions. The table inverts the per-substrate view — useful for verifying that the intervention portfolio collectively reaches the bottleneck layers.
The 10 causal-bottleneck substrates are the candidate intervention surfaces for Phase 2 K-12 expansion. Several are already partially engaged by the launch interventions A-E; others (decision rights, implementation capacity, teacher pipeline, funding formula) are open.
If you have a substrate-level intervention proposal targeting one of the bottlenecks above, the contribution queue is the intake. The structured submission form supports intervention proposals.
Submit a substrate to engage →