; (2) partnership with a local educational agency, a consortium of local educational agencies, or Tribal educational agencies; (3) an assurance from school leaders to making reforms and activities proposed by the applicant a priority; (4) ways to address critical transitions, such as middle school to high school, high school to college, and school to internships and jobs; (5) input from education researchers and cognitive scientists, as well as practitioners in research and industry, so that what is being taught is up-to-date in terms of content and pedagogy; (6) a communications strategy for early conversations with parents, school leaders, school boards, community members, employers, and other stakeholders; and (7) resources for parents, school leaders, school boards, community members, and other stakeholders to build skills in modeling and analytics. (f) Use of funds An entity that receives an award under this section shall use the award for research and development activities to advance innovative approaches to support and sustain high-quality mathematical modeling education in public schools, private schools (including faith-based schools), or homeschools, including statistical modeling, data science, operations research, and computational thinking, which may include— (1) engaging prekindergarten through grade 12 educators in professional learning opportunities to enhance mathematical modeling and statistical problem solving knowledge, and developing training and best practices to provide more interdisciplinary learning opportunities; (2) conducting research on curricula and teaching practices that empower students to choose the mathematical, statistical, computational, and technological tools that they will apply to a problem, as is required in life and the workplace, rather than prescribing a particular approach or method; (3) providing students with opportunities to explore and analyze real data sets from contexts that are meaningful to the students, which may include— (A) missing or incorrect values