Norwalk Public Schools understands that a teaching and learning culture should permeate every facet of a school district’s operations, extending from the superintendent’s office and academic core priorities to the individual classrooms. We customized a social and emotional development strategic plan, that is the unifying force that brings together district priorities, influencing central office staff, school leaders, teachers, students, and families alike.
OSSE’s strategic plan is clear: foster student and staff well being. We are building OSSE’s social and emotional learning standards as the underpinning to their future implementation plan. This is largely premised on EduSolve’s SCAN Analysis Report, commissioned by OSSE to organize community assets and honor the needs of youth across the City. Through this process, various collaborative efforts were conducted; including writing groups, focus groups, in-person and virtual feedback engagements, and a survey.
Hopkinton Public Schools, with a diverse student population, recognized the need to enhance their Social Emotional Learning (SEL) initiatives to better meet students’ holistic developmental needs. The primary challenge was to integrate SEL more deeply into the academic framework to promote both emotional well-being and academic success. The district faced issues with inconsistent SEL practices across schools, insufficient training for staff, and a lack of alignment with the academic goals.
EduSolve conducted a comprehensive review of existing SEL programs, gathering data through assessments, surveys, and direct observations. Working with the district team, we identified gaps in SEL curriculum alignment and inconsistencies in program delivery which were impacting student engagement and wellness.
Our team of national SEL experts conducted walkthroughs in schools, engaging with teachers and administrators to understand on-ground realities and challenges. The team evaluated the current training programs for staff, identifying areas for enhancement to support effective SEL implementation.
The project team created a phased implementation plan, ensuring that recommendations align with the district’s strategic goals and are feasible within the operational constraints. Following the implementation of the recommended strategies, Hopkinton Public Schools observed significant improvements:
The partnership between Hopkinton Public Schools and EduSolve, LLC successfully enhanced the SEL framework, demonstrating the profound impact of strategic planning and targeted interventions on student development. This case study underscores the importance of a holistic approach to education, where academic success is intertwined with social and emotional well-being.
We are getting ready for two seasons: holiday season and budget season. In both instances, superintendents, cabinet members and board members can take time to reflect on what has worked in the immediate past and what needs to be adjusted.
The final fiscal year of ESSER invites us to do this by crafting a compelling vision for well-resourced schools with improved efficiencies. There are some predictable trends in this invitation to adjust, based on our results and the system’s response to the influx of these resources.
More often than not when the K12 system receives additional funding, it responds by spending that money on labor: new positions, new support roles, and increased compensation (including, as we saw, retention bonuses). We see this investment show up across school district strategic plans.
In 2023, we conducted a national scan of large urban school districts and found labor initiatives as second only to instructional interventions in over 80% of these plans. As pressure increases, districts also put funds into “promising practices” or innovative approaches intended to make things easier or improve performance.
During the pandemic, these practices included facility upgrades, new technologies, social and emotional learning activities, and high-quality instructional materials. Each of these expenditures needs to be tested using the Learning on Investment (LOI) measure.
We offer these suggestions, based on our work with dozens of states and school systems:
In the wake of ESSER closeout, the need to improve efficiency will certainly be painful. This is a normal cycle of rebalancing similar to the one many of us experienced when the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act expired. Resilient school systems are those that adapt, innovate and become agile enough to overcome challenges. We think though that this cycle is exacerbated by the acuteness of student learning loss and the growing threat of the teacher shortage. The latter is an opportunity to prepare for another season: hiring. In the coming months, we will spotlight how states and districts are thinking about recruitment and retention in compelling ways and getting results.
Remember the adage, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” If you oversee resource allocation, now is the time to admire the view from the cliff and find a safe path down to the valley, not step off.
Dr. Dana Godek is a seasoned expert in educational policy, social wellness, and community engagement. Her extensive career encompasses roles as a teacher, public school administrator, national researcher, and leader in federal and state policy. In her current role as the CEO of EduSolve, she applies her wealth of experience tackling intricate educational challenges in collaboration with local communities. Dana is a dedicated policy advisor to the Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning and serves as a Data Currency Advisor to Credential Engine. She has contributed her expertise as a board member of the National Association for Federal and State Program Administrators and is a sought-after keynote speaker on matters related to federal investment in public education. Dana holds a doctorate in organizational leadership with a specialization in public policy and is a certified fundraising executive.
Michael Moore has been a national leadership and organizational development consultant and executive coach for 20 years, following a successful career as a high school principal and Superintendent of Schools. He works in school districts with ‘Directors and above’ to prioritize strategy, manage change, and build organizational capacity. As an expert in principal supervision and development, Michael co-designs culturally responsive, job-embedded leadership pathways and support models. As an expert in talent strategy and team building, he coaches executives and their teams across a wide range of organizations. Michael is a partner at the Urban Schools Human Capital Academy and works frequently with the Partnership for Leaders in Education at the UVA Darden School of Business.
Americans gain an average of eight pounds over the holidays each year. Before you switch over to a fad diet, consider a bigger weight loss goal: $122 billion. Since the beginning of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) we have been warning that when FY24 arrived, executive leadership teams would need to be ready to shed initiatives they can’t sustain and report on their Return on Investment (ROI). Teams also need to maintain those initiatives that produce Learning on Investment (LOI).
As we travel the country, we’ve been increasingly worried that superintendents and boards are waiting too long to confront the upcoming fiscal cliff. The reporting season is here, as the U.S. Department of Education just released financial reporting dates as early as March 2024 for all states.
Chief financial officers and Grants Administration leaders have been patching budgets with one-time fixes as schools returned from pandemic disruptions. Year-to-year, short-term solutions are not only causing the avoidance of hard decisions about the loss of ESSER funds but, we’d argue, they are also masking deeper, longer-term crises such as declining student enrollment, an educator workforce that is too large to sustain, and instructional offerings that are too diffuse to close learning gaps. It’s like going on a fad diet rather than making the necessary lifestyle changes.
Like getting to a healthy and sustainable weight, you’ll need to adjust both your intake and your level of activity. Communicating a compelling vision of success shared with a wide range of stakeholders will ensure better results, more satisfied families and educators, and predictable fiscal planning.
ROI is a financial metric used to evaluate the profitability or efficiency of an investment relative to its cost. ROI is measured by dividing a company’s net profit by its initial investment and then multiplying the result by 100 to express the ratio as a percentage. But how to measure learning on investment (LOI)?
An LOI measure divides net student learning gains by the investment needed to generate that gain. This is a versatile process that can be applied to various scenarios, such as evaluating the performance of academic interventions, assessing the effectiveness of training programs, or comparing curricula. It guides decision-makers as they allocate resources effectively and informs choices about where to invest time, money and effort. It also identifies initiatives that need to be strategically shed to make room for fresh approaches based on the current needs of students, families and our workforce.
“Public services”— road maintenance, public safety and K12 education, for example—don’t have a “profit motive.” That absence makes it challenging but not impossible to measure the effectiveness of a public service. Historically, a particular public service will expand in scale or scope in response to political pressure and will be reduced or constrained when resources (usually tax dollars) are limited.
This push-pull dynamic can be seen as a back-and-forth between resiliency and efficiency. Resiliency in this context is the ability to respond quickly to things that aren’t predictable, such as post-pandemic student learning loss. Efficiency is simply getting the “most bang for the buck” in the most expedient ways.
There’s a negative correlation between resiliency and efficiency: when one goes up, the other goes down. Think of restaurants: they plan for efficiency, but customer volume is unpredictable and some diners want changes to what’s on the menu. School systems are facing similar changes with volume (enrollments) and modifications (requests for new services such as intervention and student well-being). That’s the challenge presented by the fiscal cliff.
ESSER was intended to improve the resiliency of K12 operations, providing for 1:1 technology, increased staffing, facility upgrades, and innovative methods and materials. The narrative of ESSER’s expiration is: “We gave you additional resources to help you through the pandemic and return to school. These resources improved your resiliency but reduced your efficiency. That’s not sustainable. Now we need you to continue moving toward a ‘new normal’ by improving your efficiency and to do that, we need to reduce your resilience.”
While CFOs and federal programs directors have done a good job guiding districts through the last three years of budget tailoring, now it’s time for superintendents, cabinet members and board members to take a longer-term, strategic approach to ensure that only the most effective strategies—those with the strongest LOI—are retained as resiliency is drained from the system.
Researchers of corporate governance refer to this as “repositioning the core” of the business. LOI is not as clear-cut as ROI. Superintendents are subjected to more public scrutiny and political pressure than corporate CEOs. As such, it’s important to design a comprehensive decision-making model, maximize appropriate stakeholder engagement, push for data-driven decisions, prioritize equity, and communicate a clear and compelling vision of the future emphasizing the investment, not the reductions.
This will test even the most experienced superintendents. In our next article, we will offer practical, actionable ideas on how to get this done. But, before you stop eating all carbs, push your team to show the data wins for each initiative. It will become very clear quickly: If you can’t put it on a scale, it’s going to derail the weight loss.
Dr. Dana Godek is a seasoned expert in educational policy, social wellness, and community engagement. Her extensive career encompasses roles as a teacher, public school administrator, national researcher, and leader in federal and state policy. In her current role as the CEO of EduSolve, she applies her wealth of experience tackling intricate educational challenges in collaboration with local communities. Dana is a dedicated policy advisor to the Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning and serves as a Data Currency Advisor to Credential Engine. She has contributed her expertise as a board member of the National Association for Federal and State Program Administrators and is a sought-after keynote speaker on matters related to federal investment in public education. Dana holds a doctorate in organizational leadership with a specialization in public policy and is a certified fundraising executive.
Michael Moore has been a national leadership and organizational development consultant and executive coach for 20 years, following a successful career as a high school principal and Superintendent of Schools. He works in school districts with ‘Directors and above’ to prioritize strategy, manage change, and build organizational capacity. As an expert in principal supervision and development, Michael co-designs culturally responsive, job-embedded leadership pathways and support models. As an expert in talent strategy and team building, he coaches executives and their teams across a wide range of organizations. Michael is a partner at the Urban Schools Human Capital Academy and works frequently with the Partnership for Leaders in Education at the UVA Darden School of Business.
July is an exciting time in school districts. The students are out of school. The budget is adopted. And there are people in new leadership roles. Are you newly promoted? Are you moving from school leadership to district leadership? Congratulations!
All new roles present challenges, but in our experience the transition from the principalship to a district role feels like a very big step to many people.
In this article, we’ll look at why that’s the case. First, we’ll define district leader success criteria. Then we’ll discuss why, as the cliche says, ‘What got you here, won’t get you there.” Finally, we’ll look at the leadership shifts—in perspective, behavior and priorities—that provide a path into effective district leadership.
The core challenge for new district leaders is about identity. You got promoted because of your success leading adults who reported to you. While you certainly had a boss or two, you spent nearly all your time as The Boss (apologies Bruce!) at your school.
As a district leader, you’ll spend most of your time surrounded by colleagues and by more senior leaders. One newly promoted leader told us, “I used to make 30 quick decisions in a day as a principal and now every decision I need to make requires a meeting or a committee.”
As you build a new identity as a district leader, consider how will you be judged given the daily attention you’ll be getting from everyone around you. We believe these six success criteria can serve as a scorecard:
Earlier, we used the cliché: “what got you here, won’t get you there.” The reason that the move from school to district leadership feels like such a big step to many leaders is because the skills that made you a successful— and promotable—principal are in some way counterproductive for district leaders.
:Superintendent turnover : Frenzy of moves as school year ends
As a principal you were able to build strong relationships with staff and students because you saw them everyday and got to know them. As a district leader, you’ll spend less time with more people making it hard to use relationships as your ‘go to’ appeal.
As a principal you could make dozens of quick decisions in a day and delegate tasks to direct reports. As a district leader, many decisions require discussion across teams or departments, stretching out the decision-making process.
As a principal you focused on things that were happening that day or as far out as the next break. You were excellent at “firefighting.” As a district leader, you are asked to think about next year and the next several years, reducing the level of urgency.
As a principal you were a generalist. You could build a master schedule, deal with an angry parent and give effective feedback to a new teacher. Except for the superintendent, district leaders are functional leaders, experts in important but narrow roles. You might be tempted to debate things that you experienced as a principal that didn’t seem quite right coming from a central office. Use these perspectives and trust your intuition with your team, but resist ‘fixing’ other departments until you know the lay of the land.
As a principal you established the political context. Others knew what was important to you, how you would react to different situations and how you managed others. As a district leader, you have been dropped into a complex political context where you don’t set the tone.
There is a path to becoming a successful district leader that will take at least a year to master but can be accelerated through intentional shifts in perspective and behavior. Those shifts are:
Congratulations on moving into a bigger role. You are likely on the way to even bigger and better things!
The meeting was already 30 minutes over time. People were looking at their phones. An assistant knocked on the door and asked someone to step out. “Are we done?” the superintendent asked as he stood up. Cabinet members gathered their things and walked out, talking quietly in small groups.
The frustrated superintendent looked at us: “I don’t need any more bright ideas from people who just want to show everyone how smart they are. The board wants to know why we’re not meeting our goals. I need people who can work together to get things done. Where are the people who will execute?”
There are few things directly under a superintendent’s control, but the senior leadership team is certainly one of them. Becoming more intentional about the team’s purpose, membership and meetings will make your life easier, bring energy to the work of your leaders and improve your results.
By design, the superintendent serves as the hinge between the board and the district’s leadership. The board oversees the process through governance and monitoring. The senior leadership team oversees performance by managing people and resources. The superintendent is the only role holding and connecting both of those functions.
Senior leadership team performance is a concern in most organizations. More than half of senior executives report underperformance by their top team. McKinsey describes the challenge as “individual and institutional biases and clunky group dynamics.” By focusing on “dynamics, not mechanics”—that is process, not just content —senior leaders can work as a team, take advantage of different skills and perspectives and bring coherence to their work.
Patrick Lencioni calls this “Team #1.” Even if you’re familiar with the concept, we encourage you to take a moment to watch this linked video and reflect on the degree to which each of your senior leaders truly behave like your team is their Team #1.
In defining the purpose or mission of your senior leadership team, span of control is often a concern. Traditionally, an ideal span of control has been seen as six or seven direct reports, but recent research has made a case for a broader scope.
This increased span has been attributed to the need for the CEO to have easier access to more information, speed up decision-making, improve operational efficiency and foster better coordination. Paradoxically, a broader span of control improves accountability because no one sits between the CEO/superintendent and the senior leader who is responsible for results.
We’ve created a graphic to describe how any team should make the most of its time. The most senior teams in an organization should focus on the top-right functions – collaboration and creativity – with teams lower on the hierarchy addressing the less complex functions.
So, what should your senior leadership team collaborate on and create? The concept of time horizon comes into play here. You and your senior leaders are the only roles expected to look beyond the next 60 to 90 days. You want team members, individually and collectively, to be continuously ‘forward looking’: discussing the forces and resources in play, considering a wide range of scenarios and, pushing for rigor and creativity, but also mitigating risk. This includes making sure the senior leadership team has the superintendent’s back. Highly successful senior leaders use the time horizon to anticipate the field around the leader, both inside and out.
Senior leaders should be expected to be ‘in the arena’ with the superintendent when it comes to board member engagement, board preparation and presentations and governance-level conflict resolution. Second, similarly, as more community and stakeholder engagement becomes the norm, senior leaders should take on significant external-facing responsibilities. Expectation-setting, training and even role-playing may be needed before all members are comfortable stepping into these roles. The superintendent cannot do all the needed external-facing and political work alone.
The bottom line: The purposes of your senior leadership teams are creating long-term strategies for the district’s success, creating and collaborating on those strategies, executing and coordinating those projects and activities that lead to results, and extending the superintendent’s communication and engagement efforts with the board and community. No other teams or roles share these purposes.
You want to coach a star team, not just star players.
Corporate poet (yes, there is such a thing! ) David Whyte notes that: “Too often, we reward people who solve problems while ignoring those who prevent them. Instead of glorifying those who run around putting out fires, we need to create an organizational culture that empowers everyone to act responsibly at the first sign of smoke.” Culture, of course, starts at the top.
A strong senior leadership team has a mix of “T” and “I” shaped leaders. “I” shaped leaders have functional expertise. The CFO you trust completely with the district’s fiduciary responsibilities, for example. “T” shaped leaders successfully lead their function, while also having an organization-wide perspective: the bar across the T. If most team members are “I,” collaboration will be a challenge because everyone will “stay in their lane.” If most team members are “T,” moving from strategy to action may be a challenge.
While the “T and I” language is well known in the private sector, we suggest including a third shape (an “I” with a bar, top and bottom): those with social capital in the community, who will add values and historical perspective into the mix.
We sometimes see two membership mistakes. One is keeping a senior leader on the team who poorly represents you or the team. If you decide to commit to a “Team #1” approach it’s essential that each member’s loyalty is to the senior leadership team, not to their own team, a peer group or naysayers. As Ty Wiggins says: “Culture is the worst behavior you’ll tolerate.” And everyone watches the behavior of senior leaders.
The other mistake is to leave a mission-critical player off the senior leadership team because their title isn’t right, such as an executive director of accountability. If they’re that important to your success you should probably elevate their title, but even if you don’t, put them on the team.
The senior leadership team is not a regular team or meeting. It is your team and meeting, and needs to meet your needs. That starts with being clear up-front about the level of decision-making. Wiggins suggests asking each team member, “Do you agree that people can disagree and still commit?” Of course, the right answer is, “Yes!” Those are the only kind of “yes men” you want on your team.
It’s important to explicitly foster a culture of vigorous debate. Be explicit about the ground rules and protocols you will use for such debate. This releases the power of the team to get the best from one another. It’s also easier when members know that the team discusses and debates, but ultimately that it’s you who will decide.
The toughest challenge in creating that culture is all leaders’ tendency to add value reflexively. Whenever possible, make your decision in the moment and unpack your reasoning. That’s a teachable moment for members and the team.
In addition to debate and decision-making, another key function of the senior leadership team is making and keeping commitments to the team. We’re fans of The 4 Disciplines of Execution but any method that records specific commitments made by members and then monitors progress will boost productivity and members’ engagement.
As professional facilitators, we plan on about two hours of preparation for each hour of meeting time and we encourage you to use a senior (but not executive) leader to play this role, ideally facilitating the meeting itself so that you can participate fully in your CEO role without managing the process. That preparation should include information-gathering, framing action items clearly, anticipating the need to bring other people into the meeting and tracking commitments from one meeting to another.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
Last month, we wrote an article about how to become successful district leaders. Our Six Success Criteria provide a scorecard for how your efforts to improve the senior leadership team are working. The stronger your team, the more satisfied (and rested) you’ll be as a superintendent.
Like traditional public schools, charter public schools are facing pivotal decisions, particularly given the imminent deadline of September 30, 2024, to utilize pandemic relief funds from the ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) Fund. EduSolve is proud to work with Charter Schools USA in making informed, equitable decisions amid the challenges posed by post-pandemic learning shifts and funding drop-off. In doing so, they have optimized $24M in funding. We partnered to install tangible system solutions and sustainability measures that measure ROI to preserve LOI.
Performance Management in Education is crucial for transforming educational outcomes. Saint Louis Public Schools have embraced this approach by implementing the Performance Management Inclusive Committee (PMIC) system.
In the rapidly evolving educational landscape, leadership effectiveness is measured by the ability to implement and sustain improvements through a coherent strategic plan. For Saint Louis Public Schools, the adoption of a Performance Management Inclusive Committee (PMIC) system represents a pivotal strategy in transforming educational outcomes and enhancing organizational performance.
This case study could serve as a blueprint for other school districts aiming to implement similar performance management frameworks, illustrating the importance of strategic planning and stakeholder engagement in achieving educational excellence, while focusing on establishing a robust performance management framework.
Dr. Keisha Scarlett, Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools, commissioned the project during the strategic adoption of key district initiatives, to include Literacy for the Lou’. The PMIC approach is part of a broader vision involving community partnerships, systematic change management, and a departure from traditional methods to foster student-focused, equitable outcomes. PMIC was introduced as a vital resource, embedding principles of project and change management to streamline processes, optimize resource usage, and enhance operational consistency. Tools and a detailed playbook are being used, to guide leaders through strategic goal achievement, emphasizing collaboration, measurable results, and continuous improvement to support both student and community needs effectively. The approach is grounded in rigorous standards, shared responsibility, and a commitment to overcoming barriers, signifying a dynamic shift towards proactive, structured, and strategic educational leadership.
The PMIC system significantly influenced the strategic operations at Saint Louis Public Schools, contributing to:
The partnership between Saint Louis Public Schools and EduSolve, LLC, through the establishment of the PMIC, demonstrates the effectiveness of tailored performance management systems in educational settings. By focusing on structured strategic management and inclusive leadership practices, schools can significantly enhance their educational outcomes and organizational performance.
