In this guest blog post for the Leadership Learning Community, Education Pioneers' Director of Network Strategy, Jason Weeby (and a 2007 Alumnus), writes about best practices that the most effective leaders use to advance their careers and deepen their impact as professionals.

A year ago, Education Pioneers made the courageous decision to depart from our conventional alumni engagement strategy to an innovative network strategy.  Our new direction employs tactics that build relationships amongst our alumni rather than to our institution.  This reorientation required us to challenge our assumptions about how we develop education leaders capabale of transforming education in the 21st century.

Our fellows hail from the country's most selective business, education, policy, and law graduate programs that have turned leadership development into a rich social science, but have also built their programs around the navigation of traditional hierarchies and the common scenarios of an institution.  In order to build a professional network of leaders that work across agencies, Education Pioneers is revamping our curriculum to include components that teach emerging leaders how to turn to one another to accelerate change in the field.

As Education Pioneers' director of network strategy, I reviewed academic literature and boiled the salient findings down to five network leadership competencies that we're weaving into our curricula at Education Pioneers. 

Read on for a look at practices that you can use to advance your career and deepen your impact as a professional.

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In Newark Public Schools, New Jersey’s largest school district, less than 54 percent of students graduate from high school. According to reports from Essex County College, a community college based in Newark, 98 percent of the Newark Public School students who graduate high school and enroll at Essex required remediation in math.

The education system in Newark is clearly struggling.

Despite these grim statistics, however, there is a renewed sense of hope and optimism for education bubbling in Newark. Education reform-minded leadership at every political level, in addition to promising innovations and models of success in Newark, are starting to forge a path that will lead to an improved education system in Newark.  

This year, Education Pioneers will help build the capacity of organizations working to improve education by expanding operations beyond New York City and infusing leadership talent into the Newark area. Education Pioneers expansion is due in large part to a generous grant from the Newark Charter School Fund.

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Federal and state policies such as the US Department of Education’s Race to the Top state grant competition and Illinois’ Performance Evaluation Act of 2010, which prioritize building effective principal and teacher evaluations systems to improve student achievement outcomes, have ratcheted up the need for data-driven teacher evaluation in Illinois. This renewed attention on improving student achievement outcomes has the education sector exploring innovative tools to use for evaluation.

Chicago Public Schools’ Excellence in Teaching program, led by Education Pioneers Alumna Sheri Frost Leo (’05 Boston) is one example of an innovative teacher evaluation program that is receiving significant attention.

The Excellence in Teaching program currently is underway in 100 Chicago schools. It seeks to transform teacher effectiveness through a robust evaluation tool that measures teacher practice and student growth, and provides meaningful feedback to teachers. According to Frost Leo, this is an “opportunity to redesign the teacher evaluation from the bottom and end up with a comprehensive, nuanced system… [and] a more complete picture of what it means to be effective.”

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For the third year in a row, Massachusetts’ fourth and eighth graders have outperformed students from all other states, according to scores on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam.

While these results highlight success, a growing number of education leaders recognize that Massachusetts’ strong performance must be viewed as a starting point rather than as an end. 

"I am pleased that Massachusetts students are once again at the head of the class," said Representative Martha M. Walz (D-Boston), House Chair of the Joint Committee on Education. "Our challenge now is to continue to improve so we not only ensure future success, but also guarantee that every student has full access to a high quality education."

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Report Author and EP Fellow, Andrea Mayo, Cites Innovation, Local Control as Critical

“Changing California’s education system will require more money, but the absence of resources does not preclude policy changes that can make a difference for kids. This is the way forward.”

So begins David Plank, Executive Director of Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), when asked to explain the impetus behind PACE’s most recent report.
The report, released in April and titled “Reforming Education in California: A Guide for Candidates and Citizens,” makes clear policy recommendations in anticipation of California’s state-wide political races.

“This report points the way for reforms that would make a real difference in the performance of schools,” Plank said.
When he first conceived of this report in early 2009, Plank knew he would need an author who could summarize years of research in a short period of time, and who could articulate complex policy in a way that would appeal to a broad audience. Recognizing that Education Pioneers has access to “the brightest minds and people who care about education,” Plank approached the Bay Area program to find this author.

Enter Andrea Mayo (’09 Bay Area), a doctoral student in public administration at Arizona State University. When admitted to Education Pioneers, Mayo recalled that she was “relatively new to K-12 education. Education Pioneers matched me with a project that fit my skill set and gave me a learning experience over the summer.”

With Plank ’s guidance, Mayo translated PACE’s research into an action-oriented report.  Given her fresh perspective on the field, she was struck by some of her findings.

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Teacher evaluation is nothing new or radical. In fact, schools and districts have a long history of evaluating teachers.  

However, in practice teacher evaluation plays out as one big irony. While the majority of teachers receive “satisfactory” evaluation ratings, an increasing number of schools are labeled “failures.”

There is something wrong with this reality.  

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The Movement to Transform Education into an Data-Driven Sector 
There is a movement underfoot to evolve the use of data in education.  The transformation will enable practitioners, policy-makers and leaders to use data to drive decisions everywhere from the classroom, to the board room, to the halls of the legislature.

The push, heavily motivated by federal funding initiatives such as the $4.35 billion Race to the Top program, and major education reform philanthropies, seeks to accelerate the rate of improvements in education and the number of United States students succeeding in school, career and life.

Recently, the Annual Progress Report on State Data Systems, a report by the Data Quality Campaign, found that since 2005, states have made notable progress towards the goal of building robust longitudinal data systems. 

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An Interview with New Houston Fellow Mironda Ross
Mironda Ross ('10 Houston) spent six years increasing productivity and decreasing costs as a business analyst for Protective Life Insurance Company and American Iron Pipe Company prior to entering business school. At first glance, she is not your typical candidate for a role in education. 

But within a resume chock full of accomplishments and academic accolades, you see a committed volunteer and community change agent. Beyond her work in the classroom and office, Ross tutored 8th graders in math and increased partnerships by 300% as President of the National Council of Negro Women for the Birmingham Chapter. All told she has over 13 years of volunteer experience.

A desire to have meaningful impact was the catalyst for Ross to quit her job and move half way across the country to attend business school with the plan of transitioning into the education field.

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2/23/10

Teachers have the most significant influence on student learning – especially for minority and low-income students. The evidence here is clear.

And recently a paradigm shift in the way the education industry evaluates teachers has been taking place.

As this change aims to measure teachers by the success of their students, rather than predictors of quality such as credentials, many believe –and hope– that teachers will soon be accepted as individual professionals rather than interchangeable pieces in the educational puzzle.

According to a recent study, part of the problem is systemic.

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EP Alumnus, Jesse Hahnel (07 Bay Area), to Spread Ed Reform, Entrepreneurial Spirit, to Child Welfare System

2/23/10

Jesse Hahnel has worked with foster youth since the beginning of his career.

As a teacher in low-performing schools in Washington DC and New York City, Jesse saw first-hand the positive effects a vocal adult had on a child’s success in school. He also noticed the sparse number of adult education advocates for youth in the foster care system.

After graduating from Stanford Law School in 2008, Jesse worked with foster children and foster youth in Oakland to learn what was happening on the ground and to identify their unmet needs.

Not long into his work with Oakland-area foster children, Jesse was contacted by the director of a group home who was concerned about one the children in his home, a 15-year-old boy named Alex, who had not been placed in a school by the local school district despite Alex having been in the group home since November.

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