One Good Question

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2/7/17 2/7/17

One Good Question with Kaya Henderson: What Will Make My Heart Sing?

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.” These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

The US has invested in two things in public education that are fundamentally wrong. The first one? Perpetuating really low expectations for kids. When you look at our education investments over the last 20-30 years, the focus has been low-level proficiency in a handful of subject areas. That belies a fairly low expectation about what kids can accomplish. It reveals our belief that, if schools can just get the moderate level of proficiency, then they will have done their job. We seem believe that low to moderate proficiency is the goal for some kids. For wealthy kids, we believe they also need international trips, art and music, foreign language, and service experiences. Those investments, made both by wealthy families and wealthier schools – belie greater expectations for those students.

I had the very good fortune to grow up in a family that started out poor, but transcended to the middle class over the course of my childhood. I was blessed to have a mother who had us traveling the world, insured that I spoke a foreign language, took horseback riding, and participated in Girl Scouts. But I had cousins who came from the exact same place as I did, whose parents and schools didn’t share those expectations. Some of them attended the magnet elementary with me, so even when their parents didn’t have high expectations, good public schools put us on the same trajectory.

When I became chancellor of District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), my expectations were based on my personal experiences. I believe that schools have to inspire kids to greatness. What I saw however, was people trying to remediate kids to death. So, I inherited a district where people weren’t teaching social studies and science, and where arts and foreign language programs were paid for by some PTAs, because some parents recognized the needs even with the district didn’t. What I saw was different expectations for different kids, and the investments followed suit. Our goal was to recreate these rich experiences, both enrichment and academic, for all kids.

The second investment that cripple US education? Systems that are built for teachers who we don’t believe in. We try to teacher-proof the things that we want teachers to do. But, if what we give teachers is worthy of them, if it peaks their intellectual curiosity, makes them need to learn, pushes and challenges them? — then teachers rise to expectations in the same way that kids do.

One of the things that we did in DCPS was to significantly raise teachers’ salaries, and radically raise expectations. Lots of people were not happy about it, but the people who were happiest? Our best teachers! They were already rising to highest expectations.We reinvented our curriculum aligned to Common Core State Standards, with the idea that every single course should have lessons that blow kids’ minds. We designed these Cornerstone lessons – the lesson that kids will remember when they are grownups. For example, when we’re teaching volume in math, it coincides with a social studies unit on Third World development. So students learn to design a recyclable water bottle, in a few different dimensions, to help developing countries get better access to water. They then build the prototypes for the containers and test them out. Lessons like that make you remember volume in a different way.We wanted one Cornerstone less in each unit, for a total of five over the year. We designed lessons for every grade level, every subject area. When we designed the Cornerstones, we mandated that teachers teach that lesson. What happened? Everyone used them and demanded more! Teachers wanted to have 3 or 4 Cornerstone lessons for each of their units.

“How do we get parents to opt — in to public schools at scale?”

I had families tell me that I needed to do a better marketing job, that I wasn’t selling DCPS enough. They compared us to charter schools with glossy brochures. When I started, the product that we had to market wasn’t good enough. I didn’t want to duplicate the negative experiences parents were getting: great marketing, but then disappointment in the product.The first year that I was Chancellor at DCPS, we didn’t lose any kids to charters. That was monumental! After 40 consecutive years of enrollment decline, we had 5 consecutive years of enrollment growth. We laid a foundation with a good program, then we listened to parents. We combined what they wanted, with what we knew kids needed, and rebuilt the system from the ground up. Our competitive advantage is that we are not boutique schools. We are like Target: we have to serve lots of different people and give them different things. As a district, our challenge is to guarantee the same quality of product, regardless of location. What are we going to guarantee to every family and how will every family know that?

We started by re-engineering our elementary schools. Some schools had been operating for so long without social studies, that they didn’t know how to schedule for it. It meant creating sample schedules for them and hiring specialist teachers. Once we could tell parents that every school would have XYZ programs, they didn’t have to shop for it anymore! Then we moved on to middle school and guaranteed advanced and enrichment offerings at every campus. Then we did the same at the high school level and significantly expanded AP courses. Today all of our high schools offer on average 13 AP courses. Even if there are kids who have to take the AP course twice, they do it. We know that the exposure to that level of academic rigor prepares students for college.

DCPS was a district where families came for elementary, opted-out at middle school, and then maybe came back for a handful of high schools. So we looked at the boutique competitor schools and added a few of those models to DCPS too. You do have to sell, but there’s no better advertisement than parents saying “I love this school !” Some of our schools that were never in the lottery, now have a ton of applicants! We were careful not to build things on charismatic people, but to build systems so that these gains would be sustainable. Now parents that never would have considered DCPS are clamoring for our schools.

Kids are kids, no matter where in the country they live. The cost of education is static. If we are serious about this education, we have to make some different decisions and put the money behind it. We’ve seen ten consecutive years of financial surplus in DC, at a time when the country was falling apart. I was even more lucky that three different mayors prioritized education and but the money in the budget. You can’t expect schools to do the more on the same dollars. You have to invest in innovation funds.

Kaya’s One Good Question: Literally, my question is what is the best use of my time moving forward? When you’re running a district, you are in the weeds. You don’t know about all of the new and exciting things in the space. Right now, I’m being deliberate about exploring the sector and that’s important. I want to figure out what will make my heart sing!

Right now I’m obsessed with the intersectionality about housing, education, jobs and healthcare. This old trope that, if we just ‘fix’ education, is garbage. I’m not saying it’s linear or causal, but it’s necessary to work on more than one issue affecting families at a time, and the efforts have to be coordinated and triangulated. Some of the most exciting things on the horizon are people like Derwin Sisnett, who is working to re-engineer communities for housing to be anchored around high performing schools and the community is replete with healthcare services and job training that the community needs to improve.

Kaya Henderson is an educator, activist, and civil servant who served as Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools from November 2010 to September 2016. She is the proud parent of a DCPS graduate and a DCPS fifth grader.In 1992, Henderson joined Teach For America, and took a job teaching in the South Bronx in New York City. Henderson was promoted to executive director of Teach for America in 1997, and relocated to Washington, D.C. In 2000, Henderson left Teach for America and joined the New Teacher Project as Vice President for Strategic Operations.

3/15/16 3/15/16

One Good Question with Chris Plutte: Can Global Understanding Help us Address Race Issues in the US?

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

There’s a genuine interest in wanting to be global but folks don’t know where to start. When you ask someone how they’re working towards the goals of being global citizens, they are very few examples. We’re still a current event on a Friday at 1pm. That’s how schools go global. I don’t think we’re preparing kids for a global society at all. We’re failing at that. We are thinking about right now, but not 2030 or 2045 when we’ll be more connected than we already are. We’re not teaching the kids skills of communication and collaboration across countries. There’s a shift that needs to happen from competition against Finland and Singapore to collaboration with Finland and Singapore. Then we need to work backwards with the skills that young people need to develop for that new economy.

Personally, I come to this from a peace-building lens. How do you bring people together who don’t understand each other and are in perceived conflict with each other? We’re living in a world where people are bouncing up against each other and don’t have the skills to navigate that. Ten to fifteen years ago, we had diplomats sitting in capitals representing our values and cultures to other communities. We’re now side-by-side engaging and we don’t know how to do that intercultural communication. We won’t be able to do that until we engage whole communities—parents and educators to become global citizens. Give them the tools, experience, and opportunities to inquire about how the world is outside of their own city. Then they can be inspired to share those with the young people that they’re educating. The investment is really with the adults right now as much as with the students.

“You’re the first American educator in this interview series to bring up peace as a function of education.”

When we talk about race, there’s a conversation there about peace, but we’re looking for peace within our communities. I’m curious about how global can help local. I’m stuck on Einstein’s idea that no problem can be solved in the conditions in which it was created. The idea that you have to leave the environment to solve the problem. I wonder if there’s an opportunity to expand on that and talk about race issues and conflict issues. There’s such massive Islamophobia in the US. At Global Nomads Group, we focus on linking US schools and Muslim-majority countries. Part of it is building compassion and empathy for one another. That’s a muscle that gets developed. It’s perhaps easier to have a conversation around Islamophobia than race issue in your own community. Can you build that muscle globally and then pivot and use it to address race issues in the US? As an organization, we’re trying to explore that possibility.

When we think of global citizenship in the US, we think about teeing up Americans to be global citizens. But you can’t be a global citizen by yourself. There’s a perspective called Ubuntu-- I am me because you are you. You need the « other » to be a global citizen. Right now it’s a taking, how can we take from other places to be global? It’s not about taking. It’s about navigating within an ecosystem with others who are also global citizens and navigating yourself with different experiences. It’s a long-play. It has to be cultivated and integrated over years.

“What are the first steps to change?”

I need to articulate to people what the world actually is and be a bit of a futurist. When the educator or administrator sees themselves as a global citizen, then they can champion it. Peace Corps, Army Brats, and Third Culture Kids seek out Global Nomad Group to impact their classrooms. The big question is how do you move beyond those converted communities and get the larger community engaged in demanding it? That’s what we need right now. We need larger communities demanding it for their children and their schools in an authentic real way.

“So many educators in urban settings regard this work as esoteric or enrichment. How do you start from that perspective?”

Where we are, you have to work with the willing : networks, districts and charters who are willing to partner with you and can be an example to others. People need to be able to have some type of anchors and understand that they can do that too. I certainly felt in my fellowship that I was with these rock star educators who are trying to get kids to graduate high school. Who am I to say, By the way, you should also go global. I struggle with this. We have a problem here in the US, but in comparison to rural schools that meet under trees in the blistering sun, we also live an extraordinary opportunity. We can create a community in which people are engaging globally and that will help their local communities. That’s how I approach it with those folks: Problem-solving. For me, if you would weave that together with problem-solving and peace-building and race issues—that woven together often will resonate with the ed reform community. Not everyone, but enough entry points to move away from being the fringe in order to get a small place at the table. And we need those entry points right now.

“With Global Nomads group, you answered one of the fundamental questions about access to get youth in developing nations connected with their global peers. What student-led action are you seeing for youth on both sides of the experience as a result of their participation?”

All of our programs are project-based. So when you’re paired with a school, you have to identify a problem within your community that your going to help answer based on this program. We had a group in Pakistan focus on girls’ education and girls in their community not going to school. In the US, it was a recycling and environmental program for trash in their community. We work together and compare and contrast and offer ideas to each other. The results for the Pakistan students were that they actually did a community awareness about girls’ education, met with families of the girls, raised money and got scholarships for local schools to get the girls enrolled in schools. Just last week, a US school who is connected in Gaza actually planned a whole week(!!) to do a program around educating their community on Islam. The action was really inspired by the young people in the US hearing from their Palestinian counterparts on how their own stereotypes and stigmas impacted their community. That was a result of their programs.

Chris' One Good Question: How do I get global citizenship to be as important as trigonometry? How do I get the broader ed reform community engaged and demanding this?

Chris Plutte is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Global Nomads Group (GNG). Founded in 1998, GNG is an international non-profit whose mission is to foster dialogue and understanding among the world's youth. In 2008, Plutte worked overseas for Search for Common Ground (SFCG) as Chief of Party and Country Director for Rwanda. He opened and directed all of SFCG's programs in the country and oversaw cross border initiatives in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi. During his two-years in the African Great Lakes region, Plutte introduced innovative programs for peace building using technology in the classroom and secured new funding for program growth and expansion. He rejoined GNG in 2010 as the Executive Director. Plutte received his B.A. in International Communications from the American University of Paris.