GSE Theses and Dissertations

When he was named New York City schools Chancellor in 2018, Richard Carranza promised to advance equity for the city’s 1.1M students. Shortly thereafter, despite substantial budget cuts at City Hall, his First Deputy Chancellor, Cheryl Watson-Harris, secured $10M to launch Academic Response Teams.
Academic Response Teams represented a fundamental shift from a one-size-fits-all school support model to one that is focused on co-constructing unique supports with individual school communities. Academic Response Teams serve as a vehicle in the quest to deliver on equity promises through deliberate, contextually driven actions. Providing contextually-fit school improvement support is a unique challenge for a mature, bureaucratic organization that serves an enormous variety of students across a myriad of demographic and socioeconomic markers. In the 2019-2020 school year, I was charged with engineering, erecting and launching Academic Response Teams. Academic Response Teams serviced nearly 140 schools and approximately 80,000 students throughout all five boroughs. All reforms vary in their success, but herein is an attempt to answer whether a reform is more successful when it is aligned to the aspirations of local communities. It also explores the barriers that such a reform encounters. Nested in the Office of the First Deputy Chancellor, Academic Response Teams Advance Equity Now using improvement science and school-level context as the driver for the design of school support. However, this reform is not disentangled from the history and cadence of change in the New York City Department of Education, because all change sits atop other institutional knowledge. While there are changes in infrastructure or processes, there remain organizational memories, routines and habits throughout the organization. What leadership actions are necessary to orient teams toward equity-centered change? This capstone elevates the learnings, themes and lessons that emerged when New York City Public schools used local context to drive school support.

There is a growing need across PreK-12 urban school systems in the United States to support and create the conditions for academic, social, and emotional success for children and youth of subgroups who have historically been marginalized. In public school organizations with high leadership churn, how might central office systems-level leaders set the stage within and across departments for increased coordination of resources to serve the whole child? Situated in California’s San Joaquin Valley, Stockton Unified School District (SUSD) is a Title I PreK-12 public school system located in a city most recently named by U.S. News and World Report (2020) to be “the most diverse city.” Unfortunately, high diversity doesn’t necessarily equate to high equity; according to a study by Brandeis University (2020), Stockton ranked as fourth in our nation in terms of the Child Opportunity Index 2.0, which reveals pervasive geographic and racial inequities. Through the “Whole Child Bridge” strategic project in SUSD, I designed and operationalized multiple collaborative meeting structures and relevant professional learning opportunities for key executive and senior central office leaders charged with guiding the academic, social-emotional and wellness of nearly 37,000 students. The multi-dimensional evidence collected includes the analysis of individual surveys, focus group interviews, 101 audio reflections, and an initial and final survey where participants indicated that within half a year, the “level of collaboration, communication and alignment between Educational Services and Student Support Services” increased by 200% from 3.1 to 6.2 on a ten-point scale. Implications for the project incorporate the National Equity Project’s “Seven Circle Model” for equity-based systems change and are aligned with Aspen Institute’s Commission on Social, Emotional, & Academic Development’s integrated whole child approach. I conclude with the recommendation that school systems find ways to couple initiatives with the intentional and visible integration of a student-focused, equity-based lens that incorporates cultural responsiveness and restorative practices. Investing in adults’ understanding of race and equity in all interactions, including those with colleagues within and across the central office towards a coherent mission, is necessary for all youth to be successful in our nation’s schools.

For more than ten years, officials from the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) and the New York State Education Department (NYSED) remained locked in a stalemate over what services were required for students with disabilities preparing for the high school equivalency exam through the NYCDOE Pathways to Graduation program. Finally, in 2020, the two agencies partnered together to reach an amicable agreement within a matter of months. In this paper, I analyze the sea change by which two bureaucracies progressed from conflict to resolved partnership. Drawing from knowledge in the fields of peace studies, mediation, behavioral science, and organizational decision making, this paper both assesses the conditions under which cross-functional teams can drive systemic change and asserts the important roles of executive leadership, mid-level managers, and local actors in driving such change. It also surfaces and analyzes tensions between positional and relational influence and transparency and vulnerability. Additionally, I explain a practice I call “designing from the margins”-meaning developing policy based upon the needs of individuals not typically considered by policymakers. Focusing on learners in the margins, like the students with disabilities in the Pathways to Graduation Program, creates the environment in which more effective policies can be implemented for all students. Throughout this capstone, I argue that both hope and conflict- though they are seemingly divergent qualities- are necessary in efforts to improve organizations and to best utilize cross-functional teams.

Education serving as a lever for increased access to opportunity, in theory, is implicit within the design of the U.S. education system. However, disparities in achievement across demographic groups continue to be apparent as measured by traditional means of accountability such as standardized tests, graduation rates, and enrollment in Advanced Placement courses. These results raise question as to whether or not the education system indeed serves all equitably. One means of holding this charge to account is through the development of a system of data presentation with the explicit purpose of measuring for equity. Somerville Public Schools (SPS) is a small urban district serving a diverse community of learners. In partnership with innovative educators, Superintendent Mary Skipper is leading SPS in the examination of their policies and practices to redesign the system to serve equitably across demographic groups. After passing a district wide Equity Policy bolstered by the formation of equity focused School Committee Goals, the next step in the district’s evolution is the formation of a data collection system to examine current practices, provide evidence of movement, and guide informed decision-making through an intentional equity lens. This capstone explores the idea of using indicators designed to explicitly measure equity within Somerville Public Schools, such as those put forth in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine 2019 report, Monitoring Educational Equity, to serve as a starting point from which to examine policies and practices that result in disparate achievement levels and inequitable access to opportunity across demographic groups. With deliberate focus on race and ethnicity, this capstone calls for data and the collection systems in which data is housed to drive interrogation of our current system of education. This occurs through the examination of the effects of policies and practice, and identifies and challenges social constructs on which such policies and practices are built and continue to perpetuate inequities. With intentional equity lensed data collection, educational organizations are more prepared to adapt practices and pursuit purposeful, equity-minded redesign.

The Education Trust is a national policy and advocacy nonprofit dedicated to closing opportunity gaps and expanding achievement for historically underserved students, particularly children of color and children living in poverty. After 2015, Ed Trust launched a strategy to support state advocates in forming equity coalitions. The Massachusetts Education Equity Partnership (MEEP), founded in Fall 2018, was one of the state equity coalitions born out of this strategy and was where I completed residency. This capstone examines how advocacy and movement-building in the education sector can serve as an antidote to the widespread anxiety and hurt currently impacting the United States. I joined Ed Trust and MEEP in July 2019 and was charged with managing MEEP’s membership and coalition dynamics, creating systems that ensured internal equity and facilitated advocacy, and reimagining MEEP’s vision and strategic plan to meet its goal of securing educational equity in Massachusetts. My work in the field drew from social movement theory, community organizing, and literature about teaming. In putting research to practice, my residency revealed that in order to spark a statewide movement for educational equity in a state that has not experienced one in the modern era, education advocates must (1) learn to organize and mobilize communities, (2) practice effective teaming and organizational ambidexterity, (3) orchestrate small wins that lead to larger ones, and (4) capture and be responsive to the national zeigeist. These learnings compel The Education Trust to revisit its state strategy and how it supports state equity coalitions to truly form a national movement, and it invites the education sector to reimagine family and community engagement and reassess how the sector responds to successes and perceived failures. In turn, we realize that building people power is the balm we can leverage to fight societal and educational injustice.

Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD) is radically pressuring institutions of power to rebuild and support Baltimore’s families with livable-wage employment through their jobs movement, called Turnaround Tuesday. The organization has secured over 800 living-wage jobs for its participants, with a 2-year retention rate of 83% with partner employers. I met BUILD 8 years ago when I left the classroom to organize in Baltimore. The organization helped found the Baltimore Education Coalition, which worked on the campaign to address dilapidated school facilities in the city. In 2012, the coalition elected me to cochair the Baltimore Education Coalition. We led the unification of 3,000 people, then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Baltimore City Public Schools under the leadership of Dr. Andres Alonso, and three quarters of Maryland’s Legislature to secure $977,000,000 in funding to renovate and reconstruct school facilities for Baltimore’s 85,000 students. Right after the school construction win, BUILD’s organizing for jobs that pay living wages for people with legal system records started moving deeper into the beginnings of the movement that is now Turnaround Tuesday. As a resident, I developed and created media content about the organization’s impact that served to educate and inspire funders, employers, and city officials to partner with BUILD’s Turnaround Tuesday. My storytelling centered on the inherent power, dignity, and agency of the people supported by Turnaround Tuesday. I sought to not use tactics like shock, guilt, pity, and anger to capture people’s attention and motivate them to donate. I was interested in telling Turnaround Tuesday’s story with dignity and strength. I used Professor Emerita Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot’s portraiture methodology to discipline my approach to producing a four-episode audiodocumentary series, now officially hosted by Baltimore’s National Public Radio station, and a short visual about the jobs movement. To inspire viewers and listeners of the audiodocumentary and short visual to act and support Turnaround Tuesday, I leveraged Single Grain, a top digital marketing agency, as an out-of-education industry example for guidance. The agency’s marketing funnel framework illustrates how potential customers can go from awareness of a product to purchase of a product. The marketing funnel framework aligned the media I produced with Turnaround Tuesday’s communications strategy, leading up to the fifth-anniversary celebration of Turnaround Tuesday in December 2019. Additionally, I led a team at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University to organize and host a 2-day seminar of inspiration, planning, and strategy to develop a blueprint for training and retaining another 1,000 Baltimoreans in quality jobs. Ten key corporate and philanthropic leaders from Baltimore attended the Radcliffe seminar in January 2020. The purpose of this event was to build working partnerships between Turnaround Tuesday and the key leaders in order to increase funding support and employment opportunities for the organization. Together, the audiodocumentary series and short visual were used during the Radcliffe seminar and Turnaround Tuesday’s fifth-anniversary celebration as media to engage potential funders, employers, and political leaders and further inspire them to become active supporters. As a result, the organization secured over $100,000 in donations within 4 weeks after the fifth-anniversary celebration. The key corporate and philanthropic leaders who attended the Radcliffe seminar committed to significant next steps with Turnaround Tuesday and Baltimoreans ready to get back into the labor force. To date, Turnaround Tuesday has received $496,000 in donations.

The Clark County School District (CCSD) is one of the fastest-growing school districts in the country. This rapid growth has increased the demand for effective school leaders. CCSD filled 42 principal vacancies during the 2019-2020 school year. The district projects multiple principal vacancies for the 2020-2021 school year. As the doctoral resident in CCSD, I was charged with creating a professional development experience that would serve as the foundation of the principal pipeline. This experience was designed to produce a highly qualified pool of leaders that are equipped with a deep understanding of the competencies needed to serve as principals in CCSD.
This capstone chronicles the development of the Aspiring Principals Academy in CCSD from ideation to execution. Based on research and recommendations from The Wallace Foundation and The New York City Leadership Academy, the Aspiring Principals Academy was created to equip current assistant principals with the technical and adaptive leadership skills needed to become highly effective principals. Originally designed as a twelve-week intensive professional development experience, the Aspiring Principals Academy consisted of sessions that were developed and facilitated by the best and brightest principals in CCSD. These weekly sessions focused on strengthening participants’ skills in strategic thinking, instructional leadership, community engagement, and cultural competence.
After weekly engagements with a cohort of 100 aspiring principals, I offer my analysis of the successes, failures, and opportunities for further exploration in the development of the Aspiring Principals Academy. Through reflection, I detail implications for my own leadership, CCSD, and the PK-12 education sector. I conclude by providing recommendations to leaders and organizations that are considering developing their own principal preparation programs.

Research on language acquisition and the cognitive, emotional, and academic benefits of multilingualism point to clear solutions for improving literacy instruction and closing ongoing opportunity gaps for Multilingual Learners. While the research is not new, it has not widely translated to classroom practice and is often excluded from professional development for reading. As this project shows, the state of Texas is poised to reverse this trend through legislatively-mandated professional development on foundational reading instruction. In my residency with the Texas Education Agency, I implemented cross-functional, agile organizational strategies to increase capacity for prioritizing multilingual content in the development of statewide reading academies. As a result, the Texas Education Agency will provide specialized professional development for Spanish-English bilingual teachers as well as support for teachers of Multilingual Learners in general English and ESL classrooms.
In this capstone, I describe the three phases of the project in addition to an intentional focus on learning and leadership structures that I drew on throughout my residency. Through my analysis, I discuss successes and challenges of employing cross-functional structures in a large organization, and suggest that while cross-functional collaboration served to bridge a capacity gap during the course of the project, future hiring for bilingual expertise at the state level is critical to equitably serving teachers of multilingual students in Texas.

The city of Birmingham and its schools have experienced a tumultuous history – from a school system born out of deep-rooted segregation and racist policy, to one disrupted and transformed by the relentless and heroic efforts of Civil Rights leaders. Ensuing decades within the school system saw a period of white flight, declining enrollment, and the increase in a population of students socially and economically disenfranchised. The district entered the 21st century in crisis, experiencing seven different superintendents during the first two decades of the century. Yet, amidst this mountain of challenges, hope abounds. In the past three years, under the leadership of Superintendent Dr. Lisa Herring, 75% of schools in the district improved by at least one letter grade as identified by the Alabama Department of Education (Seale, 2019). In October 2019, the local electorate overwhelmingly approved an ad valorem tax that translates to $30 million dollars per year applied to the district’s bottom line. This vote represents an impressive feat in a fiscally conservative state and a time when other Alabama county electorate rejected similar tax proposals. According to internal polling data, the Superintendent’s approval rating is above 80%. This number is extraordinary in a time when only 36% of Americans express confidence in public schools (Calderon, Newport, & Dvorak, 2017). Birmingham City Schools is turning around. This capstone tells the district’s story. In 2019, as a doctoral resident in the Harvard Ed.L.D. program, I was invited to join the Birmingham City Schools executive team to lead one arm of the district's turnaround efforts - designing and implementing a comprehensive accountability and support system for school leaders. The intention of the School Accountability Reviews (SARs), was three-fold. First, build the data analysis muscles of Principals. Second, create the intentional space for leaders to share best practices, be held accountable for individual school data, and receive district support. Third, begin to shift the culture of the district from one of complacency to one of practice-sharing and strategic action. This capstone explores how I approached the challenge of developing and implementing a statistical or “stat” model of continuous improvement within Birmingham City Schools. I relied on historical examples of effective stat model implementation in school districts across the United States as well as current research on improvement science, relational trust, and adaptive leadership to guide the process. In conclusion, I provide recommendations for how Birmingham City Schools can leverage what was learned and continue to accelerate school turnaround.

Schools operate in a constant state of change. Developing educators’ capacity to manage perpetual education reform efforts requires a fundamental change in school culture. This elusive term “culture” refers to the customs, expectations, written and unwritten rules in a school building. Today’s reform efforts bring focus to the need for equitable opportunities for our most vulnerable students. The goal of this capstone is to contribute to a deeper understanding of school culture, one that prepares adults to tackle the systemic inequities in school systems. This new approach to school culture is based on the principles of deliberately developmental organizations. Whereas schools traditionally focus on a skills-based, efficiency model of culture, deliberately developmental cultures position personal development at the center of learning in order to enable adults to be more effective leaders and educators. The promise of this approach is explored through the creation of a New Principal Institute at New York City Department of Education Community School District 11 in the Bronx. New principals engaged in monthly professional learning sessions organized to support them in examining their mental models in designing a school culture that prioritizes adult learning and accountability; building psychological safety within their Instructional Leadership Teams for deeper levels of inquiry; and creating and leading systems and structures for distributed leadership of a shared vision for teaching and learning. Throughout the capstone, I use Robert Kegan & Lisa Lahey’s research on deliberately developmental organizations to formulate the project, analyze results, and offer insights for systems-level leaders seeking to design this innovative approach to school culture. The paper concludes with implications for myself, Community School District 11, and the sector at large.