Graduate School of Education

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.

In 2019, the New York City mayor–appointed School Diversity Advisory Group released two separate sets of recommendations to the Department of Education (DOE) on how to integrate its schools. The first set addressed the conditions necessary for integration to take root and was adopted by the DOE in June 2019. The second set addressed enrollment policies and special programs. It was released in August 2019 for consideration by the DOE. This residency, based in the Chancellor’s Office of the New York City DOE, involved two primary tasks: coordinating cross-agency implementation of the recommendations that were adopted, and creating a process and a strategy to advance policy objectives from the recommendations under consideration. This capstone is a critical analysis of these efforts with implications for large-scale racial and socioeconomic school integration efforts in urban school districts. The findings paint a nuanced picture of progress during the 2019–2020 school year. First, recommendations that were narrowly focused in one to two offices, had clear mandates, or overlapped with existing priorities, generally were successfully implemented. In contrast, recommendations that were broadly cross-divisional or open to interpretation generally made limited early progress. The analysis suggests that hierarchy, siloed divisions, and competing priorities impeded the implementation of complex recommendations, although enlisting senior leadership eventually accelerated the implementation of some of these recommendations. Second, the analysis shows that the public reception of the second report, especially its portrayal in the media, and the political reaction to the public reception created significant obstacles for advancing policy changes that would lead to more diverse schools. This led the DOE to reconsider strategy, timing, and community input, delaying substantive reform of enrollment policy beyond 2019–2020. The implication for school districts attempting to integrate is that successful school integration requires both internal and external strategies, undergirded by an expansive vision of school integration. The external strategy should involve (a) having a clear, strategic, and persuasive public narrative that frames the value proposition of integrated schools as a boon to student achievement; and (b) cultivating support and legitimacy by the media, the public, and politicians. The internal strategy should involve (a) having innovative solutions to ingrained organizational practices, such as student placement; (b) deliberately creating novel structures for work; and (c) deploying targeted resources for transformative change.

In this multiple-case study of 6 mid-level leaders working in biotech R&D--an archetype of a complex, uncertain, turbulent, and, multidisciplinary 21st-Century workplace--I explore the importance and interaction of mental complexity (MC), an aspect of adult development, and emotional intelligence (EI) for leadership effectiveness (LE). MC concerns the sophistication of the mindsets we use to construct stories for ourselves about the meaning of things. EI refers to one’s ability to manage one’s own emotions, appraise those of others, and engage emotional matters intelligently. I investigate how MC and EI contribute, separately or together, to LE. To select 6 case-study subjects I administered two psychometric tests: MSCEIT (an EI test) and LDMA (a test of MC) to 11 R&D leaders working at the same biotech company. I selected 2 contrasting groups: 2 people who scored high on MC and moderate on EI and 4 people who scored moderately high on MC and moderate on EI. I then conducted semi-structured 360-degree interviews with case-subjects, 2 of their superiors, and 2 of their subordinates. Interview data analysis included scoring a measure of LE created for this research. Interviewee responses suggested that MC and EI tend to work jointly to enhance LE and that insufficiency of MC and EI are associated with one or more of 7 fault lines of leadership, patterns of behavior that diminish LE. I call these 7 LE-diminishing behavioral patterns 7 Leadership Blind Spots. Each subject exhibited at least one LE blind spot, with significant variability between domains (technical, interpersonal, and organizational), context (team, cross-functional team, and organization), and situation. Using the acronym BLINDSPOT as a mnemonic device, the patterns of behavior in which LE tends to be diminished are: Being too Forceful, Lacking Visibility, Insecure Authority, Need to be Political, Distance and Decenter, Stop Enabling, and Problems On Teams. These results are hypotheses to be explored in future research. Leadership education implications include interventions to help leaders become aware of and begin to address their own blind spots as well as interventions to help leaders improve their MC and EI abilities.

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.

The Principal Impact Collaborative (PIC) at the University of North Texas at Dallas creates transformative learning experiences for principals in school districts across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. In its fifth year, this small nonprofit is challenged with balancing quick growth with the sustainability of its internal team. Both of these challenges were exacerbated by the complexities brought on by the pandemic in professional and personal ways. As a resident, I led an internal initiative to create a culture of learning to support this rapid growth and honor and respect the individuals doing the work. This capstone describes our journey to become more deliberately developmental as a lever to improve team effectiveness and increase organizational learning in order to scale effectively. This is done through three enabling conditions: become more candid, provide more critical feedback, and engage in productive conflict. Throughout this capstone I rely on adult development theory and the research on Deliberately Developmental Organizations from Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, as well as teaming and psychological safety concepts from Amy Edmondson, to intentionally create an environment of vulnerability, open communication, and feedback. Ultimately, this capstone points to the need to humanize our companies, organizations, and schools. In every sector, we could all flourish and thrive if we were unafraid to speak our truth, to provide honest feedback, and to engage in productive conflict. If we knew we could do such things without fear of retribution, we could each add to the collective learning of the places where we work and improve the overall effectiveness of the work itself through our increased collaboration and resulting innovation.

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.

As home to the oldest elementary and high schools in the United States, Boston has always been one step ahead of the rest of the country in education policy. Amid the calamity, strife and uncertainty of 2020, Boston Public Schools has striven to maintain the trailblazing pace set four centuries ago. Caught in the middle of the chaos are the 54,000 school-aged children in Boston and the adults responsible for their care—parents, teachers, school leaders and educational staff around the world, especially adults responsible for decision-making about their ongoing learning.

Currently, however, there is a fundamental disconnect between the activities of the central office and the support needed by school leaders. This disconnect has to do specifically with what support school leaders need to create the right conditions for teachers to provide high-quality equitable instruction for all students. For BPS to advance equity and transform academic outcomes for each student, the district needs to create the conditions that will position school leaders and the central office to achieve the goal by working together.

Successful relationships between school-based and district office leaders allow for colleagues to interact, learn together, and build trust—all critical components in education systems pursuing change (Finnigan 2017). In an attempt to bridge the gap between district office and school-based leaders, I conducted a pilot by pairing school leaders with a district partner to collaborate on the implementation of PLCs (Professional Learning Communities) for all school leaders district-wide. In order to determine the appropriate level of support for these pairings, I conducted more than 50 interviews with staff and leaders within Boston Public Schools and leveraged data obtained through the PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) framework to focus on PLC leaders’ acute needs and adapt the structures of support accordingly.

In my analysis, I reflected on the three drivers of Frances Frei’s Trust Triangle—authenticity, empathy and logic. This capstone acknowledges the current state of affairs and offers concrete recommendations for Boston Public Schools to (a) build a foundation of trust to increase effective communication between school leaders and district office leaders; (b) provide support for school leaders to increase their capacity as instructional leaders; and (c) ensure leadership carries out three core responsibilities: providing direction, protection and order for school leaders, all of which are critical in times of crisis.

Across all sectors, attracting and retaining talent is a pressing challenge. At the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a non-profit working to transform 18 of Los Angeles Unified School District’s highest-need schools, the challenge of retention held particular relevance. The pace and urgency of work with high-need schools made turnover both understandable and damaging. An 18.3 percent average turnover rate from 2012-2016 created gaps in institutional knowledge and capacity – turnover meant an exponential increase in intensity for remaining team members. The Partnership identified manager skill as a lever for retention, and tasked me in my residency to create the Leadership Development Series. The Series’ goals focused on adaptive leadership skills, self-reflection, and coaching. The structure included 11 whole-group trainings, a peer coaching system, and an observation cycle of manager practice in check-ins. While the Series had positive impacts on overall staff satisfaction ratings and planned tenure, it is unclear if that impact came from changes in manager practice. Using the Ganz Leadership Practices framework, this paper argues that the Series succeeded because of strong shared relationships and structures, namely in initial relationship-building and peer coaching. However, the Series missed a foundational step in building a shared narrative about the drivers of retention and the management skills needed to improve retention, particularly the value of adaptive leadership skills like self-reflection and self-awareness, which can appear to run counter to the high-urgency work the Partnership undertakes at schools. Without this shared narrative, the ties between the Series and the ultimate goal of retention became abstract, resulting in a valuable professional development experience, but an unclear path to impact on retention goals. This capstone recommends that the Partnership create a more fertile ground for a focus on adaptive leadership skills, including engaging schools to create a common understanding of strong management, creating low-risk learning environments to build a culture of self-reflection, and including team retention as a performance goal for managers. For the sector, there are lessons to be learned about the value of creating a coherent narrative for a retention strategy and setting metrics aligned to those narratives.

Pay for Success is an innovative financing tool through which private investors provide upfront capital for high quality, evidence-based social services programs, and are paid back by government once pre-determined outcomes are reached. This tool enables governments to explore new programs without risk, and connects dollars directly to outcomes, rather than the delivery of services. Social Finance, a Boston-based nonprofit, launched the Pay for Success field in the U.S. in 2011, and is a leading practitioner in developing and implementing Pay for Success projects. Although 20 projects have launched in the U.S., none have been in the field of K-12 education due to the complexity of the tool and challenges associated with applying it in education contexts. This Capstone is focused on the strategic project that I led as a resident at Social Finance, through which I sought to assess the relevance of the Pay for Success model in the K-12 education sector, and pursue adaptations of the model to increase its potential for impact in the space. The foundation of my work was a set of six education projects that Social Finance launched in the second half of 2017, each intended to assess the feasibility of Pay for Success to support an education service provider’s K-12 intervention. My action plan for adaptation, which required both mindset and model changes to Social Finance’s typical approach, was grounded in change management literature and centered on engaging across the six specific projects to understand and address the barriers that Pay for Success presented across the projects’ education contexts. Through my work on and across these six projects, I found that Pay for Success, as it is traditionally defined, does have narrow relevance in the K-12 education space. The two major challenges that we identified included a lack of rigorous evidence for particular interventions, and a fundamental disconnect between stakeholders who pay for and implement education and those who benefit (or suffer) from the outcomes of education. To address these challenges, we developed four adapted models, each based on the traditional Pay for Success approach, but each with higher potential for impact in the education space. My strategic project has significant implications for Social Finance and for the Pay for Success field. By broadening the definition of Pay for Success beyond a single model, to include a range of outcomes-based financing tools such as the four adaptations that we explored in my work, there is immense opportunity to expand the reach, relevance, and impact of this innovative concept in education and beyond.

Upon the release of the Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System (RICAS) scores in December 2018, there was a massive public outcry over the prolonged neglect of the Providence Public School District. Various segments of the broader Providence community mobilized to advocate for a new course of action and to hold state and local governments accountable for failing to support the district. In the spring of 2019, Governor Gina M. Raimondo appointed Angélica Infante-Green as the new Commissioner of the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE). Commissioner Infante-Green’s primary charge was to turnaround the persistently failing school district. As the largest school district in the state, the Providence Public School District (PPSD) serves approximately 24,000 students, of which 91% are students of color, 84% are low-income, 31% are multilingual learners, and 16% receive special education services; this would be the largest education endeavor in RIDE’s history. As an Ed.L.D. resident at RIDE, I was charged with designing and leading a community engagement strategy that would promote greater collaboration between RIDE and the broader Providence community as they worked to develop the district’s Turnaround Action Plan (TAP). Drawing upon case studies from the field, the Dual Capacity-Building Framework, and elements of equity-centered design thinking, I designed and implemented a collaborative and co-constructed community design process. This capstone examines what happened when the community was given “a seat at the table” in the transformation of Providence Public Schools. What follows is an analysis of a three-month community design process that resulted in the development of recommendations that will be incorporated into the Turnaround Action Plan for the Providence Public School District. Following the analysis of the project, I discuss the implications of this work for my own leadership, as well as for RIDE and the education sector.

Humans can recognize others’ emotions based on overt cues such as facial expressions, affective vocalizations, or body posture, or by recruiting an abstract, causal theory of the conditions that tend to elicit different emotions. Whereas previous research has investigated the recognition of emotion in specific perceptual modalities (e.g. facial expressions), this dissertation focuses on the abstract representations that relate observable reactions to their antecedent causes. A combination of neuroimaging, behavioral, and developmental methods are used to shed light on the mechanisms that support various forms of emotion attribution, and to elucidate the core features or dimensions that structure the space of emotions we represent. Chapter 1 identifies brain regions that contain information about emotional valence conveyed either via facial expressions and or via animations depicting abstract situational information. These data reveal regions with modality-specific representations of emotional valence (i.e. patterns of activity that discriminate only positive versus negative facial expressions), as well as modality-independent representations: in medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), the valence representation generalizes across stimuli, indicating a common neural code that abstracts away from specific perceptual features and is invariant to different forms of evidence. Building on evidence that young infants discriminate and respond to the emotional expressions of others, Chapter 2 investigates whether infants also represent these expressions in relation to the situations that elicit them. The results of several experiments demonstrate that infants within their first year of life have expectations about how facial and vocal displays of emotion relate to the valence of events that precede them. Whereas Chapters 1 and 2 focus on a simple binary distinction between positive and negative affect, Chapter 3 investigates a space of more fine-grained discriminations (e.g. someone feeling proud vs. grateful). A combination of multi- voxel pattern analyses and representational similarity analyses reveal brain regions containing abstract and high-dimensional representations of attributed emotion. Moreover, a set of causal features (encoding properties of eliciting events that vary between different emotions) outperforms more primitive dimensions in capturing neural similarities within these regions. Together, these studies provide a newly detailed characterization of the representations that structure emotion attribution, including their development and neural basis.

This article describes the structure of academic discussions during the implementation of a literacy curriculum in the upper elementary grades. The authors examine the quality of academic discussion, using existing discourse analysis frameworks designed to evaluate varying attributes of classroom discourse. To integrate the overlapping qualities of these models with researchers’ descriptions of effective discussion into a single instrument, the authors propose a matrix that (1) moves from a present/absent analytic tendency to a continuum-based model and (2) captures both social and cognitive facets of quality academic discourse. The authors conclude with a discussion of how this matrix could serve to align teachers’ and researchers’ identification of quality academic discussion and the process by which users could measure improvement in students’ discourse skills over time.

School systems can be terribly fragmented and incoherent organizations. A lack of clear and focused priorities often results in poor execution of initiatives as well as duplicative, conflicting, non-coordinated, or non-complementary efforts. Moreover, a lack of shared priorities can be felt by school leaders and teachers as an inconsistent and overwhelming number of directives. During my 10-month residency at Chicago Public Schools, I led the strategic planning and continuous improvement process for the district’s Office of Teaching and Learning. I supported central office collaboration to define, socialize, measure, and monitor an equity-focused, district-wide instructional vision and an associated set of academic priorities. Most notably, I helped the office shift from previous years’ practice of drafting and executing over a dozen separate department plans to creating and collaborating around a singular, collective, officewide academic strategic plan. This capstone describes and analyzes my efforts to help craft a set of academic priorities, to lead for coherence, and to foster a collaborative culture of inquiry within a district’s academic office. The implications I draw from this work may be helpful to educational leaders, particularly district academic leads, who seek to organize and guide central office staff to develop academic programming, offer professional learning opportunities, and improve student outcomes.

De novo therapeutic design is challenged by a vast chemical repertoire and multiple constraints such as high broad-spectrum potency and low toxicity. We propose CLaSS (Controlled Latent attribute Space Sampling) — an efficient computational method for attribute-controlled generation of molecules, which leverages guidance from classifiers trained on an informative latent space of molecules modeled using a deep generative autoencoder. We further screen the generated molecules for additional key attributes by using a set of deep learning classifiers in conjunction with novel physicochemical features derived from high-throughput molecular simulations. The proposed approach is employed for designing non-toxic antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) with strong broad-spectrum potency, which are emerging drug candidates for tackling antibiotic resistance. Synthesis and wet lab testing of only twenty designed sequences identified two novel and minimalist AMPs with high potency against diverse Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens, including the multidrug-resistant K. pneumoniae, as well as low in vitro and in vivo toxicity.Live-cell confocal imaging revealed that the bactericidal mode of action of the peptides occurs through membrane pore formation. Both antimicrobials mitigate the onset of drug resistance and are effective against antibiotic-resistant strains. The proposed approach thus presents a viable path for faster and efficient discovery of potent and selective broad-spectrum antimicrobials.

Accountability has become a primary function of large-scale testing in the U.S. The pressure on educators to raise scores is vastly greater than it was several decades ago. Research has shown that high-stakes testing can generate behavioral responses that inflate scores, often severely. I argue that because of these responses, using tests for accountability necessitates major changes in the practices of educational measurement. The needed changes span the entire testing endeavor. This paper addresses implications for design, linking, and validation. It offers suggestions about possible new approaches and calls for research evaluating them.

Experimenters often use post-stratification to adjust estimates. Post-stratification is akin to blocking, except that the number of treated units in each stratum is a random variable because stratification occurs after treatment assignment. We analyse both post-stratification and blocking under the Neyman–Rubin model and compare the efficiency of these designs. We derive the variances for a post-stratified estimator and a simple difference-in-means estimator under different randomization schemes. Post-stratification is nearly as efficient as blocking: the difference in their variances is of the order of 1/n2, with a constant depending on treatment proportion. Post-stratification is therefore a reasonable alternative to blocking when blocking is not feasible. However, in finite samples, post-stratification can increase variance if the number of strata is large and the strata are poorly chosen. To examine why the estimators’ variances are different, we extend our results by conditioning on the observed number of treated units in each stratum. Conditioning also provides more accurate variance estimates because it takes into account how close (or far) a realized random sample is from a comparable blocked experiment. We then show that the practical substance of our results remains under an infinite population sampling model. Finally, we provide an analysis of an actual experiment to illustrate our analytical results.

In addition to preparing students academically, public schools are increasingly expected to address the complex social, emotional, and safety needs of students. Collective impact, first defined by Kania & Kramer (2011) as “a commitment of a group of important actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem” has emerged as a framework for bringing cross-sector partners together to share ownership of student success (p. 36). Its data-informed, continuous improvement orientation drives collective action to address root-cause issues and to achieve large-scale social impact.

This capstone documents the leadership and support I provided to Oceanside Unified School District (OUSD) and its community partners to advance and plan for the long-term sustainability of the Oceanside Promise (The Promise), a collective impact initiative anchored within OUSD. FSG’s Five Conditions of Collective Impact and StriveTogether’s Cradle to Career Theory of Action were used to assess the current state of the partnership, its backbone capacity, and the development of a multiyear strategic roadmap. My strategic project involved working with district leadership, the Oceanside Promise Foundation (The Foundation), and The Promise partners to clarify roles and direction, create coherence, and facilitate shared ownership of The Promise and its long-term sustainability. In addition to my professional and academic experience, literature regarding collective impact, critical leadership competencies, and organizational and community coherence informed the strategic project’s planning and execution.

This capstone also provides insight into the challenges and opportunities of a district-anchored collective impact initiative. Most notably, it explores how shared community ownership must be intentionally cultivated and how collective impact challenges the mindsets and competencies of educators and community members with a traditional view of how school districts and community partner. Thus, the implications for site and sector sections elevate the conditions that would better support the success of innovative school districts assuming the role of backbone support in collective impact initiatives.