Equal Opportunity Education with Reid Saaris

What if quality education was accessible for every child, regardless of their socioeconomic background or race? Buckle up as we explore this intriguing question with Reid Saaris, the force behind the nonprofit Equal Opportunity Schools. With Reid’s unique insights, we illuminate the dark corners of educational inequality and the persistent underinvestment in students of diverse backgrounds, setting the stage for a compelling conversation about what might be done to move the needle on equity in education.

A candidate for the Washington State Superintendency, Reid has committed his career to helping school leaders provide all student an equal opportunity to achieve their dreams.  He is the author of "The Kids Across the Hall and the Fight for Opportunity in Our Schools," available HERE on Amazon.com

To connect with Reid, folks can find him on facebook, instagram, and linkedin. His campaign website is www.reid4waschools.com.

"Outliers in Education" is a project of CEE, The Center for Educational Effectiveness. Find out more at effectiveness.org.

Produced by Jamie Howell at Howell at the Moon Productions.

Transcript

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Outliers in Education is brought to you by CEE, the Center for Educational Effectiveness. Better data, better decisions, better schools. To find out more, visit effectivenessorg.

Eric Price: 0:15

Education is for everybody? Right? In theory maybe, but not in practice. One recent study found that 67% of us think our school systems are actually rigged in the favor of the wealthy and the white. Is that true, and if it is, what can be done about it? Today we'll meet a man who has dedicated his career to these very questions, on this episode of Outliers in Education.

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I think we really need to change how we look at what we do in schools. Everything that we do as educators, it just comes back to people.

Erich Bolz: 0:44

I love it, even when it's hard, especially when it's hard.

Ad VO: 0:47

Ultimately. I mean, this is about what's best for kids.

Eric Price: 0:52

Welcome everyone to another installment of Outliers in Education. I'm Eric Price here, as always, with my co-host, Eric Bulls from the Center for Educational Effectiveness. Bullsie, I found this inspiring quote from the late 1800s, back when we were starting to latch onto the idea that education might be a good idea for society as a whole and not just for the folks with money and power. Joseph White, back in 1864, had this nice idea about how public schools could provide a place where quote the children of the rich and poor, of the honored and the unknown, meet together on common ground. Unquote. The idea was that providing an education to everyone, not just the elite. But like I talked with my students, that was like a century and a half ago and doesn't really seem like we've gotten there yet. So what do you think, bullsie? Do you think our school systems are rigged?

Erich Bolz: 1:43

Well, ep, thanks for starting out with that nice light topic today, just for you. So I know rigged for some is a term that might be triggering a little bit. So whether we say our school systems are rigged, whether we take a look at what sociologists would say structured inequality, or whether we just delve into the data and look at the numbers, the outcomes in terms of outputs out of schools and then what that means for life outcomes, there's absolutely no question that, houston, we've got a problem.

Eric Price: 2:11

Well, I totally agree with you, and our guest today has dedicated his career to making sure that every student has access to great learning opportunities. That's not a small challenge, I'd say, and he's the founder and former CEO of the nonprofit called Equal Opportunity Schools. He's a Harvard grad, a former school teacher and coach, an author, and, most recently, he's put his name in the hat for the Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Please say hello to Reed Sarez. Welcome, reed.

Reid Saaris: 2:41

Thanks for having me Appreciate the opportunity.

Eric Price: 2:44

It is great to have you on the show, and I just want your perspective on this question. Do you think our school systems are rigged, and if you do, how do we get there?

Reid Saaris: 2:55

Yeah, that's a great question. I do think that opportunities are still unequal, despite the best efforts to solve those challenges. I think there's regular and well-documented underinvestment in students of a variety of backgrounds. Most recently, I've been looking at some of the Washington State data and the challenge of funding fully special education, the challenge of fully funding and resourcing things like my wife came to the US at the age of six and she needed to learn English in addition to the other things going on in school and that takes additional services and support and so we're not routinely resourcing those effectively for folks. And then you see gaps in funding by students' income and students' race when you look at all sorts of reports like the education trust work across the country. So, yeah, big gaps, I would say, and opportunity often outside of the school people talk about and focus on, but also inside the school in terms of financial resources, in terms of teacher experience and quality and also in terms of curriculum and access to learning opportunities, which is where I focused a lot of my career so far.

Erich Bolz: 3:59

Well, thank you for that, Reed, and as somebody a lot smarter than me, which is a fairly long list once said, systems are completely designed to get the results they get. Obviously, this didn't happen overnight. Can you tell us a little bit from your perspective around how we got there?

Reid Saaris: 4:13

Oh, big question. Yeah, I mean a little bit like you were talking about in the intro. There's sort of a history of access for the most elite folks, as determined by society at the time to school. So we started out with I was a history teacher and I'm currently doing some teaching at Rainier Beach High School and Theory of Knowledge and things like this.

Reid Saaris: 4:35

But I love the history angle around it where, yeah, schools started out as a notion for just a select few need to be involved and then, to EP's point, over time you started to see, hey, education is a public good, it's something that I am better off if my neighbor is more educated.

Reid Saaris: 4:56

And so we expanded beyond the notion of education as something for white men who own property, to women, to people of color. We expanded the notion beyond primary education to education at the secondary level should be available to everyone. And then the notion of equal opportunity schools was that logic of universal access and the public good benefit of education hasn't yet reached the highest levels of K-12 education and that is often these advanced courses where those courses sprang up in the 50s and 60s when schools were getting integrated as a way to have a separate set of opportunities for kids at a higher level and to this day, you're almost 3 quarters of a million low-income students and students of color who would be involved in those classes if we had equal opportunities to participate across race and income lines.

Erich Bolz: 5:51

Hey, why we're on the topic. Tell us a little bit about how you derive that figure.

Reid Saaris: 5:55

Sure, yeah.

Reid Saaris: 5:55

So the work for me started with this idea of missing students, and that was inspired by my best friend, who went to school literally just across the hallway from me and got a radically different education.

Reid Saaris: 6:07

My mom was a career educator and knew the school system, and he was first generation in his family to go through some of these experiences, and so he didn't have a mom pointing him in the direction of hey, this is how the system works, this is where to go, this is the things that'll get you ready for what you want to do later.

Reid Saaris: 6:23

And so that notion of missing students followed me to my time as a teacher, when I started to put more names and experiences and stories to that idea and saw lots of kids who could do really incredible work if they were invited into AP programs, ib programs, things like that. To your question about the national number, we collected data from every single high school in the US, data from the college board, data, from the IB data, from the National Center for Education Statistics, and we actually did the math at the school level for every school in the US to say how many more low income students and students of color would you have in these advanced courses, if participation were equitable, what are those impediments that you see for low income or for students of color into those IP AP?

Reid Saaris: 7:09

Yeah, great question. So we tended to divide it into a few categories. One is basic information. So if you ask students and we've asked a lot of them a million students last time I counted, but it's been been going up a lot since we survey every student in the, in the schools where Equal Opportunity Schools has partnered, and you ask them and you say what is AP or IB, how does it work, what are the benefits, how do I sign up? Just core information about the programs.

Reid Saaris: 7:36

It's inequitable and it's divided along the types of lines that I mentioned with my best friend, with my wife and others, where they just may not know the system in the same way that other students do. And so you see those inequities popping up in terms of what we call information gaps. Then you have expectations gaps. Do you do people in the school have the same level of understanding of what the aspirations of students are? We found in those surveys as well, across probably 40 states now, that about 90% of students from every background aspire to go to college and about 90% of students from every background report that their parents expect them to go to college.

Reid Saaris: 8:14

But the school system doesn't necessarily understand that and you ask a lot of different educators and they have different you know. They say maybe 60% want to go to college and these sorts of things. So you have differing expectations on the part of students, families and the school in terms of what the students goals are. And then there's a preparation question, and the preparation gap is sometimes real and sometimes imagined, where people say, hey, this set of students couldn't do it, they're not ready, they didn't have the same preparation as a reason for why they shouldn't be included. What we've found time and again is, when you close those gaps, success in the AP and IB classes maintains or increases in general. And so the preparation gap is real in some ways and there's need to support kids and make sure they have the skills, but we overemphasize that as a reason not to include missing students when it comes down to the real data of how they do in the classes.

Erich Bolz: 9:13

So an information and expectation and a preparation gap yes, hey, thank you for that Reed and switching gears just a little tiny bit and you booked the kid across the hall. To fight for opportunities in our schools is based on a lot of your own experiences, both within your family and your K-12 experience, and then also your early teaching in Buford, South Carolina. So can you tell us a little bit about that origin story and what has really translated into this lifelong passion? Sure, absolutely.

Reid Saaris: 9:41

Yeah, I mentioned my best friend earlier and then one of the other kids across the hall that really started it all off for me was my foster sister, and at the age of nine I was in my only childhood home I'd ever live in. And she came at the age of six and it was her 10th childhood home and so I had this wake up notion of hey, there's, there's radically different life experiences out there in the world, and then I started to hear and understand how caseworkers, social workers, counselors and others were talking about Erin and they were talking about her and what we think of in education as a deficit mindset. She's really bad at how to tough and she couldn't possibly, and so the notion at first was she couldn't possibly make it in a mainstream classroom. My mom, being a school counselor, said a little bit later we need to retest her on those things that you sort of drew those conclusions around. And her and my mom's notion was that Erin had been traumatized and she was scared. And the engagement that she's showing on this test has nothing to do with with a limited cognitive capability. It has to do with the nature of our way of understanding that. And so Erin had been malnourished and all sorts of things, and after a time we retested her and suddenly she went from well, she couldn't possibly be successful in a mainstream classroom to, of course, she can be successful in a mainstream classroom. We also heard things like she couldn't be successful in a regular family. She might not ever learn how to love some of these sorts of things.

Reid Saaris: 11:04

That as a nine year old, 10 year old, 11 year old, I got to see and experience. Erin, instead of these, you know notions about who, what she couldn't do, and I knew that the notions that that were sort of limiting notions weren't true. And I knew the same thing with Jamie in high school, when the notion was, hey, you know, he can't do the college level coursework, and so that's what inspired me along the journey was every time people started to say somebody couldn't, I said, well, actually I know my students and I saw what they did. Actually I know Jamie, actually I know Erin. And so let's not assume against, let's assume in favor of and let's increase opportunities and let people have a chance to show what they can do.

Erich Bolz: 11:49

The portrayal of your mom in the initial part of the books pretty transparent. What's, what's that relationship like now?

Reid Saaris: 11:55

Yeah, with me and my mom, or my mom and my sister.

Erich Bolz: 12:00

Hey, great questions. Feel free to answer both.

Eric Price: 12:04

Hey, you don't get to ask questions here, reed, don't? You know the deal here? What's up?

Reid Saaris: 12:08

Yeah, I mean, all of us will be getting together for Christmas coming up and we spend good time together and you know, with the book, we've unpacked some of these issues together. So it's yeah, it's easy to convey somebody else as having missed out on potential or underestimated somebody. So there's a little bit of that about my mom, which is maybe what you're referring to in terms of my perspective versus hers on this. A big part of the story for me was I came, you know, ripping out of this set of childhood experiences and, you know, social justice motivated as a young educator, and you know part of that is saying, oh man, I see how these other people are really screwing things up and they don't get it, and that notion, I think, caused me a lot of trouble.

Reid Saaris: 12:52

To have that attitude about other people and to say, well, I got it figured out and I got the data and I know how, to, you know, believe in people and other people don't have it can be a really toxic way to approach things.

Reid Saaris: 13:03

And so some of the irony and, I think, interesting part of the story over time is how do we come to understand, as educators in our own journey, the ways that we are misunderstanding people, the ways that we have not yet figured things out, the things that we have yet to learn, and I think you know a little bit of poking fun at myself more than anything throughout the book to start to say, hey, you know, here's this guy walking around pretending he knows the answer to this thing, when he's doing the very things that he's concerned with other people doing and not realizing it.

Reid Saaris: 13:36

And that's the position where I think we all find ourselves into some extent. We want to, as educators, enter the room and say I got the answer, I got it figured out, I got this and that, and you all have a lot to learn. And the reality is we have a lot to learn and it's hard and it's vulnerable, and so that's what I tried to do in the book was make it a real journey of not somebody saying I'm writing the book because I have all the answers, but I'm writing the book because I've got a lot of mistakes to share. And, yes, I started out by pointing out mistakes and others, but eventually got pushed to the point where I could really acknowledge those in myself, even on tough issues like race and gender and what we expect of others.

Eric Price: 14:14

So, Reed, let me just ask you this Can I get this right that if I write a book, I can clean up all the crap that's happened in my family? Is that what I can do? I just want to get that clear.

Reid Saaris: 14:26

Yes, yes, Perfect.

Eric Price: 14:29

So when we start to talk about some of those inequalities, what are the things that you would say, hey, this is how we can start to move that system that we haven't moved for a century and a half. What are those steps that you think that we should get to where we can have more of an equitable education system?

Reid Saaris: 14:47

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I do think it involves a bunch of nerdy stuff on the one hand, a bunch of nerdy stuff like funding formulas and teacher credentialing and assignment and who gets into which classes and the master schedule and how we orient that. But I think the sort of theme throughout the book, that is the sort of a little more human than technical, is that we have to start seeing the potential and possibility in others, because I was in programs that were not especially diverse as a student and so I missed out on a lot of learning. And so the sort of other side of the kid across the hall is it can refer to Aaron and Jamie, but it also refers to me and if I'm separated out from folks with different experiences, my learning is severely diminished.

Reid Saaris: 15:41

And at a very fundamental level, learning is the incorporation of difference into our minds. If you walk into a classroom as a student or a teacher and you aren't encountering something different than what you already think and you're not grappling with that and incorporating that into your mind at the brain level, you haven't learned anything. And so if we're having homogeneity of experiences as leaders, as educators, as students, I think we're having only a partial and a relatively more impoverished education. So I think the biggest thing to do to address a lot of these challenges is we need to have experiences on a day-to-day basis with people who are different from our experiences and backgrounds.

Eric Price: 16:22

And does the system push back Reid? What is the push back from the system on that homogeneity?

Reid Saaris: 16:27

I mean there's a push towards separation. We have increasing residential segregation, we have increasing separation when it comes to who goes to school where. And then the programs that I've been working on AP and IB programs they have tended to be relatively separate, and so the more I'm exposed to something, the more I like it as a basic tendency, when you look at images and words and all these sorts of things. So what is our exposure? And then that sort of self-perpetuates right. And so there has to be, I think, leadership coming in to break that cycle and say, hey, I believe that kids of every background can do this. I believe people of different backgrounds can live in the same neighborhood and I'm going to invest in that and I'm going to spend time there and then sort of break that cycle towards how we think about things and what we're exposed to and what we're aware of and what we like.

Eric Price: 17:15

All right, after the break we'll be back for more with Reid Sarris right here on Outliers in Education Not by SEL expert Dr Greg Benner.

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Erich Bolz: 18:05

He's telling us strategies that we can implement tomorrow.

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Eric Price: 18:27

Welcome back to Outliers in Education. Today we're deep in conversation with author, education activist and candidate for the Washington State Superintendent, reid Sarris.

Erich Bolz: 18:36

In the part of the world that I live in, I live on the dusty side of the cascades. In the part of the world that I live in, it's not uncommon to hear there is no white privilege, there is no gender privilege. How do we begin to actually physically unpack that?

Reid Saaris: 18:48

Yeah, I mean back in the classroom as a teacher, so drawn back to what we're talking about in the classroom, because we try to engage all these things down. And what we're talking about as a class is that there are ways to get to the bottom of a question like that Do these things exist? And so we've just been enjoying the power of experimental method as a way to get an answer to a question like that, and so when you say that this type of privilege doesn't exist, you can simply start to test it. You know, and for folks who aren't aware, there's just so many interesting studies to look up and say, hey, if I change somebody's name to a name that sounds like it's of a different background, you're gonna see fewer callbacks for a job opportunity. When you lower the curtain at the orchestra and do the auditions, you're gonna have an increase in women who are getting selected to participate in the orchestra, because there's a male female bias in selection for the orchestra. And so to me, those are you know, they're worthwhile questions and discussions. Absolutely you should question the notion of do these things exist if I haven't seen it and experienced it.

Reid Saaris: 19:54

Let's get some data and let's get some evidence, and the evidence is strong in a variety of ways.

Reid Saaris: 19:59

It doesn't mean that every thing that everybody came up with about bias or prejudice is true, but I think the evidence is really powerful to see a wide variety of ways in which it does show up, and that's what we did with the AP and IB programs.

Reid Saaris: 20:14

And when you get down to data too, I think it can lower people's defensiveness If I say hey, there's a set of students in our school who haven't been encouraged to participate in advanced courses by any adult. It may have to do with the adult at home and may have to do that with the adult at school, but what we know is that encouragement by any adult to participate at least this was in some of our early data I haven't looked at the most recent any student who's encouraged to participate by adult is four times as likely to sign up and get involved. So we don't need to talk so much about who didn't encourage who. But let's say we have an opportunity here. We have an opportunity with kids who are excited. They have the motivation that teachers say is important to participate. They have a B and C that are gonna make them likely to be successful in advanced courses. Let's have that encouraging conversation and start to shift the data based on facts rather than accusations or recommendations or things like that.

Eric Price: 21:09

So, reed, we've been Bullsie and I've been in this business for about 30 years Each about 60 years. So we've seen this pendulum swinging back and forth, but one of the things that I think has really impacted both Bullsie and I is this idea about belonging. So that seems to be a subject that you've kind of picked up on and pointed towards. Why do you think that's such a big deal in this context of equality?

Reid Saaris: 21:37

I think it's at the if you think of a hierarchy of needs, it's at the base of the hierarchy of needs. It's a gateway to so much else. If I don't feel like I belong socially, I got alarm signals going off. It's a threatening environment, Like Claude Steele describes it. It's like there's a snake in the room and you're sort of on alert. And so then you say, well, can you focus on this thing over here? And you say, well, there's a snake in the room.

Reid Saaris: 21:59

I don't know if I'm belong here, I don't know if I'm safe here, I don't know how people are gonna treat me and all those sorts of things. So we've worked with a lot of teachers to support their desire to increase belonging and to do belonging rich activities. We've also done belonging activations where you really share data with kids. Hey, 50% of kids of color entering AP for the first time worry that they won't belong. So you take it from I don't belong to.

Reid Saaris: 22:25

That's how a lot of people like me feel in this experience and so that's okay and normal, not something that suggests I shouldn't be there. And then the last one we did is we had kids write postcards to appear where they would say at the end of this experience in AP, what would I tell people like me who are coming in to the courses and so give them pointers and have a sense of hey, this is experience of people like me and that's normal to go through worrying I don't belong and finding my path and those sorts of things. So I think that's a key question and really important area.

Eric Price: 22:57

And let me ask you this, reed so this is just from the hip, but do you think that most schools ask those questions of students like do you feel like you belong?

Reid Saaris: 23:07

Oh man, increasingly I think they have been, but I don't know that it's a systematic effort and I think it's always. There's always an opportunity to find better ways to use and collect data. At schools we sort of often find ourselves the sort of data rich and insight or information and knowledge poor, and so I think that's one where we just found tremendous value and when folks close the gaps in access to advanced courses, there was a transformation in belonging and so we sort of tracked that and I think it's a huge unlock. I think it's a huge sort of baseline thing that schools should absolutely be looking at and tracking and addressing when there are challenges there.

Erich Bolz: 23:50

Reed, we know that you have thrown your hat in the ring for state superintendent of public construction. Curious as to what prompted you to run? Obviously you have. You've forgotten more about policy than EP, and I know, and we consider ourselves policy wonks, so you know what a box the state superintendent is in with regard to policy to some extent. So what changes or green shoots would you hope to see as a result of your role as state superintendent, given some fairly significant policy constraints For me?

Reid Saaris: 24:22

what prompted me to run was my experience with teachers, students and leaders all across the state and across the country who are making breakthroughs. It's a, you know, teaching is a really challenging. It's increasingly challenging. We have all sorts of things, you know, headwinds lately, but I see people make breakthroughs and I don't think that there is to your question about policy. I don't think there's a policy silver bullet. There is no button that any state superintendent can press to. You know, because in our state you're talking about over a million students in relationship with tens of thousands of teachers on a daily basis. It's incredibly complex. It's the largest shared undertaking that we have in Washington state.

Reid Saaris: 25:06

From a resource standpoint, people standpoint, dollar standpoint, this is just an immense undertaking, and so, to me, I was prompted to get involved because the last seven years, we've seen declines in student learning, fallen out of the top half of states in terms of student learning, according to NAEP. We've seen steady declines in student mental health, and these things are not just a result of the pandemic. We've seen declines before that and we're 40th out of 50 states, which means 39 other states are doing it better, which to me is a travesty. We have the shared values in Washington state to address this. We have the economic resources We've been one of the fastest growing economies for multiple recent years running. We have the research and insights and data collection, and so to me, it's about leadership that connects those dots.

Reid Saaris: 25:53

And I actually thrive in an environment where you don't have that magic button to press, because with equal opportunity schools, we have no power over anybody.

Reid Saaris: 26:04

What we had was the mission work and the sort of goals that we shared with people and that they shared with us, and we had deep data and worked together to solve challenging problems, and so that resulted. I think by the time I left, we had been hired by more than a thousand school and district leaders across the country where they were actually paying our nonprofit to come in and help them solve problems. So if they don't even have to pay me because I'm state superintendent and we have the team there, we'll come in and solve problems with people and we'll use the data and I'm obsessed with where can you make the biggest difference in people's lives and what's going to make the biggest difference to address the challenges that teachers are facing and things like that. So I say you get focused on the problems that are most significant and you solve them together. There is no magic formula, magic policy, but it's the work I've been doing and I see a huge need for that here in Washington.

Erich Bolz: 26:58

Just a short follow up. What would you see your two years into your role as state superintendent? What would you see as one to three key green shoots?

Reid Saaris: 27:07

So I put out a paper recently, early summer, with the Children's Alliance called when Can we Find Hope During the Epidemic of Hopelessness Facing Our Children, and I think mental health is top of the list. We declared it an emergency, I think, over two years ago. Our data findings were that 58% of Washington adolescents are experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression, with one in 10 having attempted suicide in the last year, and it's just at a level that's inconceivable to me. And the part of what pushed me into running was we put together a lot of data and insights on this. We interviewed people around the state, around the country, around the world what are the best strategies? And it was long into I don't know, a year plus after it was declared a state of emergency.

Reid Saaris: 27:55

We went around to people and we said we're new to this, but we're trying to pull together some insights and let us know if we're on the right track and this is useful. And the response generally was thank you for bringing us together around this, around evidence and data of what's possible so that we can actually get to solutions here. And I was thinking that's what I love to do, let's do this. And so we've come up with a set of solutions in the paper that I think will be reviewed this year by the state board and probably the legislature. That says, you know, at $40 a student you could have really rigorous, evidence-based strategies that will address issues for most of the students who are struggling with anxiety and depression, which is the biggest driver of mental health struggle in our state. So that would be a big one.

Eric Price: 28:34

And to put that into context, reed, how much? If that's $40 per kid, how much are we spending per kid and FTE for the state of Washington about?

Reid Saaris: 28:42

For overall spend I forget the exact figure maybe around 15,000 students these days.

Reid Saaris: 28:48

So, yeah, 40 is a really small portion, and we have a lot of federal funding to be able to do the startup costs and launch for systems like this.

Reid Saaris: 28:58

So, yeah, I think that's a big one. I think we should follow the evidence-based strategies around, whether it's paraeducators, tutors and learning support, because we do have not only the achievement gap that's caused by opportunity gaps that people have been talking about a lot, but we have a lot of pandemic gaps and things there that some areas within our state, some schools and some other states have aggressively addressed and supported, so that you can find schools and districts where student learning is above where it was pre-pandemic levels, and so I think those are the types of scaled solutions that we should have accessible to everyone. And then the third sort of green shoot to me is getting serious about what high school and beyond planning means, and again, this is a case where we're behind most other states, and I think that surprises people to know and that one's not rocket science, but it does take bringing people together around evidence and building solutions collaboratively, which is what I love to do.

Eric Price: 29:56

Yeah, reid. Well, now is the time that Bullsy. We have asked him to summarize this whole thing. Bullsy, you got a lot of boulders here. What do you got for a summary, my man?

Erich Bolz: 30:08

Well, you caught me writing my last note. I make a commitment to keep it to a page, so it's an awful lot to distill inside of one page today. So bottom line, starting right from the top, opportunities are still inequitable. I think it's absolutely fantastic that he's working part-time at Rainier Beach as a teacher right now. Boy, is it tough out there. So knowing that we've got a state superintendent candidate who's plugged into that everyday reality, I think really will resonate with folks. I really appreciate it in the book and this was a learning for me. I hadn't thought about the fact that advanced level classes were really another Jim Crow response to integration and I think that's something that's important to think about. I think the word that's going to resonate with our educator friends out there when we really pull this apart and test the data is disproportionality. It's something that we hear all the time and our requirements are around reporting, but what would happen if our best and brightest outputs, our students, looked like a slice of the communities we serve? Great things would happen, both in terms of holistic life outcomes but also increasing our GDP. It's the best investment we can make, both in individuals and in societies.

Erich Bolz: 31:19

The collective so many parallels with our outlier study. It's almost as if CEE and Reed have been doing parallel work for the longest time. But one of the things that we look at in the outlier study and those successful schools we found in those 23 characteristics and conditions that we found across those schools none of them were state mandated or prescribed improvement efforts, by the way. What we did find is students who are encouraged to elaborate on personal goals and outcomes are students who tend to achieve it at higher levels. So lots of parallels in that research. On a personal level. Always easier to critique others than to change ourselves and reflect on our own approaches and performances. So I think that was just a powerful reminder and a theme in Reed's book Across the Board.

Erich Bolz: 32:02

Really like the answer around how do we start to break down notions of there is no white privilege, there is no gender privilege. I think if we could encourage people to test their beliefs against the empirical evidence, we would be further along as opposed to throwing mud at each other for our own personal points of view. So I thought that was a really smart answer. I love what Reed brought up around four times more likely to persist in these classes If you've got an adult who says have you considered it? Or you should do it, because that just jives with so much we know about the power of one caring adult inside of the school house to transform a child's education or to ensure that child actually becomes a graduate.

Erich Bolz: 32:42

Public ed the largest shared effort we have in our state from a scope and scale and resource standpoint Mental health in terms of a green shoot, really stood out to me and it validated that I think we're on the right track and we think of so many of our podcast guests, from Maria Barrera to Jim Sporelater, greg Benner and Aram Christopher, all talking about different aspects of surfacing student trauma and addressing that mental health. Thanks, reed, we feel like we're on the right track and I think, to conclude, maybe job one, it's to foster belonging, those social connections and that growth mindset we want all students to have the potential to say I am an AP student, I belong here and, reed, thank you, it was just great to be on with the Kindred spirit today.

Reid Saaris: 33:24

Awesome. This is great. Yes, I really appreciated the opportunity and what a good conversation about the good work happening.

Eric Price: 33:31

Reed, is there anything else you'd like to touch on that Bowles didn't get in that exhaustive summary.

Reid Saaris: 33:36

No, I think you covered it all. I would just say that you know, yeah, folks want to follow along with what we're up to. It's read for wasschoolscom REID, the number four, waschoolscom, and then the book we were talking about is the Kid Across the Hall. Where can they find that? Anywhere books are sold.

Eric Price: 33:54

Reed, I want to thank you for being on the program and really your heart to say, hey, let's do the right thing, because that's what I'm hearing you and I think that Bowlesy and I are very much in that same headspace of we now have seen it, we've been in it and now we want to make sure that we try to make it as right as possible for all kids. So I want to thank you for being on the show and for your efforts to try to do that very same thing. So thank you, yes, thank you so much.

Erich Bolz: 34:20

I really appreciate it, and thanks to all of you for joining us today on Outliers in Education. You can find this episode and more anywhere you listen to your favorite podcast or visit us online at effectivenessorg. Until next time, this has been Outliers in Education.

Ad VO: 34:39

If you'd like to find out how to gather the data you need to help drive positive change in your school or district, take a moment to visit CEE, the Center for Educational Effectiveness, at effectivenessorg. Better data, better decisions, better schools Outliers in Education.