Farah Jimenez, President and CEO of the Philadelphia Education Fund, joins Robert Balfanz to explore the function of local education intermediaries and examine the roles they play in designing the education systems we need to enable all students to succeed.
One of the unique features of education in the United States is how decentralized and localized the decision-making is. This has the ability to be a source of creativity and flexibility, which are necessary for innovation, but can also be a source of stagnation since roles are constantly shifting.
This constant shift has given rise to another uniquely American institution: the local education intermediary. With long histories in their communities, these organizations often support the development of new approaches and ideas. In this podcast, Ms. Jimenez discusses ways that one such organization has supported the efforts of a large urban school district to develop a college-going culture and help young people develop viable plans for postsecondary success for nearly forty years.
Farah Jimenez, President and CEO of the Philadelphia Education Fund, joins Robert Balfanz to explore the function of local education intermediaries and examine the roles they play in designing the education systems we need to enable all students to succeed.
One of the unique features of education in the United States is how decentralized and localized the decision-making is. This has the ability to be a source of creativity and flexibility, which are necessary for innovation, but can also be a source of stagnation since roles are constantly shifting.
This constant shift has given rise to another uniquely American institution: the local education intermediary. With long histories in their communities, these organizations often support the development of new approaches and ideas. In this podcast, Ms. Jimenez discusses ways that one such organization has supported the efforts of a large urban school district to develop a college-going culture and help young people develop viable plans for postsecondary success for nearly forty years.
Bob (00:00):
Welcome to designing education, the Pathways to Adult Success podcast series. I'm Dr. Robert Balfanz Director of the Everyone Graduates Center at John's Hopkins. I'm delighted to have you join us today. This is the fifth in a series of conversations we'll be having with education leaders and thinkers and practitioners from across the country. We want talk about what will it take to create an education system that truly empowers all young people and sets them on pathways to long term success.
Bob (01:07):
In today's episode, I'll be joined by Farrah Jimenez, the president and CEO of the Philadelphia Education Fund. One of the unique features of education in the United States is how decentralized and localized decision-making is. At some level, the designers of American education are members of its over 12,000 school boards at an equal number of local superintendents. This could be a source of creativity and flexibility, which are necessary for innovation, but it can also be a source of stagnation as the folks in these roles constantly shift. And there's always the assumption that each new school board or superintendent needs to have a new agenda. This in a way prevents significant changes from having the time they need to take root and have impact. So this has given rise to another uniquely American feature that we're diving into today. The local education intermediary. These are organizations with long histories in their communities, which among other things support the development of new approach and new ideas over time. In some cases, they become the design shops for their local school systems. With Farrah we are going to explore the function of local education intermediaries and examine the roles they play in designing the education systems we need to enable all students to succeed. Welcome Farrah.
Farrah (02:29):
Thank you for having me, Bob.
Bob (02:32):
We're gonna have a good conversation today and we like to start our conversations, um, with sort of the goal in mind, which is, you know, our aim is to have an educational system where for every student every day is a good day. So when you were in school, what was a good day?
Farrah (02:47):
Well, Bob it may not surprise you to know that I was, uh, completely a nerd while I was in school. I absolutely thought the best days were the days where I felt like I was being stimulated, learning something really new, being challenged, letting my curiosity take me into interesting directions. And I was fortunate to attend a school where that was possible. I also really liked it when I was having a day at school where the teacher didn't have to spend a lot of time with classroom management. So I was fortunate that my parents exercised their choice and moved into a community that had really great public school system. And I got a high-quality education.
Bob (03:24):
Yeah. Yeah. I think we have a lot in common because that's always my answer: a good day was when I learned something. And then if I'm honest, I think the challenge we face is that those days weren't every day. There were some days when I was in school and I didn't feel like a lot of learning was going on.
Farrah (03:40):
Oh, absolutely. Those are days where the teacher was mainly trying to manage what was happening in the building or in the school classroom. If I had a good teacher, there were times where a lot of that study could happen on my own after school. But I knew that the teacher was really interested in helping her students or his students grow.
Bob (04:00):
I mean, that was key, right? When you knew the teachers were on your side and were there to really help you learn, then you felt like you could get through anything.
Farrah (04:19):
It's one of the things you and I have talked about in the past, and part of the really important work that you've been doing as part of Pathways to Adult Success. That a sense of belonging is one of the key elements to helping young people really feel connected to their academic settings, but also, I think, really in communion with their potential. So being able to create that sense of belonging. And I was fortunate that I was able to go to a school where that was possible.
Bob (04:45):
Yeah. All right. So, let's figure out how to make that happen more often. To start, can you tell me what the Philadelphia Education Fund is?
Farrah (04:56):
We are an intermediary in Philadelphia as you indicated in your definition. That was right on point, that’s exactly how we're designed to operate. And we’ve been a key partner to the school district of Philadelphia since our founding in 1984 or 85. Our history was really working with educators to help advance humanities and math education, which at the time were getting short shrift in our public school system. We were working alongside our superintendent at the time, trying to bring in relationships from the private sector and resources from the private sector to support educator-led reform. I think over time where we've evolved and what we currently are, is primarily an opportunity for the school district to test innovation, to have somebody who works alongside them to really serve the needs of students and educators in the larger community. Our programs right now are primarily focused on exposing and supporting young people with college and career advising services—an area of work that is under-resourced in many urban school districts, Philadelphia being no different—and therefore being able to provide the enrichments and support so that our students have a greater likelihood of not just going to college, but completing.
Bob (06:14):
Yeah, that's so crucial, and it’s really interesting, because you know, have a long-shared history with the Philadelphia Education Fund, because I got into education reform work through mathematics reform too. Now what about designing education? Right? What role can intermediaries play in encouraging and supporting the redesign and improvement of education, so that it enables all students to have this pathway to adult success which we both believe is so crucial?
Farrah (06:45):
I think one of the primary ways in which an intermediary can support is that lot of our school districts have constraints on the way that they can use their resources, whether those are human or financial resources. So they may have a desire to innovate or to test an idea, but their ability to actually deliver on that is constrained. And I know that with the Philadelphia Education Fund, one of the primary ways in which we partner with the school district is that we are a judgment-free zone in terms of whether or not they're delivering great success for our students. What we are focused on is, how do we help them achieve their aims? Because we know that their intention is to be able to have great impact for young people in Philadelphia, despite the economic and financial constraints on their ability to fulfill that vision.
Farrah (07:35):
So we are able to raise independent dollars to create programs that are embedded in our public schools. For example, we have a college access program that is embedded full-time in six Philadelphia public schools. We work alongside the district, sometimes in implementation of strategies. So we've been an important partner for the school district in the GEAR-up program that runs in 12 Philadelphia high schools. We've also worked as a consultant alongside their school leadership teams or principals and counselors to help identify ways in which schools can create college-going cultures, and we support their ability to actually fulfill the promise of creating a college prep environment in our traditional open-enrollment public high schools. The other way that we serve is that we can bring new partners to the table. There are sometimes organizations that are really interested and well-situated to be able to resource work that can happen in the school district.
Farrah (08:37):
But the school district also has limited capacity to be able to support and accept partners. So sometimes organizations will look to partner with us, because we have long-established relationships with our school district and can help them understand how best to navigate and deliver those resources to our school district. One example of that is, we have a lot of STEM corporations in Philadelphia that are really hungry to be able to do whatever they can to support STEM education in Philadelphia. So we now run a regional STEM equity initiative that has been funded for more than 10 years by our key partner GlaxoSmithKline to identify ways that the public, private, and social sectors can be in involved in helping underrepresented students access STEM education and STEM careers more meaningfully. So there are lots of ways that we are really an extension of the schools’ desires, but also the facilitator to help in the actual implementation of those aims.
Bob (09:39):
Yeah. And that's so important. And you know, one thing you said that really stood out to me was this idea of a judgment-free zone. Because what I think is sometimes not fully appreciated is how much our school districts often feel judged. They have to report to that school board, which is often a very political body and often, you know, it's hard to get it right. So having that judgment-free zone, I think, is a really critical feature of a powerful local educational intermediary.
Farrah (10:15):
And so also one of the things that I've had discussions with our superintendent about is the irony that in many ways, those of us in the nonprofit sector who care so deeply about wanting to help our students and our school systems are in some ways almost required to talk about the failings of our school district in order to access resources. So too often for school districts, the whole narrative is that everybody has to tell the story about what's not working in order to get the resources to help them fix what's not working. And that can feel really challenging for someone who is putting in a tremendous amount of effort and energy, which I believe is what I've seen, both as the CEO of the Philadelphia Education Fund, and also as somebody who served on the school board in Philadelphia for several years. There are super dedicated individuals who want to make sure they're doing whatever they can to do what's best for students and deliver really quality outcomes. And I think that's one of the ways that education funds, not only ours in Philadelphia, but the various ones across the country, can really be a partner to our districts and therefore help our students.
Bob (11:40):
Yeah. And I think a way to really illustrate that, is that I can't have a conversation about the Philadelphia Education Fund and not tell the story of how we worked with them to discover the early warning indicators which have now become widely known. Just the brief story—and then you can help us finish how it ends—is that as you said, we began partnering with the Philadelphia Education Fund about 25 years ago when they helped us bring in a whole school reform model, the Talent Development middle school model, an evidence-based comprehensive model. And as you said, the Philadelphia Education Fund was the intermediary that brokered our relationship with the district, that we worked with closely to get funding and all sorts of things, and to study the model’s impact.
Bob (12:23):
Along the way we recognized we were making a difference, but many kids still were being left behind. And that raised the question of how early were kids signaling that, absent effective interventions, their odds of graduating were low? And working closely with the Philadelphia Education Fund—and Lisa Herzog was then I think the director of research—we were able to get access to one of the first longitudinal data sets. They're more common now, but in 2005, they weren't easily accessible so we could follow cohorts of kids through the Philadelphia schools, from fifth grade on to multiple years past when they should have graduated. And in doing that, we looked at all sorts of hypotheses. We found at the end of the day that it was what became known as the ABCs: that students that are not able to attend on a regular basis, students that run afoul of the behavior expectations, and students that struggle on their classes—these are the students who, absent interventions, had incredibly low graduation rates.
Bob (13:20):
In fact, we found that a sixth grader, a 12-year-old, who had any one of these indicators only had a 25% chance of graduating. That really shocked and surprised people, right? That so early was such predictability, absent intervention, three out of these four kids were not going to have a strong pathway to a future. And then the final part of the story that shows the full sort of package that education funds could provide is, so we did this research, and now we have to share it. And they organized forums to share it with the school district and other places. And the interesting thing is that this was the beginning, just the beginning, of viral things on the internet. We gave this PowerPoint on early warning systems to a local audience, which then the Philadelphia Education Fund put on its website.
Bob (14:08):
And we put it on our website, thought nothing of it, and suddenly in a month it spread everywhere so that it became ubiquitous, and we were getting all these calls about early warning systems when we had just put it up on the web. So what I want to ask you is, I know, you haven't been at the Philadelphia Education Fund for 25 years; you joined more recently. But do you know how that story ended? Did the district do more with early warning on-track indicators? Where did that go?
Farrah (14:44):
Yes. So absolutely, to your point, it not only became an integral part of how the school district operated subsequent to the release of the information in those data sets, but it continues to this day. So a big part of the work that we do with the school district is that we help them integrate some of the findings from that work to support their office of research and evaluation. So now one of the things that’s integrated in a lot of their data sets and that they look at in terms of the performance of each of the schools, which they still talk about today, is, what are the opportunities to provide the right kinds of interventions, creating tiers of interventions. In other words, what are the interventions for a student? What are the interventions for a classroom? What are the potential interventions for an entire school building?
Farrah (15:34):
And what are the ways that we can actually help move the needle for students, particularly in the middle grades as they're transitioning into high school? And now it's basically on autopilot, it's so integrated into how the district functions and how it looks at how it supports students. So it's really exciting. I know that we had a strong partnership for many years also with United Way that also built on the work that was done in early warning systems.
Bob (16:20):
Yeah, that's really good to hear, and it shows the continuing power of how ed funds can really sustain things over 15 years now, right, and make a real difference.
Farrah (16:29):
Absolutely. I think that is one of the key elements of an intermediary is the fact that we can provide some support that goes the distance. One of the areas of work that we do that is a complement also to early warning systems is the work through our consulting practice called the Philadelphia post-secondary success program, which we've been able to sustain for more than 10 years, which is about helping schools identify their needs to create a college-going culture. So obviously there's an element of it that's informed by the early work of warning systems, but now we're integrating so much of what you've taught us and we've learned through Pathways to Adult Success into that work to help high schools think about how do they support kids so they complete college.
Bob (17:15):
Yeah, and speaking of that, I know one of your more recent innovations, which really shows how sometimes relatively small shifts can open up much larger possibilities a, is that you came up with the idea of having college recruiters—who typically visit juniors and seniors—spend some time with freshmen. Can you tell us about this effort, what it does and what you're learning?
Farrah (17:39):
Yeah. It's a college passport program. We know that a lot of college recruiters are really interested in the quick win, you know, how do I identify those emerging students who are in their 11th or 12th grade year and are ready to apply, or thinking about where they're going to apply to college? How do I get them interested in my institution? The reality is, in a district like the school district of Philadelphia, particularly in the schools we work in, which are low-graduation-rate high schools, we're working with a population of students who are largely the first generation to go to college. They haven't grown up in a home where they’re constantly asked where they're going to college. It's more a question of whether or not they're going to go at all. So the earlier we can expose them to the potential of college, the better: not just because it awakens them to that possibility, but also because when you connect them to a college recruiter, there's a chance for that recruiter to talk about the ABCs, the attendance, behaviors, course rigor and course selection that would make for an optimal candidate for that institution, not just for admission, but for completion.
Farrah (18:46):
I had a story when I was early in my career, where I ran a summer youth employment program and had a young woman who wanted to be a doctor. So we sat together during the summer and I was going to tutor her for her SAT test when I discovered she'd only had two years of science, and one of those two years was a repeat of her biology class. She was going to be a 12th grader. And at no point, was she aware of what was going to be required of her if she wanted to pursue becoming a doctor. So that story imprinted on me. And I think that's why it's important for us to get to students as early as possible, so that they understand they can actually exercise some choices here and make some decisions even in ninth grade so that they can expand their options later.
Bob (19:55):
Yeah. I mean, it's actually so essential, right? We have to keep reminding ourselves that these are 14- and 15-year-olds, and many of us at much later ages than that, really don't know what we don't know. And so often people don't tell kids that, you know, it's great you want to be this, that's amazing, but to get there, here's what you need to do. And if we don’t tell them when there's time, so they can still do it otherwise, we're just being vastly unfair.
Farrah (20:29):
And for those who are concerned about the debt loads that many students take on, it's also part of being able to eliminate that for young people. Because that young woman could have then chosen to go into a program that would have cost her two years additional tuition fees, but wouldn't have contributed to her journey of trying to get into med school. We find a lot of our students, when they just don't know, they end up having to take a lot of remedial courses and make other kinds of financial sacrifices to be able to access the careers that they most want later. So the earlier we can get them this information, and also the supports to pursue those choices, the better it is.
Bob (21:09):
Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the big arguments we're making about pathways to adult success is that there’s almost a moral imperative to do this now, because everyone has to go somewhere after high school. There's really nothing to support a family with just a high school education. And if we don't prepare you for that transition from the very start, we're not doing justice to you. We're not doing justice to our communities. And this is a big reconceptualization for people that grew up with a very different idea: the idea that for many people, public education ended after high school.
Farrah (21:42):
Well, I think that's always an interesting point that I make to others who don't know a lot about education history, that we had a much lower graduation rate from high school in the 1950s than we do today. But the demands of the workforce were very different. And so for our young people, we have to let them know that continuing their education beyond high school is critical now, if they really want to have financial sustainability, if they want to have maximum choices in terms of their lifestyle in the future. And that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be college, but we want students to make a decision about what they're going to do upon graduating, and whatever we can do to help them prepare their minds for that future is to their benefit.
Bob (22:27):
Absolutely. So what's on the drawing board. What are you guys thinking up as the next great thing to work with the school district on?
Farrah (22:36):
Yeah, so we've been doing some really interesting targeted work. Overall our work has been very expansive, as I shared earlier: working broadly in schools; consulting support to create college-going culture; we also have this incredible scholarship program. But one of the things that we recognize is there are discrete populations that need unique interventions. We're really proud of a partnership we have had now for three years with the Philadelphia Foundation and the Lenfest Foundation, to focus on what we call fostering college readiness. It's targeting the needs of students who are connected currently, or have been in the past, with the foster care system. The college-going rates of students who are foster-care connected are really, really low. And there are lots of reasons for that, including high mobility in terms of their educational experience, but there are also a lot of resources out there to help them—but they're not aware of those resources.
Farrah (23:35):
So what we're working on is trying to understand, by working deeply with the school district, but also identifying these students, is what are the kinds of interventions and how early do those interventions need to be put in place? How can the social work system help support students so that we can help increase the rate by which these students not only graduate from high school, but go to college and complete college? We're also doing some incredible work in providing access to students who don't have college advising in their high schools; in Philadelphia, we have this wonderful website called Phillygoestocollege.org. And on that site, students can access very locally focused resources, including other kinds of programs that are specific to where they are in their academic journey, as well as where there are college recruitment opportunities and fairs, what providers are at out there that can support them, scholarship programs, and a robust calendar.
Farrah (24:50):
It's been really exciting to see the take-up of this resource and the opportunities that it can present to students, and/or people who care about students, in terms of helping them get directed to the resources that can help them focus on their futures.
Bob (25:05):
Yeah, that's amazing work. I can't wait to see how that develops.
Farrah (25:09):
Thank you.
Bob (25:10):
So for my last question, I want to go a little broad and deep. We can't really talk about Philadelphia without talking about funding. I don't think some of our listeners might know that that Pennsylvania and Illinois are among a few other states where there has been historically almost no state equalization of funding. So it's basically fallen very much on just the local tax base, which we know is dramatically unfair, based on a whole host of factors, from structural racism to redlining. But my question is, how has this chronic underfunding and financial uncertainty really impacted the district's ability to innovate and create a system that works for all kids?
Farrah (26:11):
So, it's interesting. I think in some ways the limited resources have forced the district to be innovative, and probably not in the ways they would hope. But certainly, one of the things that I've seen over the last 10 years in terms of robust transformation, is their ability to really understand the data and where they're having results. So there's a really robust set of frameworks and data sets and meetings that occur to do continuous improvement work at the district level, which is really impressive. I will also say that the district has been incredibly focused on making sure that they limit any negative impact on anything student-facing. And what that has meant is that there are real limitations on the district's general operating capacity.
Farrah (27:12):
So their ability to be creative beyond kind of the maintaining of the current state of affairs is really difficult. Their ability to address the fact that the district has a significant amount of aging infrastructure that really needs capital investments is incredibly challenging. So we don't really have modern school environments that we can use to educate children in. But I would say that the biggest impact has really been in the district's ability to add enrichment programs for students. Our schools are largely ABCs in the traditional academic sense of those words, but not a lot of enrichment, not a lot of ability to provide music and theater and sports and speech and debate programs. And frankly not the ability also to resource a lot of more rigorous programs. So for example, there are schools where there may only be one advanced placement class offered in that high school. So you have a student who has the talent and the ability to take four, but can only take one, because that's all that's offered. And so there are lots of examples across the district where there's a desire to be able to provide students with more, but we're limited to just being able to offer the bare minimum academically as a result.
Bob (28:43):
Yeah. And when you get a chance to visit Philadelphia and tour some of the schools, it really shows the history of how the funding has ebbed and flowed over the years. So, there's a number of buildings in Philadelphia that were built as palaces to learning in the 1930s, when Philadelphia was sort of the economic powerhouse of the state, and many of those buildings are still in use, close to a hundred years later. And then in some other cases, they were able to find some bond funding. And the school we started working with on that middle grades effort in Philadelphia, Central East Middle School, which was then renamed as Fultonville School of Arts and Sciences, at some point got a totally new building, but right next to it is another building that hasn't been renovated at all. So it's almost luck of the draw that determines whether you get a good building or not, which is really not where we should be in the 21st century, right? All students should have a place that's comfortable to learn in. And I think we have to keep reminding ourselves that even that most basic need has not been met in many of our large cities and also poor rural areas.
Farrah (30:01):
Oh absolutely. We have schools we work in that were built for 2,000 or 3,000 students and they have 300 in them now. That's a consequence of the expansion of the charter school system in Philadelphia, but also a consequence of just change in population. And so how does a district maintain buildings that are one tenth full where they were, and also maintain this aging infrastructure on top of it? So there are a lot of challenges for Philadelphia in terms of figuring out how to deal with the capital needs, as well as how the district gets, what I call a bigger allowance from mom and dad, which for us is the city and the state because the school district of Philadelphia, the school board, does not have taxing authority either. So it is also constrained in terms of its ability to raise taxes or to generate more revenue.
Bob (30:58):
Yeah. So a lot of work to be done, a lot of work for ed funds to help with. I want to thank you for a really fascinating and rich discussion today. And as we close out, I just want to ask, are there any last words you'd like to share with the audience or let them know where they can learn more about what we discussed today?
Farrah (31:14):
Yes, I would. I would encourage people to visit our website, which is www.phillaedfund.org. There you can get information and a link to our phillygoestocollege site, but also all the different programs that we offer and also resources that might be useful regardless of whether or not you live in the Philadelphia area. I also just want to conclude by thanking you so much for the longstanding partnership. We are so grateful to be part of your community of learners and partners and helping identify the ways we can help young people really fulfill their fullest potential.
Bob (31:57):
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate our conversation today and as always, I learned so much through it. Innovation in education is a delicate thing, right? We need both organizations and leaders to challenge the status quo: you know, the status quo that says, what we have is what we need or the best we can get. And then on the other hand, we also need organizations to help school systems stay the course and have the time to implement improvements, to learn as we go, to fine tune things until they work. So to enact changes, we need both to push through inertia, but also to implement with stability. Today’s show shows that local education intermediaries have a key role to play in the design of better schools. I see them as similar to systems engineers, advocating both for change and for the conditions to enact it. Before we go, we want to take this to opportunity to ask you: please subscribe to Designing Education wherever you listen to podcasts, to stay up to date on all the revolutionary work happening in education. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a five-star review, and please share the show with your friends or colleagues or on social media. This has been Robert Balfanz from the Everyone Graduates Center and the Pathways to Adult Success learning community. Thank you, everyone, for listening, and we invite you to listen to the other episodes in our Designing Education series. Onward, and be well.