S1 Ep11: The New ABCs: Drawing on Street and Institutional Data to Scale Effective Student Supports

Traditionally, schools have been designed around a set of standard practices and expectations. When students do not fully benefit from these practices or conform to the expectations, schools either add on supports or establish consequences to try to modify behaviors and outcomes.

Over the past 15 years, researchers, school officials, and school teams have developed an approach that pools the knowledge of teachers, counselors, students, and families to identify solutions to support students more proactively, using predictive indicators of important outcomes like high school graduation or college degree attainment. This approach has been called different things, including early warning intervention systems, on-track systems, or multi-tiered student support systems. Pioneers of this work now seek to further develop it in ways that incorporate recent learnings from the brain sciences and adolescent development to create more comprehensive, inclusive student success systems.

In the 11th and final episode of season one, Carla Gay, Director of Innovation & Partnerships for the Gresham Barlow School District in Oregon, addresses some of the important elements needed to go deeper and provide better student support and school improvement initiatives.

Transcript

Bob (00:00:08):

All right. All right. Hello, and welcome to the Designing Education podcast. In today's episode, we're talking to Carla Gay about how we can design student success systems that enable schools to graduate all students ready for the future. We can't wait to jump into the conversation, but before we start, we want to take a moment to remind you to subscribe to the Designing Education podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. We're available on Spotify, Apple, and Google Podcast just to name a few. Subscribe to the Designing Education podcast and never miss an episode.

Bob (00:00:55):

Welcome to the Designing Education podcast series. I'm Dr. Robert Balfanz, Director of the Pathways to Adult Success Program, and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University. I'm delighted to have you join us today. This is the 11th episode in a series of conversations we'll be having with education leaders, thinkers, and practitioners from across the country. We'll talk about what it will take to create an education system that truly empowers all young people and sets them on a pathway to long-term success. In today's episode, I'll be joined by Carla Gay from the Gresham Barlow School District in Oregon. Let's set the stage for our conversation. 

Bob (00:01:38):

Traditionally, schools have been designed around a set of standard practices and expectations. When students do not fully benefit from the practices or conform to the expectations, schools either add on student supports or establish consequences to deter what are seen as inappropriate behaviors or insufficient outcomes. At the middle and high school levels, the supports and consequences were often reactive, applied only once a situation reached what were viewed by adults as problematic levels. For example, not much was done with students to support students’ regular attendance until a student missed enough school to be referred to truancy court. Nothing was done to increase student engagement or sense of belonging until they misbehaved too often or in certain ways, and then they were suspended. Students struggling in class often received little help until they failed the course, and then they were required to repeat it, often under the same circumstances. Since these responses did not change the conditions which drove the behaviors, the behaviors often continued, as did the responses, until a student transferred schools or dropped out.

Bob (00:02:46):

On top of this, the academic and well-being impacts of the pandemic have severely strained existing student support systems, which were never designed for the scale and scope of student needs schools must now respond to. Over the past 15 years, researchers, school officials, and school teams have developed a new approach to supporting student success, using predictive indicators of important outcomes like high school graduation or college degree attainment to identify students when they're just beginning to need support; and then creating systems which pool the knowledge of teachers, counselors, students, and families to identify the best solutions; and then working for better ways to develop schools to more proactively support students. This approach has often been called different things in different schools, but it's most commonly been referred to as early warning systems, early warning intervention systems, on-track systems, or multi-tiered student support systems.

Bob (00:03:43):

Recently, many of the folks who pioneered this work have come together to think through how they should be further developed to enable schools and students to meet the challenges of the pandemic, focusing not only on high school graduation, but preparation for post-secondary success, and incorporate recent learnings from the brain sciences and adolescent development. The result is a student success system. Okay. We are excited to have Carla Gay, Executive Director for Innovation and Partnerships from the Gresham Barlow School District here with us today. She's been part of these efforts to build better student support and school improvement systems from the start, and we are looking forward to hearing what she has learned along the way. Welcome, Carla.

Carla (00:04:21):

Hi, Bob. Thanks for having me.

Bob (00:04:25):

So glad you're here today, looking forward to talking to you. But before we dig in, we always like to start by asking folks here at Designing Education: when you were in school, what was a good day?

Carla (00:04:36):

Thanks, Bob. I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you. So, a good day for me in school was when I could experience success by solving a problem or having that “aha” moment in a subject that I cared about, followed by an opportunity to participate in a leadership or athletic activity. Sometimes the tedious task of being in school or learning could be offset by those opportunities to engage socially with my peers, and with teachers who cared about me or coaches. And so I think a good day was a nice balance of feeling successful in the classroom, and then having those opportunities to engage socially outside of the classroom. And I was a pretty active student in a very small school, so I had lots of opportunities to do that.

Bob (00:05:31):

Yeah. So, you know, a good day is when you really felt like you were part of the school. Right? Something more than just yourself doing your assignments.

Carla (00:05:40):

Exactly, yes. And sometimes it's hard to think about what the good day was, because I can also point to experiences that were not so great. But I definitely know that what highlighted it was the opportunity to engage socially and feel like I belonged, like I was included in the whole process of learning.

Bob (00:06:05):

Wonderful. Wonderful. So, we're going to start by just getting to learn a little bit about you and your work, and I'm going to ask you first to tell us a little bit about the work you're currently doing at the Gresham Barlow School district, and then a little bit of about the evolution of your work, from moving from high school dropouts to enabling college and career readiness to some of your recent work with student success systems and the grad partnership.

Carla (00:06:29):

Sure. Well, right now, like you mentioned, I'm the Executive Director of Innovation and Partnerships, which is a pretty fun title. Yeah. That has a broad…

Bob (00:06:39):

Love that title. What's better than innovation and partnerships?

Carla (00:06:43):

Right. Well, nobody really knows what it does, so you could kind of take a stab at a lot of different things, but one of the things it has allowed me to do is really push on some of our instructional systems that help create more inclusive learning environments and more inclusive settings for our students. So I oversee all of our alternative and dropout prevention efforts, as well as our counseling, mental health, social work supports, and then work with a variety of college and career efforts around K12 pathways. And then finally, none of that happens without partnerships. So we have business and industry partners, mental health partners, many community based organizations. So that's what I do in a nutshell. 

Bob (00:07:39):

Yeah, that's a lot. But what I think is powerful is that you're sort of pulling all the pieces together. In many other districts, each of those efforts you talk about will be its own little office.

Carla (00:07:49):

Right? Yeah. And I think one of the things that's been fun about that is that then I can figure out where there are opportunities for excellence and take them to scale. Right? So, one of those has been with our ninth grade on-track work and really supporting our MTSS, our multi-tiered systems of support work with other colleagues. Of course, none of this happens alone, but really thinking about how our MTSS shows up at in the middle and high schools particularly, and how we leverage that to inform more student success. So that's what I do in this district. I did start my career working with students who were failing their classes. So, my career was to support students who were failing in a class, and I was supposed to tutor them to help them improve, which doesn't really work when they're missing the class that they're failing.

Carla (00:08:49):

And there were no other support systems in place, other than dropping out, or kids going to a different setting. And so the interesting thing for me was that while other people thought of the students as failures, some of my colleagues in that school, I began to notice their interests. They were excelling in something like wood shop or in on the athletic field, or they would talk about what they did outside of school. And I realized that to tap into their academic success, we needed to tap into what interested them and their own potential. So one opportunity led to another, and I found myself leading a middle college program at Portland Community College for students who had already disengaged. And that really helped me think about how we help students excel in post-secondary and maybe community college as a way to help students who have disengaged because they weren't challenged, but also because they were underestimated.

Carla (00:10:01):

And I had the opportunity to help support the start of Gateway to College and all of that. Despite that focus, I realized we can't intervene our way out of a systemic problem. You can't always create more programs that are specialty programs for a small subset, unless you also, at the same time that you're doing that, basically go upstream to find out what are those systemic issues that cause students to leave in the first place. And that's where I began to work with Education Northwest, Sarah Frazelle, who really helped me understand early warning systems. And I read a few things. I participated in a few webinars, and I was hooked.

Bob (00:10:53):

Wonderful, wonderful. It's that rich wealth of experience you can really see, so well, to be innovation and partnerships, right? So, let's dive into student success systems now. In a nutshell, it's the idea of combining, you've talked about a lot of this already, supportive relationships: you have to have that connection to students. Who are you as a person? What are your strengths? What are your dreams? What are you, where do you want to go? But then we also need that actionable and predictive data so we can be there sooner rather than later, and as you said, in a more systematic way; but then we have to put that together, as you said, with this strategic set of improvements and interventions. And it's really both those things, improving the system and [intervening] where needed…

Bob (00:11:37):

… for groups of students. Those things that are more customized. And this all has to be guided by this idea of a student-centered mindset. You're not a failure. We're not here to remediate you, you're not a problem to be solved. You're a beautiful human being with an amazing future [and] we're here to help figure out how to help you get you there. So that's a lot. Let’s take it a piece at a time. Let's start with relationships, all around. Students to students. You mentioned this in your very beginning of a good school day: it's when I was with my peers doing something. I was with my teachers doing something. Why are relationships so important to this idea of student success?

Carla (00:12:23):

Well, I think they're the foundation of trust. So for students to… We can create all these systems to say, Okay, we're going to do something to the student. We're going to tell them they have to do check in, checkout, or something like that. But if they don't trust the adults that are trying to support them, if the families don't trust the school system, if the families and the students don't see themselves reflected in the staff in their efforts, if they don't see their words and their experience showing up in all of these efforts, then they don't trust. And the way to get to trust is through relationships. And that authentic connection of, I care about you and I don't want to do something to you. I want to do something with you so that you can realize your own potential. So I think that in order to get to that trust to actually make our intentions become a reality, we've got to start with building those connections with families, with one another, with students; and fostering that to create a culture of trust. And that only comes when there are authentic relationships.

Bob (00:13:42):

Yeah. It's getting used a lot these days, but I think it's a very powerful piece. People say, improvement only goes at the pace of trust. And then also, when you think about it, a lot of this work is that we're either trying to help someone overcome a challenge or maybe modify or adjust some behaviors. And none of us do that in our day-to-day life unless we have a relationship with the person we're engaging in that dialogue with. None of us do it because somebody else in authority that we don't know just told us to do it. And yet we often think that's the way students in school should respond. Just do this and everything will be fixed. We know what's your problem. And we know, as you said, that that doesn't work, even though we tend to just go to that.

Bob (00:14:34):

So we have some trust, we have some relationships; but we have a lot of kids and a lot of challenges and a lot of situations, and it's hard to do this one individual kid at a time, even as important as that is, when we have, in some schools, thousands of kids. So that brings this idea of actionable and predictive data. Just talk to us: Why… you know, everyone says data, data this, data that, data-driven; but we really try, in this work, to narrow that down to actionable and predictive data. Why is that? Why is that important?

Carla (00:15:12):

Well, I think it helps us figure out where to focus our energy. When we have predictive data, then we can say… I mean, it's overwhelming to look at the number of kids who are chronically absent, for example. But we can focus in and say, Oh, these kids didn't just become chronically absent in a day, there was a pattern, and really drill back to when that pattern started, what our first clues were and what happened there. For example, we talk about the first period and the period right after lunch is being really low attendance. So, there's a clue. And if we monitor based on individual absences or period absences, then we can get to a better understanding of the trajectory that leads to chronic absenteeism. The only way to do that, though, is to complement that sort of high-level or satellite data in my mind, with actually talking to the kids who are disengaging, because you can't [forget] that for student success, the high-level data is only as good as understanding the root cause.

Carla (00:16:30):

And to try to get to that root cause, you've got to talk to the folks who are most impacted. You've got to have that conversation, whether that's through empathy interviews or focus groups, really trying to understand, from that student perspective and sometimes that family perspective: Why is this happening? And then that's where the action comes in. That's where the solutions become much more real and impactful. But it definitely has to start with going back to that root cause analysis and trying to backwards map, from this data that can look really alarming and overwhelming, to where did it start? What happened? And not back in kindergarten, because if they're a ninth grader, you're not going to solve that. But you can say, Oh, this started in the third week of ninth grade. Let's talk to kids during the third week of ninth grade and find out why they're skipping. Right. 

Bob (00:17:34):

Right, right. There are some places and times where a number of kids are engaging in what's happening. So that tells us that's a key point, a sort of lever of improvement. And one thing I wanted to share here is that I was recently in a school and they inverted this process a little bit in a very interesting way that… They had their pattern data. They had their early warning indicator data. They knew their broad trends, but then they tried to have very intensive, often 45-minute long root cause/solutions meetings with a set of students that had those indicators, their parents, their teachers, all done in a very asset-driven positive way. And their idea was, only by going deep in maybe 20% of the cases were they able to really understand what the real patterns were. So they went deep in a sample, in a way, to establish the broader patterns for everybody, as opposed to just looking at it from the high level data. I know there's a book both you and I like that we're going to recommend to our audience, called Street Data, which I just…

Carla (00:18:46):

Yes. I was just going to jump in. Yeah, I'm sorry, keep going. Which…

Bob (00:18:51):

No, go ahead. Which really gets to that idea.

Carla (00:18:53):

Exactly. I have it in multiple places. I definitely love Street Data because it does help us flip that notion of why we're seeing the patterns, why we're seeing this high-level data the way it is. It doesn't mean that we don't need… and Shane Safir, who wrote the book, talks about, there's street data and then there's map data, which is what I think of as that disaggregated data. You look at these high-level pieces of data and you see you have an issue with behavior or chronic absenteeism, but you do need to look at where those pockets are. Is it because we have differential treatment of different student populations within our school? Are we approaching our students in a different manner? And that's that sort of map data, but to really understand it, you need to actually talk to the students and do that deep listening and understanding, and then involve them in the solutions.

Bob (00:19:58):

Yes. Absolutely.

Carla (00:19:59):

Because I really feel like one of the things that happens, particularly to communities of color or historically marginalized communities, is, we go to the… Well, it's very popular to ask, “We have to involve you, we have to involve you.” But if we're just involving you to check a box versus involving you in not only understanding the problem, but really helping us craft solutions that are centered on your experience, not the adult experience, that's where the magic happens. And I do think that the Street Data book is one highlight that helps us flip that conversation to focusing on what the students need and then use that student success high-level data to kind of… It's a complementary relationship.

Bob (00:20:49):

Yeah. And [in] the same visit, there was a group of students that had been through this process, they were talking about it, and I came up to them and I said, “How often is it that the adults in the school are totally clueless on the real reasons you're not able to attend school on a regular basis?” And they essentially responded a hundred percent.

Carla (00:21:09):

Yeah.

Bob (00:21:10):

That that the adults were totally clueless as to the real reason, unless they actually engaged them in a conversation.

Carla (00:21:16): 

Yeah. Yeah.

Bob (00:21:18):

So that brings us to our next step. We've built better relationships, we have access to actionable and predictive data, we're talking to our students; but how does this lead to better student supports and greater school success? What do schools need to do to turn relationships and data into an improvement?

Carla (00:21:37):

Oh, that is the million dollar question, I think, or multimillion dollar question. I think it starts with time. Schools and districts—and it does require investment as a system—but we need to carve out time for teachers and other professionals in the schools to meet together, because when each teacher or each individual is meeting in isolation of one another, you cannot get to root cause because you don't have the full picture. But when you create that time, whether you call it professional learning communities or MTSS teams, that time where folks are sitting around together looking at the same data, about the same group of kids, and trying to unpack for themselves their behaviors in the classroom, in the hallways, in the school, and then also come, that's where they begin to start talking to students.

Carla (00:22:40):

Somebody in that group says, “We should ask the students,” hopefully. And that is where then you start to really understand how to move from navel gazing around the data, to action. But it does require time for folks to come together, and that often requires money and a commitment. And then I think there has to be some accountability for the adults, the people in the system, to follow through. So, in the example you just gave, when they met with those students and did a 45-minute deep dive into the root cause, the people leading that have an absolute responsibility and accountability to then act on what they learned. And they also have a responsibility to circle back to those same students and say, “Here's what we're doing; is this right? Are you joining us in this journey?” – so that they are not just soliciting feedback and then going away and doing business as usual. So there's time and there's also some accountability to act.

Bob (00:23:48):

And one of the things also that we've learned, and you're getting to, is that this has almost has to be—the student success systems idea or whatever you choose to call it—is really about organizing the whole school community to help do this work, not have it just be a few adults or a specialist. You know, a very traditional model is, send the kids to the counselor, to the social worker, whatever the category of issue it is, send them to that person. That person, if it's a school where there are a lot of student needs, suddenly has a case list of 2, 3, 400 kids. The best they could ever do is some sort of triage. Whereas, if it's is spread across the school, we have a much more realistic chance of reaching all our kids.

Bob (00:24:33):

So in this example of the school I visited, they built this over time, but they were up to six teams of eight adults each, each doing a segment of the kids. And that's really distributing it now across 48 adults. And it was quite a large school, so that still was less than a third of all [adults], but it was still a large number of the adults, actively involved in the work. And I think that's key to this also. It's getting out of this idea that this is something for specialists alone to handle. It's really a community-wide, school-wide effort.

Carla (00:25:06):

One hundred percent. And I would also add that when the adults sit around the table together in teams like that, and they interview students and they engage in some deep thinking around their problem of practice, and then the solutions or the potential solutions, you also build relationships among those adults. You also kind of start to unpack the bias that different folks hold. So you help people in their own equity journey around how they think about kids, which has a broader ripple effect when you create that space and there's some structure around it. It can't just be, send them to this group, and then we're just going to sit and admire the problem. There has to be some structure so that folks are actually churning and creating some action steps out of it. 

Bob (00:25:58):

And the other thing that was also clear in this case and more broadly, is that it's important that the school leader really believes in this work.

Carla (00:26:05):

Right?

Carla (00:26:07):

One hundred percent. Yes. And you have to create this space. It's interesting because I have seen schools in the same district where one, they've [decided] okay, we are meeting weekly. We're bringing together the counselor, the outreach liaison, the attendance person, the campus monitors, all of the VPs and the principal, and the social worker. And we're all sitting around now. No, we can't pull everybody out of the classroom; but they are intentionally doing that. The other magic of that is, that while they might be coming to the table to talk about kids they have concerns about, what they discover when there's a data protocol, is that those kids are really the tip of the iceberg; and that they actually have a systemic problem that they need to address, not an individual kid problem. 

Bob (00:27:00):

A hundred percent agree with that too. Once you start doing it, you learn you can't individually intervene your way out of it. You have to look up, what's the most strategic point really to address this series of issues or possibilities for improvement? And I think this sets us up really well for my next question, which is: We're saying, when done well, these student success systems bring together a lot of people from a lot of different perspectives. Teachers, counselors, school leaders, students, parents, community organizations. It's a lot of people to keep on the same page. What are some key shared mindsets that need to develop for these folks to work together in concert? Particularly, as you said, with a focus on justice, not just like, we're here to mechanically do a process. 

Carla (00:27:51):

Right. I think it starts with identifying your purpose. There's a great video about knowing your why. When you know your why, your what has a lot more impact. I think it really does lend itself to knowing their collective why and identifying that up front. It requires some of that team building, that norm setting. And then I think it's being courageous as a team. Most educators in this country are from a white dominant culture. And yet we serve a large percentage of students who are who are members of all kinds of marginalized communities: racially, linguistically, students with disabilities, students in poverty. And one of the key pieces is to be aware of our role that we play in perpetuating or interrupting some of those cultures. And that means doing some work as a group on bias.

Carla (00:28:56):

So understanding where unconscious bias or conscious bias plays a role in decisions that we make about students from the systemic level down to the individual level. Without that awareness as a team—and you pointed out the importance of the school leader playing an active role in that and modeling that—it's really hard to get past it, because people will always come, particularly when it comes to things like discipline and behavior, [with] much more deficit-based language. And it's super-important for us to understand our own judgments and biases that play a role in those conversations. That requires some upfront work for sure. And then some ongoing monitoring. 

Bob (00:29:45):

Yeah. One of the things I've observed that really connects with that, is that one of the key shared mindsets is this relentless focus on being asset-based. What can we build upon to go where we want to go, as opposed to, what's the problem? What's the challenge? What's wrong with you? Who needs to stop doing what they're doing? It really is the way to, how do we build up, as opposed to separate out.

Carla (00:30:13):

Yes. I just think it takes conscious conversations threaded throughout it. And to your point earlier, you were talking about, it can't be on the shoulders of one person. Equity, the work of equity and inclusion and justice, can't be just on the shoulders of the equity coordinator or whatever title. It needs to be everybody's responsibility to lean into those conversations and be willing to be uncomfortable. I think that is something that [as] educators who are in positions of power and authority in the classroom, we have a lot of work to do collectively around de-centering ourselves and then really centering students and their assets. It's a different model that I think education training programs are working towards leaning into.

Bob (00:31:17):

Absolutely. They have some work to do, but they're getting there. They're trying to get there. All right. I'm going to shift gears a little bit here. Because we talked a lot about what our vision is for these student success systems, and a vision based on a lot of lived experience can really make a difference for schools and students' lives. But for our listeners, let's try to make this really concrete. Can you share some success stories from schools or districts that have used early warning or on-track or MTSS systems that have most of the characteristics we discussed?

Carla (00:31:51):

I was thinking of a couple of them and, and this, in one of them, I would even push down to elementary [work]. In the early work, trying to figure out what early warning or on-track success systems look like at elementary [level] in our district, we have leaned in with coaches, MTSS coaches. In most of our elementary schools, we have seen a significant intentional increase in TA in those teaming systems sitting around to look at the data and use a data protocol to support groups and individual groups of students. And we are just at the beginning stages of them being able to map that back to student success. Of course, the, the pandemic really interrupted that implementation flow. So, from a data standpoint, we just got our state data and it doesn't look great anywhere in our data, from a state level, but I have hope. Conversely or complementarily, shoot up to ninth grade on-track and pre-pandemic, both of our comprehensive high schools in our district and many around our state: because of some additional state funding called high school success funds or Measure 98, one of the requirements was to establish through those funds, a ninth grade on-track system in each [school] in our district.

Carla (00:33:21):

What that has looked like initially was teams. Every ninth grader is put in a house, and then the core teachers of that house meet outside of their planning time on a regular basis with a facilitator to look at data. In the past it was really focused on individual student data. And what has happened is we've been able to leverage funds to embed the release time during the school day. So now those teachers are teaching five of seven periods a day instead of six of seven. That extra period is a structured time with their ninth grade on-track coach, to both be able to address individual students, but also do some grade-level views of what's happening and change their practices and address issues systemically. And we saw a lot of really great outcomes prior to the pandemic, and the pandemic definitely tanked a lot of those efforts or put them on pause.

Carla (00:34:34):

We are, this year, back on full speed ahead, and this is the first year that we've had the five of seven. So, I'm extraordinarily hopeful that we will see some significant changes, because we've cut all those other elements, we've carved out the time. Many of them are aware of the Street Data work and are really trying to use empathy interviews and focus groups and other [approaches] like that to talk to individual kids. They also are addressing more of the interventions at the tier two and tier three [levels], but they have the time to do both. And so they can address the concerns at multiple layers within that MTSS process. And we have a student success system that we are finally getting everybody familiar with enough to use it and to track as a team what interventions or what actions they are trying to take. So that's awesome. I'm hopeful. No, it's a lot. But I'm really hopeful.

Bob (00:35:39):

Seems like you're pulling all the elements together there and we'll be very excited to follow that and learn from that. Where I want to go now is, in my intro I talked about this idea that folks have been working to get an alternative to the traditional “we don't do anything until we have to remediate a kid or until they failed or they've gotten in trouble,” or we sent them to truancy court, by moving more to these early warning on-track MTSS systems. And then some of us are now coming together to think about what's the next generation of that work, how could we learn from what we've done, but also bring in some new learnings from adolescent development and brain science, and also that recognition that all our kids have to graduate, but they have to graduate with a pathway to either more schooling or training to be able to get a job that could support a family.

Bob (00:36:28):

It doesn't end with just a high school diploma. And so, how do our high schools and middle schools help kids beyond that path as well? We're calling that work the Grad Partnership and I'm a part of that, you're a part of that. I just want to think about it a little bit now: how do we help school leaders and teachers and communities rethink or reimagine how to support students, given that we're doing it right in the midst of still all these pandemic impacts, these staffing shortages that have left folks strained and stressed?

Carla (00:37:02):

Yeah. I love this topic because I think we need to help schools reimagine what success looks like. I really think that we need to have broader conversations that student success, excuse me, has multiple pathways. There's not a single path to success. And success might look different for different people. So having a brighter vision for that, having all of the systems that we purchase or engage with, not be singularly focused on four-year college or even two-year, but a variety of pathways to the students’ goals, understanding that students’ goals change over time. In our district, we have developed a framework called preschool to postsecondary pathways to career success. And in that, it's, what in the school setting is introducing students and families at a very early age to what's possible? What does that look like?

Carla (00:38:08):

And then having family supports for those families who maybe are struggling themselves as parents to be employed or to follow their pathway, so that they begin modeling early with their own children. The possibilities as we move into upper elementary and middle school, then, ensuring that we have career exposure that does not limit kids’ thinking, but actually expands what they know to be true. Let's see, I'm trying to remember who said, “you can't be it if you can't see it.” So, we have to create those opportunities because at the end of the day, all of the student success systems are really trying to intervene at some point when we notice a red flag. But we also have to create this sense of hope and possibility for our students early and often. And then we have to provide them with tangible experiences that allow them to explore the array and to say to themselves and their families, there are multiple pathways to this adult success.

Carla (00:39:17):

And you get to explore a variety of them within the safety of the K-12 education before you're deeply in debt. And that might look different from your parents, and that's okay. [DL1] 

Carla (00:40:14):

So, we really have to be pushing our school leaders at the national and state and local levels to think about multiple pathways to adult success and, and then create the systems that support that: the visualizations, the time in the student bell schedule so that they can take an AP class and a CTE class. Absolutely. And that they don't have to be mutually exclusive; and that takes money. One thing I have on my wall is something from the data quality campaign called Grace's Path to Success. And it's a nice way to visualize the multiple pathways that a particular student could take to basically the same outcome. 

Bob (00:41:29):

Yeah. There's so much there that you share that's so powerful. And just one little piece I want to just pick up on is that, when we marginalize groups or folks from society, we also isolate them and then they don't actually know what some of these possibilities are. So therefore, it's very incumbent upon us—to your idea of multiple pathways to success—to expose you to multiple ways to get there and then give you those tangible experiences. Because the other thing that you said is also true, that right now our pace of change in the world of work, is changing quicker than a generation. So, what was true for your parents is not necessarily true for you now. And from time immemorial, almost all kids have depended on their parents for guidance on how to have that pathway to adult success. And now I think they need that parental thing, but they also, as you said, need those school experiences just to make them aware and connected to the dynamic, how dynamic the world is, and what possibilities it opens up that they may not be aware of.

Carla (00:42:34):

Yes. One hundred percent. And I just want to add that, even as you're thinking that, I know there are a lot of great models out there of individual schools that have done that. The challenge is how do you take that to scale so that it's not dependent on your zip code or whether you won the luck of the lottery for a particular school, but you actually can walk into any neighborhood public school and have that opportunity. And that is the kind of work that we have before us as a nation if we're going to have an educated population.

Bob (00:43:10):

A hundred percent. So we know our why now. Right now we just have to figure out the how. Well, thank you, Carla. This has been a wonderful conversation. We've learned so much and we've just touched the surface. We could keep going for sure. But as we close out 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?

Carla (00:47:14): 

If they want to reach out to me, they're welcome to email me at my email, gay@gresham.k12.or.us. And I'd also be happy to connect them with other local resources. There are many people doing this work and many people who are passionate about ensuring that we create these systemic changes for adult success. I'm just one of them. I also would absolutely highlight a couple of books. The Street Data one, I would absolutely underscore, and Grading for Equity, we have been reading as well, which is also really helping teachers think about their role in this work. I'm sure I could come up with a few others, but those are two that come to mind right now.

Bob (00:48:16):

Wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you so much. To bring our discussion to a close, I would like to thank Carla again for sharing her insights and learnings on how to build better student support systems and, more broadly, design schools that work for all students in the 21st century. A challenge shared across many fields is figuring out when to improve something that still works, at least for some. For over 15 years, schools, districts, and states improved high school graduation rates by focusing on supporting students with what was called the ABCs: attendance, behavior, and engagement and course performance. Those indicators are still hold true, and focusing on them still helps kids graduate high school. And the strongest high school predictor of earning a four-year degree remains getting decent grades in challenging courses. Yet one of the learnings of the pandemic is that as effective as a focus on these traditional ABCs has been, there is a second set of ABCs that we really need to include in our student support systems, that really helps us get to those more systematic and larger scale improvements.

Bob (00:49:22):

These are agency, belonging, and connectedness. Many of the challenges that schools faced last year stem from students and teachers being disconnected from school during the pandemic. Conversely, and this goes all the way back to Carla's statement about her best day in school, if students and faculties feel connected and that they are together, and that together they can shape a positive path forward, then they're much more likely to regularly attend, engage, and energetically pursue teaching and learning. This shows us that belonging is the foundation for achievement. Before we go, we want to ask you to please subscribe to Designing Education 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 also please share with your friends or colleagues on social media. This has been Robert Balfanz from the Everyone Graduates Center and the Pathways to Adult Success project, thanking everyone for listening and inviting you to listen to the other episodes in our Designing Education series, wherever you listen to your podcasts. Onward and be well.