episode 11-Stephanie Franklin-final
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Rui: [00:00:00] Welcome to Floating Questions, the podcast where curiosity leads, we follow and stories unfold. My name's Ray, simply asking questions, shall we begin?

Rui: Today I'm floating questions. I am joined by Stephanie Franklin. Stephanie is the Deputy Associate Commissioner of Strategy and Analytics at the Texas Education Agency TEA. Where is she applies a sharp analytical mind to one of the most complex and essential systems in the US public education. Before joining TEA, Stephanie spent several years at BCG and holds degrees from both MIT and Harvard.

Rui: Beyond her impressive [00:01:00] credentials, Stephanie is someone who cares deeply about building effective teams and empowering woman in leadership. I am so excited to have this conversation with her today. And before we dive into chat, um, I want to note that Stephanie is speaking in a personal capacity. Her views are her own and not representative of the agency or any professional role.

Rui: Hi Stephanie. How are you today? Welcome. 

Stephanie: Hello. Hello. I am good. It's lovely to see you. Thank you for having me. 

Rui: Let's just first maybe unwind your journey a little bit and go back to BBCG. BCG stands for Boston Consulting Group. It's one of the most, uh, well-known, established consulting agencies out there in the world.

Rui: So what made you want to pivot out of that world? 

Stephanie: Yeah, well, uh, first I'll say, I think consulting, it was where I started my [00:02:00] career. And I think it is a phenomenal way on an individual level to start your career. I really enjoy being a generalist, uh, getting to grapple with a wide range of problems and use a wide range of methods and tools.

Stephanie: Uh, and I think the nature of consulting really lends itself well to that. And in the relatively short amount of time that I was in the consulting world, I feel like I just learned a ton. Very, very grateful for that experience. Uh, I dunno if I would consider it a pivot into what I'm doing now, so much as just kind of the natural next step in my career journey.

Stephanie: I've always been passionate about public service from just outside of Washington DC and so growing up I had a lot of role models who were, uh, unsurprisingly passionate about public service, uh, both in my own family and beyond. And it just feels natural to me to, uh, solve problems that matter. That meant, uh, [00:03:00] going into education when, uh, in 2021 when the pandemic had caused just tragic learning loss.

Stephanie: And it's not, it's not the only space I'm passionate about, but it definitely is a space that I'm deeply passionate about where I saw an opportunity to use my skills and both strategy and analytics, uh, for a mission that I deeply care about. 

Rui: Yeah, that totally makes sense. I mean, education is just. One of those foundational pillars for any nation.

Rui: Right. And I feel like a lot of the issues probably in the United States stem all the way back from the education system, how it's designed, how the students are learning, what kind of materials are, um, you know, taught to the students. So it's definitely a very difficult and foundational space to be in.

Rui: Are there any big surprises going from the private sector into the public sector where you already have some type of expectation when you are going into the education agency? [00:04:00] 

Stephanie: The natural expectation you'd have going from private sector to public sector is that things are more bureaucratic as, as you named in, in the intro as well.

Stephanie: Uh, and so I don't know that that was a surprise. I think it was an expectation I had going in and I was actually very pleasantly surprised. By how, uh, strategic and data-driven the culture was before I even got there. And I credit that to a lot of the other phenomenal leaders that I work with who have really kind of pushed the agency in a really outcomes oriented direction.

Stephanie: It's not a coincidence. That's why they also created my role and hired me is because they, they care about, um, those types of things. Uh, and so I think maybe I actually overshot in my expectations or, or concerns for what government would look like, and then was very pleasantly surprised in a lot of [00:05:00] ways with how aligned I was with the folks that I worked with.

Rui: Wow, that's really interesting. I'm gonna have a lot more questions about, you know, using analytics to, uh, empower the education agency a little bit later. But before we get to that point, was there a moment when you knew public service was going to stick for you? Or perhaps is it sticking? 

Stephanie: Is it 

Rui: sticking?

Rui: As a great question. 

Stephanie: Uh, I definitely am passionate about my work. Right now. I am planning to see. The work that I'm doing now through, uh, to whatever the finish line looks like for that. Uh, and I wanna continue in my career kind of doing what I, what I, how I framed it before is solving problems that matter to me.

Stephanie: I think I am continually reevaluating what the best way to have an impact is. I hope that that continues to be government, uh, and. I also think that there are other paths for what that could look like, and so I think the goal remains the same. The, [00:06:00] the question of what's the best way to get there is something that I'm, I'm continuing to turn over in my mind.

Rui: Maybe let's first talk a little bit about your role. You are the Deputy Associate Commissioner of Strategy Analytics at the TEA. What does this position really entail? What do you do on a daily basis? 

Stephanie: Yeah. My role is really, uh. Kind of centrally positioned within the agency to support all of the different channels of what the agency does.

Stephanie: So I guess I'll start with my role, uh, which is, uh, I have a team that does analytics support for our program teams. I have a team that does technology support for our program teams, and then I have a team that supports with strategic planning and performance management. And so this is the team that really is owning the, the execution of and management to our agencies.

Stephanie: Strategic plan. Um, and so I think then the question is, well, what is that strategic plan? What are the, what are all the places that you are supporting with data, technology and strategy? There's, there's five pillars of our strategic [00:07:00] plan, or I should say six pillars. And so we do actionable goal setting is one of the pillars, so that's accountability and reporting.

Stephanie: E the state summit of assessment, uh, and the accountability systems by which we hold districts accountable to outcomes. And so I think that is kind of foundational and, and underpins a lot of the, uh, other supports, and I should name, there's, there's roughly 1200 independent school districts in the state of Texas.

Stephanie: Wow. So we don't directly administer any educational programming. We administer supports and oversight to school systems to allow them to operate as effectively as possible. So actionable goal setting, setting high bars for them and holding them accountable to it. Uh, then another pillar is. Students, so that is special education support, school safety, early childhood education, making sure that kids have all the supports they need to show up to school, ready to learn.

Stephanie: Then we have a pillar that is called rigorous engagement. So that is what content is taught in school, setting [00:08:00] the right curriculum standards, promoting the right instructional materials, and then providing the right supports to teachers to teach rigorous grade level content well, uh, including training on the science of reading, on the right way to do math instruction, et cetera.

Stephanie: And then we have supported educators. So in addition to ensuring that our kids show up to school ready to learn, we also wanna ensure that our teachers show up to school ready to teach. Uh, and so we have, you know, strategic compensation, other supports for educators to ensure that they are supported and able to teach as effectively as possible.

Stephanie: Um, and then my work. The last two pillars of our strategic plan, which are aligned systems and continuous improvement. Uh, and so aligned systems means we're going to do all of the above in an aligned and not scattered and not siloed way. Uh, both from a framework perspective, making sure that we have a coherence framework for what it means to be an effective school and effective district from a technology standpoint.

Stephanie: This is where a lot of my work lands. [00:09:00] Uh, we're not just standing up a bunch of different technology systems that don't talk to each other. We're making sure that everything is interoperable and connected. We are making sure that you don't have to submit like seven different grant applications throughout the year with different pieces of the same information.

Stephanie: We can streamline those processes, et cetera. Uh, and then continuous improvement is where we're looking internally as an agency using data and rigorous goals to continually evaluate the outcomes of our work and make sure that it's improving. And so that is really. Where my team focuses a lot of our effort and ensuring all of the things that I just mentioned are really achieving their goals and that we're improving them when they're not.

Rui: Wow. Thank you so much for such a clear explanation. It opens up the, the door for me to ask a lot of questions. Yeah, absolutely. Um, well first of all, you, it sounds like you were leading basically three separate teams, which is huge. And how many people in total, on those three teams? 

Stephanie: Yeah, well, I think my job is to make them not separate.

Stephanie: Uh, but yes, [00:10:00] they we're, uh, 20 something in total. So, uh, you know, sizable but, 

Rui: but not massive. How do you. Even making sure everyone is really, uh, doing the things in the right direction. 

Stephanie: Yeah, great question. This is, this is the kind of learning journey that I have been on. Uh, well, in addition to drinking from the fire hose on all things education over the last few years, I've also been, I think drinking from the fire hose on all things leadership.

Stephanie: Uh, I am early on in my leadership journey, but very passionate about it. And, uh, I think now with the scale of the team that I have now. It is about managing through layers, right? I have, uh, all my direct reports are supervisors, and so I'm establishing the right structures and the right supports for my leadership team to make sure that then they can lead their team as effectively as possible.

Stephanie: Um, so it's definitely a different orientation that you definitely have to kind of fight that instinct to do everything yourself and really, really focus on [00:11:00] the people on your team, because that's the most important piece. 

Rui: We can dive into that. Uh, when we talk about how do you, how do you, you know, work very effectively in this system?

Rui: The pillar five and six, align systems and continuous improvement? Uh, a lot of it, it's about making sure the agency is as efficient as possible, but. The more interesting part for me, how do we even, uh, leverage the analytics to really improve the outcomes of the first four pillars? Uh, they sound great.

Rui: I'm just curious about the mechanism and the innovations that you have been leading. 

Stephanie: Yeah. Uh, so to name some examples of projects that my team works on. Um, because there's 1200 different districts in, in Texas, we have to do a lot of district level analysis to really help us understand, you know, the average outcomes, to understand which districts are struggling and which districts are excelling.

Stephanie: Um, and so [00:12:00] for example, we've done an analysis to try to understand pre-K enrollment gaps. Where are the places where there's the most kids who are eligible for free pre-K? Are being served right now, not being enrolled. So we can target our outreach in the early childhood education space. Um, and that includes some, uh, demographic forecasting because we only know who.

Stephanie: Serving, we don't know who we're missing. We do a lot of work kind of on the more operational side of things, uh, to just track the right short term metrics to ensure our program teams are delivering things effectively. So ensuring that curriculum materials are showing up on time, ensuring that, uh, our vendors are delivering us error free.

Stephanie: Content. And if it's not error free, making sure we're tracking the in real time and, and holding them accountable. And we did an analysis that was looking at, uh, work plan data from one of our trickier projects from a [00:13:00] timeline perspective to understand what were the biggest causes of delay when you have a project you're trying to get over the finish line.

Stephanie: That just involves a lot of complex stakeholders. And what were the bottlenecks? What were the main pain points that we can understand to improve the process for the next time? So that's really on the operational side of things. And then we also do more long-term program evaluations. So understanding, you know, are our curriculum instruction efforts really actually translating into improved student outcomes.

Stephanie: Because at the end of the day, that's what matters the most. Um, and can we understand what is having the biggest impact on student outcomes? That piece is both critically important and really challenging. Um, because. Of the time skills involved because of the fact that it's really hard to isolate the effect of any inputs compared to the effect of the pandemic, uh, which has been a factor a hundred percent of the time that I've been working in education.

Stephanie: Um, but I think we're, we're [00:14:00] gonna keep at it because that is, at the end of the day, is, is what matters the most. 

Rui: Yeah. Well first of all, there are so many diverse types of problems that sounds like you are trying to solve. The thing that stood out to me the most is that it implies a long term tracking, right?

Rui: Even measuring the outcome or even understand, you know, if you make a change, maybe it doesn't show up a few years later. Uh, so there needs to be some level of continuity. How, how, how, how does the agency, or how are you building a system that makes sure that. Uh, that level of consistency is achieved. And are you mostly acting on projects, insights that come out of the research maybe from a couple of years ago instead of like the projects that are, you know, you are starting right now because you simply just need to wait a lot of time to get to.

Stephanie: Yeah. Great question. I think that is a. [00:15:00] Foundational challenge that we deal with. Uh, and I don't know if I have the like silver bullet answer, but I think we try to navigate that challenge from a few different angles. One is figuring out what the right leading indicators are that you will know about sooner.

Stephanie: So if you're, well, this is not a hypothetical, this is a real example. If we are doing training for teachers in Texas to train them in research based practices. Science of teaching reading, uh, to help them become better literacy instructors. Building, teaching a kid to read, building foundational literacy skills takes several years.

Stephanie: So you train a kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade teacher. Uh, and they, you know, the kid goes through kindergarten, first, second, third grade. It's four years before you, uh, in third grade is the, is the first, uh, point at which we have statewide literacy testing. And that's the first year that you'll know are, are those kids literacy skills improving?

Stephanie: So. We're gonna do that analysis, we're doing that [00:16:00] analysis. But in the short term, you also need to know, uh, can we, you know, collect data in the classroom to know, well, can we observe that the teachers are practicing some of the skills that we think are best practices? We're we're certainly monitoring.

Stephanie: Are they, you know, are they mastering the, the tests that we give them in this training? And then the next step is, are they, uh, are they. Teaching effectively in the classroom. And, and that in itself is not proving that the kids can read, but it's certainly an important first step. Um, so that's one piece of it is what, what are the early, early indicators you can look at?

Stephanie: I think also part of it is just you need both, um, robust small scale trials. You need to measure impact at scale. So a lot of what we're doing we're, we're the scale, right? So we're rolling out things that have already been proven out in the research to be effective through smaller randomized control trials.

Stephanie: And [00:17:00] then we wanna monitor that it is going to have the impact that we think it will in the long run. But we already have a strong hypothesis that will, because we grant grounded our strategy and research from the first place. 

Rui: Wow. I, I like the part that you were trying to tease out, not just like, Hey, we think that the, this new plan or this new strategy would actually improve the outcome of the student's learning, but also we need to tease out the confounding factor of are the teachers actually following the script, uh, the way that we taught them?

Rui: How do you really measure that early indicators, but how do you find those in early, in early indicators? What are the early indicators that you find to be effective versus ine effective? 

Stephanie: Uh, some of this by away is, is work. We're still in the process of standing up and so. I'd say ask me again in a year or two.

Stephanie: But I think part of it also is where the critically important piece is not just throwing data nerds at the problem, but really having the data nerds work together with education experts. I can call up my colleagues who are experts in literacy instruction, and [00:18:00] we can work together on a rubric that says, what are the like five practices that you really would want to see a teacher doing, and how can we measure those in a data-driven way?

Stephanie: And that that takes. At the table to get to, uh, you know, from an expert perspective on instructional practices, what are the practices we wanna see? And then from a data perspective, how can we make that, uh, a rigorous measurement instrument? 

Rui: Can you gimme an specific example for how you convert that expert opinion into a specific metric?

Stephanie: Yeah. Uh, simple stuff like are the kids engaged or is the teacher teaching grade level content? Is the teacher, uh, getting the letter sounds right? When they're teaching phonics? Uh, there are like various things that like our literacy experts will tell us that you wanna see. And then what my team is trying to do is, is not rocket science, but like.

Stephanie: We're support. Okay. How can we get all of our different teams using similar rubrics with similar scaling, [00:19:00] with data infrastructure that rolls things up in similar ways so that everybody's like, whether it's a zero to five scale or a zero to three scale, or using similar ways of translating those rubrics into data.

Rui: I see. But how do you even measure engagement? 

Stephanie: There is kind of inherent subjectivity that is never gonna go away, but the way you do it is you have third party experts who are able to go into classrooms and make a judgment call on a rubric, and then you do interrater reliability to ensure that those folks are evaluating in similar ways.

Stephanie: And so you kind of run the numbers on the backend to make sure that your, your evaluators are calibrated. 

Rui: Gotcha. So the way that you really check that metric is by sending experts, um, to random, let's say school district and select a few schools, do random sampling, and then try to understand what's going on.

Rui: So back in undergrad, I did a research project, um. [00:20:00] And the professor is at the intersection of like computer science and also education actually, um, what the project was, a lot of, uh, undergrads, they fail engineering classes a lot of times. Um, and so the after class sessions become really critical when TA teaching assistants are there.

Rui: And when they're in that after class sessions, they would be given. Tablets and then you would track the data from the tablets, for example, how they're scrolling through the screen, how they're working through the problem sets together to try to assess whether they're actually engaged so that if we predict that this group potentially is not really moving forward, you would want to send a notification to the TA to say, Hey, maybe you want to check in this group, because it doesn't seem like they're super engaged.

Rui: I thought that concept was really interesting. I wonder whether. Um, you know, the [00:21:00] education agency would consider such, uh, type of like practice. 

Stephanie: Okay. Um, it's a great question if I'm understanding the question right? It's, it's essentially like, can we track things like student engagement in more digital or tech driven ways?

Stephanie: And I think the answer is sort of, um, but this is probably one of the places where we have to be a little bit more. Conservative at the state level with our scale. Um, because I think that there, there are concerns about student privacy and I think that there are valid concerns, right? So a lot of the work that we're doing right now is very print focused, very, um, kind of more traditional from a tech standpoint.

Stephanie: Not all of it, but, but a good bit of it. And I think that we need to be cautious and measured when we think about where we're tracking student data at the state level. So. There are things that are easier to do first in smaller pilots before you roll it out statewide. [00:22:00] We are doing some work with, um, with blended learning.

Stephanie: We have a blended learning grant program where we provide grants to districts to incorporate technology into their instructional practices, and we measure outcomes for that as well. But, uh, we don't really like track students at a very granular level. 

Rui: Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Um, well, it also depends on what kind of data that you collect, right?

Rui: With the example that I was given, if you are collecting how they really, you scroll through this screen on the tablet, that type of data is a lot less invasive. Then, let's say have a camera in the classroom and then using a computer vision to really detect, oh, are they talking to each other? Those are two types of different.

Rui: Privacy requirement and problems. Are there like specific areas or specific data points that you think is on the cusp of, you know, you are able to really collect and potentially make a meaningful step change versus, you know, I, I understand there are some, a little bit more moonshots ideas. [00:23:00] 

Stephanie: Well, I think of it in a couple of ways.

Stephanie: One, I think we're pretty far from what you're describing, I think there's a lot of really foundational things we have to get right, nor do I think that the, the direction is ever necessarily. The state government having a role in anything like that you're describing because there's a difference between it's this a good thing to do and there's, there's a good thing for the state government to do, and I agree that there's a spectrum of ways in which you could track student data.

Stephanie: The level of tracking of individual students or the level of focusing on individual students that an individual teacher needs to do. That's very different from what the state needs to do because, uh, informing. On the flight, changes in instructional practices, oh, this kid needs more focus on this concept.

Stephanie: This kid, I need to redeliver this lesson. I need to like intervene with this set of kids. It's a very different set of decisions that you're informing versus like wide scale policy. We need to improve this thing at the state level. And so the ways that you would use that information differ at different levels of scale.

Stephanie: Um, and so. [00:24:00] That I think we need to keep focusing on at the state level is what is our role versus the role of an individual teacher. 

Rui: I love this angle that you're bringing up. That totally makes sense. Um, I know that we talk a little bit about how education policy change often is a very long tail one, because you just need a lot of time to even observe, measure, and understand the impact.

Rui: But are there projects that are fairly short term and pretty quick turnaround? And that was not within your expectation because in the beginning of the session you also mentioned that you were. Pleasantly surprised. Yeah. I think the piece that 

Stephanie: I was, I don't even know if it's pleasantly surprised. The piece that I was surprised by was my role was new when I came in and when my job title was director of analytics.

Stephanie: And so I was, you know, kind of understood that my goal was to stand up new data projects where we hadn't had data projects before. And I, I guess I anticipated some resistance to that because in the consulting world, there's often understandable resistance to like, why are you trying to change the way that I'm doing things?[00:25:00] 

Stephanie: Don't need this. I actually kind of found the opposite of, I think education is just inherently very data driven because a lot of the things that you described are happening at the classroom level. Like we, you know, teachers are regularly assessing their students and using that data to inform instructional choices.

Stephanie: There's actually, uh, like a proliferation of data and education right now. And I think a lot of the time my role has been like, hold up, let's simplify. Like we don't have to do. Um, we don't have to send out a 50 question survey, maybe a five question survey. Sufficient. We don't have to track. 10 different metrics.

Stephanie: Let's like streamline and focus on the four outcomes that we care about the most. Um, and I think that is also one of my, like professional strengths is, is simplifying complexity. So I think that is the more coherent answer to what I was, uh, starting to say before. As far as what, what has surprised me coming in is actually people wanting to use [00:26:00] data.

Stephanie: In some cases I think a little bit too much, uh, and really just need that strategic alignment. 

Rui: Well, I would love to, you know, get an example from you for how you think through where to simplify. 

Stephanie: Yeah. Um, I'll give you an example from some of our, uh, curriculum and instruction work. Because of some legislation the past two years ago, the state is now, uh, a textbook publisher.

Stephanie: So we actually published open education resources that are fairly available to, uh, school systems in the state of Texas with, uh, also additional like. Funding supports for them to print them, et cetera. Um. We need to stand up new processes to internally monitor how well we are doing in our new role as a publisher.

Stephanie: And I sat down with the folks on that team because I think they just had a lot of complexity in terms of the metrics that they were looking at to evaluate their work in that conversation. At the end of the [00:27:00] day, there's really three things that they need to make sure they're doing, making high quality materials, make sure they're delivering them on time.

Stephanie: Make sure that they are effectively engaging with all of the stakeholders that they need to throughout that process. So we can kind of categorize a lot of the things that they were looking at into those three categories and then really streamline, okay, here's the rubric we're gonna use to measure the weather.

Stephanie: The product is high quality. Here is the metric we're gonna use to evaluate whether we're delivering on time. And here's the like one or two. Feedback mechanisms we're gonna really look at to understand are we managing our stakeholders as well? And that is so much like you gotta get clear on that strategy and why are you looking at the information that you're looking at so that it can actually be actionable and inform your action.

Stephanie: And so that streamlining really helps us look at things in clearer ways to get to the crux of how are we doing and where do we need to improve? 

Rui: So essentially you are lending them a way of thinking, a framework so that they can stick [00:28:00] different metrics sticker to the pillar and framework, uh, outlines that you give to them.

Rui: Um. How do you arrive at that framework or distilling the job function into a few very basic categories? Uh, do you usually discover this in a conversation with them or do you usually think ahead of time? 

Stephanie: I think a huge part of my job is listening and learning. I've been very self-aware the whole time that I've been in this role that I don't come from an education background, unlike a lot of my.

Stephanie: Colleagues. And so my role is not to be the education expert. My role is to learn from the education experts and help them be more effective at their jobs. So I try to be intentional with, you know, where I'm attending meetings to build context and then ask a lot of questions. Uh, and then a lot of it is just learning from folks and then helping them to collect their thoughts into strategy and scoping out projects that would help them.

Rui: [00:29:00] I love this. Um, before I go into the next topic, can you gimme an example where maybe some of the analytics insights really shaped some of the strategy or policy, uh, around the education, 

Stephanie: some of the analytics work that we do that I'm most excited about, uh, it's not necessarily the most. Naturally exciting topic.

Stephanie: And in fact, it is one of the more controversial topics where people are not always happy with us. But I think it is just so impa directly actionable and impactful is our work around a state accountability system. So we, one of the things we do at the state level is we not only administer an annual summative assessment to understand our, our kids learning what we want them to, uh, but we actually have a system where we use.

Stephanie: That information as well as, um, college and career readiness information, some student growth information, various data points to hold districts and, and campuses accountable. And we rate them on an a f scale of how well they are teaching kids. Uh, and right obvious. [00:30:00] Obviously that is not the most popular thing that we do, but there's a, a solid research base out there that shows that, that at the end of the day helps improve low performing schools and ultimately improve outcomes for kids.

Stephanie: You have to hold the adults accountable. To help the kids. And what we do on the analytics side is we do a re a lot of like really robust analysis. It's very detailed and in the weeds because the, there's a lot of nuance that you have to get right when designing the system to understand what really are the indicators that are the most important to hold schools accountable for.

Stephanie: Uh, and how do you structure that in the way that makes the most sense? And we wanna like really understand the impact of any change that we're making to this system in detail. So a lot of just kind of modeling out what that change might look like. And like, this is again, where it's tough because of data lags, et cetera, but you wanna look at like what are the, the career or college readiness credentials that a, that a student could earn in high school, and what are the ones.

Stephanie: That most translate into post-secondary [00:31:00] success in either college or the workforce or the military, like really doing rigorous research there helps us understand then what, what we should be holding schools accountable for doing in high school and what actually matters and what doesn't matter as much.

Stephanie: And so that's one example. I'm really excited about that work because it's, it's so clearly working backwards from a very specific. Policy decision that matters. And so it's exactly the place where we should be doing robust data analysis to make sure that we're making the right choice. 

Rui: I love it. Seems like you have a very strong clarity on where you really need to emphasize on the.

Rui: Accuracy of the research versus what are the things that you could potentially let go and simplify, um, based on, especially based on your previous answer as well. Um, that's a really good point. Sweet. Yeah. 

Stephanie: It the, you have to be intentional about where the precision matters and where you might be able to go a little more, where big picture and accountability is a place where precision really matters.

Rui: Um. Is there [00:32:00] cross-agency learning like happening? Because it sounds like you guys are doing a great job and I wonder whether that type of like system would be modeled after by other states agencies. 

Stephanie: Yeah, it's a good question. I think at the end of the day, our mission is improving outcomes for kids in Texas, and so that is what we're very laser focused on.

Stephanie: We do some collaboration with other agencies in. That also have a hand in, in shaping outcomes for kids, uh, like health and human services or the Texas Workforce Commission. But yeah, I don't know if I have a, a clear answer to your question. There's an important distinction that is, uh, complicated to navigate between, um, policy and execution where we implement laws, but at the end of the day, with the Texas legislature that designed our accountability system, and then we, we figure out the details and.

Stephanie: Administer it. Um, but some of it is actually policy that [00:33:00] is not driven by my agency, but it's driven by the legislature, and then we receive that policy and we implement it. 

Rui: Right. But regardless, what's the specific policy content, the system that you built to implement the accountability to uphold such policies?

Rui: Um, if there is a tech world version for that, I would just package that into an app and help other agencies implement similar tracking system. 

Stephanie: Yep. Like when you get into differences in state policy, that's when technology solutions become a lot harder to scale across states. So we're doing a lot of technology work that is very Texas specific, but, but some of the data interoperability we're, we're doing, which is uh, based on the Ed-Fi data standard, is something that is cross state.

Stephanie: Um, and so I am excited about some of these solutions where we can build kind of foundational. Technology systems that can work in multiple different state contexts. It's hard, but, uh, but like slowly, there are places where we're [00:34:00] moving in that direction. 

Rui: Yeah, I, I totally understand the critical, the importance of data, um, connectivity because even within the company, I am also advocating a lot for that type of data connectivity, but also data reliability so that you can actually have meaningful views into different parts of the organization, right?

Rui: Mm-hmm. Um. And it's just so difficult. 

Stephanie: Yep. I completely agree. A challenge to your point of like how do you show people this is important is, uh, I think in education we need to keep grounding it. Well, this is a generalizable comment about technology. You need to keep grounding in the use cases and in education.

Stephanie: I think the reason I'm so excited about our data interoperability work, uh, it doesn't sound. Sexy and exciting. But I'd say the thing I work on that has the most direct through line to making educator's lives easier. Uh, I think a lot of the stuff that we're doing, um, to some [00:35:00] extent is in the short term, putting more work on teachers' plates.

Stephanie: We're trying to, we try to mitigate that, but like you, you're asking a teacher to do a new training, you're asking 'em to adopt a new curriculum. Like that's hard. And we hope that it pays off in the long run, but that's hard. The data interoperability work is just so directly solving a pain point that, that folks on my team have heard from so, so many educators, which I didn't even realize the extent of this problem, uh, before coming to the agency because I was an adult who didn't work in schools and didn't have kids.

Stephanie: Uh, but the, the proliferation of ed tech over the last call it decade and especially since the pandemic has just been so. Profound that so many folks who are working in schools now just see their, like their job is spreadsheets. They're just constantly like pulling things out of one system, combining it with something from another system, taking their grades in one system and entering them into another system.

Stephanie: 'cause there, there's just so many more systems now, but the, there hasn't been the foundational work to get them to interoperate with, [00:36:00] with one another. Um, and so I see this work at the end of the day as taking. Workload off of educators plates, and if we can keep grounding it back in that, I think that is how we keep the momentum and keep focused on what matters.

Rui: The next topic that I have in mind is about, you know, work within a giant bureaucracy. What makes someone effective and ineffective in a slow moving system with lots of constraints like the one that you are operating in. 

Stephanie: Yeah. And it's interesting because in some ways what I'm my organization now is, is more bureaucratic than where I was coming from.

Stephanie: And in some ways it's less. Ultimately I'm working for a smaller organization in places where I have worked in the past with tens of thousands of employees, um, where it's really easy to develop silos and duplication of effort and organizational complexity. [00:37:00] We are. Call it roughly a thousand employees, so significantly smaller, it is easier to figure out who's doing what and figure out who you need to talk to about what.

Stephanie: So that actually has been, um, in some ways easier. And I think they're, the solution to operating effectively is relationship building and really like building up an understanding of who works on what and who you need to work with for what. I think this is where I, uh, am a little bit more in awe of the complexity at the.

Stephanie: Federal level where things are much bigger, but I don't have direct experience with that. The place that government definitely is bureaucratic is in the like regulatory constraints on what you can do. Particularly when it comes to things like procurement hiring with technology work, that can be really hard because procurement policy a lot of the time hasn't kept up with advances in technology.

Stephanie: And so you have these like processes that were designed for procuring. Physical servers that now you're trying to apply to cloud [00:38:00] infrastructure and it just doesn't fit. And like the processes are changing, are evolving to keep up with modern technology, but, but slowly and so that can be really painful sometimes.

Stephanie: I don't have a fully formed point of view yet on everything that needs to happen to make it easier. But, uh, it is a problem that I'm really. Passionate about solving because enabling government to do technology well is super important. There's a phenomenal book that, uh, I recommend anyone who is at all interested in government and or technology read, uh, it's called Recoding America by Jennifer Paulka.

Stephanie: She articulates this far better than than I can, and one of the points she makes is this, we don't focus enough on execution. We focus a lot on policy and, and. Delivery sometimes falls by the wayside. And that is how you end up with things like you have to interact with government. You see it, whether it is applying for a visa, filing your taxes, trying to enroll in [00:39:00] government services.

Stephanie: Like all of those things are so painful. But from the process standpoint and a technology standpoint, and all of those things are happening digitally now. And so like strong technology systems are crucial to making. Those systems work and it erodes, understandably erodes trust and faith in government every time we do one of those things badly.

Stephanie: And it also prevents critical systems from working. Jennifer Polka. She was part of the, the group that, uh, saved healthcare.gov when the Affordable Care Act was passed. Obviously, like very impactful, very foundational healthcare policy, but it almost completely fell apart because the website didn't work and the website crashed.

Stephanie: As soon as it took effect and they had to bring in this, you know, SWAT team of tech nerds to save it. And that's exactly the sort of thing that we need to get better at preventing by putting equal focus on the execution as we do the policy in Texas. Similarly, like we administered the state standardized assessment and, and a few [00:40:00] years ago there was a tech outage and a bunch of kids couldn't take their tests because the platform.

Stephanie: Didn't hold the load. And so now we so rigorously make sure that we are load testing the platform we hold our vendors to, to very high bars for performance. And we, we focus the heck out of the technology systems because best laid plans go awry if your technology doesn't hold up to what you're trying to roll out.

Stephanie: You know, we're, we're a publisher now and so we need to not only write a really strong curriculum, we also need to make sure that the, both the digital and the physical experience. Of receiving that curriculum is strong. So my team is working on improving the user experience for the digital access to our curriculum.

Stephanie: You need, you need to have really strong operational management, the right metrics to look at to ensure that we're delivering print to schools on time or else they won't. You know, you can produce the best possible curriculum in the world and if they can't actually get it in classrooms by the time the school year starts, it's not gonna work.

Rui: This is a fantastic point. I actually [00:41:00] want to reflect this back to you, which is. In the very beginning of our conversation, I ask you, is it sticking meaning this edu working at a education agency sticking for you? Um, and they're continuously evaluating how you could make the most impact on the most important problems and sounds like.

Rui: The bits that you just shared with me right now, you are very passionate about how to enabling government with the technology because that will unlock a lot of other things and then making sure the execution is actually done correctly. Um, I think that at least that will be the theme and I don't know, maybe in a few years that's the direction that you're going or sooner than that.

Stephanie: Yeah, I completely agree. I, I am. I, I just, I think you can tell like really, really passionate about this. I, I, I just see such a glaring problem [00:42:00] in so many places that we absolutely need to fix, uh, which is why I'm, I'm continually reevaluating like, can we solve this problem? How could we solve this problem is you need.

Stephanie: Top level leadership to care about this problem. And I think right, we have that right now at our agency. Top level leadership is pushing the agency in a, in a direction of caring about outcomes, caring about delivery. It takes a lot of people to make that choice, uh, over and over and over again in so many different places.

Rui: I also know that you are really passionate about female leadership. Um. What's shaping your view over the years? Um, what do you really care about, uh, in terms of female leadership? 

Stephanie: Yeah. Um, this is another topic that excites me a lot. Uh, the last few years. I went from working in a male dominated space to working in a female dominated space.

Stephanie: Um, unsurprisingly education is very female dominated. A lot of women teachers and a lot of teachers [00:43:00] then go on to roles in education management. And so I work with a whole bunch of. Phenomenal women. I mean, I don't exclusively work with women. I also work with phenomenal men. I worked with some great women in my old job too.

Stephanie: But the scales definitely tipped when I, when I moved to working in education. And it has been really cool to see and like kind of come up in my own leadership journey in a context where I have, uh, a lot of models to look to for what effective leadership looks like. In a way that is not inauthentic as a woman.

Stephanie: The obvious caveat here is I am generalizing and obviously there's also a lot of men who are phenomenal leaders and there's plenty of women who are crappy leaders. But it wasn't until my current role that I really saw modeled at the, the highest levels of leadership that it's not not incompatible. [00:44:00] To care about people as a human and still set very high expectations and make tough choices when you need to.

Stephanie: One of the leadership leadership skills that I learned over the last few years is empathy. I think empathy is a critically important leadership skill, and it's not that men aren't empathetic, but I think that women are often like conditioned to naturally be very empathetic. Leadership is about people.

Stephanie: You need to spend your time thinking not just about systems and processes and numbers, but also about the people on your team and the stakeholders you're interacting with as humans. I think you'll be so much more effective as a leader if you are emotionally intelligent, if you lead with empathy and trying to understand other people's motivations, what makes them tick.

Stephanie: Inconsistent at all with setting high expectations. If we miss the mark on something, if we miss a deadline on a project, I'm gonna do the work to really dig in and understand [00:45:00] why and how I can really, truly. Help us do better in the future. And, and that involves like really doing the, the thought process of do we miss the deadline because this member of the team really struggles with project management skills and, and needs new systems for project management?

Stephanie: Or do we miss the deadline because we were misaligned on expectations and we need to set more clear expectations upfront or, you know, you have to actually, it's not just about saying, this was no good, go fix it. It is about understanding really, truly what the needs of your team are. Coaching to improve for the next time around.

Stephanie: Um, and similarly, when I'm navigating disagreements with folks, I think it is so important to first take the step to understand where people are coming from and why you disagree. And that doesn't mean you can't continue to disagree, but I think that. Helps to [00:46:00] one, open your mind to places where you actually could have been wrong.

Stephanie: Uh, two, it helps to almost deescalate the disagreement from an emotional standpoint because you can go to someone and say, well, I, I completely understand why you're feeling the way you feel, but still hold firm too. But respectfully, I disagree, and here's why. And I think that is really what good leadership looks like.

Stephanie: And again, it is not just about gender, but I do think that that empathy that I've seen modeled by a lot of 

Rui: women. I see. And you are seeing this pattern because you're switching to a female dominant field. 

Stephanie: Yeah, and I don't mean to dismiss some of my amazing female mentors in the consulting world because again, it's not, it's not that cut and dry.

Stephanie: Uh, but a hundred percent yes, I've seen more of that, just acceptance of modeling, empathy and vulnerability. In the education world than I have in the consulting world, and I've seen a path to my, a leadership style I didn't think was possible for myself, that it's more authentic to my true self without at all [00:47:00] sacrificing outcomes for my team.

Rui: Yeah, I'm sure some of this is biological and evolutionary driven reasons, but I think also a lot of it is societal constructs for a long, long time that's being taught to the kids. Right. So then this goes back to education again. How do you really teach kids both, you know, uh, boys and girls? For how you really understand your own emotions and others' emotions and accept them and then be okay with all kind of emotions present at the same time.

Rui: That's often not really being talked about, maybe in school, at least not that I am aware of for the education system that I grew up with. But do you see such curriculum going forward? 

Stephanie: Oh, it's a good question. That's not at all where, where my mind focuses, which is more like how do we set up organizational structures and hoach up.

Stephanie: Leaders, more leaders as adults in the work setting to implement strong leadership practices.[00:48:00] 

Rui: This could be the last episode of floating questions, or it may not be either way. I hope you enjoyed flowing along with us today. If you liked our journey, please consider subscribing. Thank you for listening and made the questions always be with you.