GAEL UnscriptED
GAEL UnscriptED, the podcast that goes beyond the headlines and handbooks to bring you unfiltered insights from Georgia’s top educational leaders, innovators, and changemakers. Hosted by Ben Wiggins, Executive Director of GAEL, this show dives deep into the challenges, opportunities, and unexpected twists that shape education today.
From leadership strategies to policy discussions—and everything in between—GAEL UnscriptED is your go-to source for candid conversations that make an impact. No scripts. No fluff. Just real talk from those leading the way in Georgia’s schools.
GAEL UnscriptED
Your EDS Called; It Wants A Doctorate
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What if professional learning actually counted twice—toward your graduate degree and your district’s biggest challenges? We sit down with Dr. Mike Dishman, dean at the University of West Georgia, to unpack a practical blueprint for educator growth, retention, and real results. From SummerGale’s community heartbeat to the nuts and bolts of a redesigned doctorate, this conversation focuses on what moves the needle for Georgia’s schools.
Dr. Dishman explains why West Georgia now treats the EDS as the first half of a doctorate, cutting needless hours and cost, and how a professional capstone replaces the traditional dissertation with a thousand-hour, team-based project that tackles problems of practice. Think VR efficacy studies, policy-aligned analysis, and solutions districts can deploy immediately. It’s rigor with relevance—grounded in data and built for working educators.
We also dive into Georgia’s Best—Building Educator Success Together—a partnership model born after the state’s burnout report. Here’s the math districts can’t ignore: replacing a single teacher costs $14,000 to $28,000. Redirecting that spend can fund 2–4 graduate degrees, lock in top talent for five years, and align learning to high-need areas like special education and instructional technology. Programs run in cohorts, use local policy and data, and are often taught by the district’s own top practitioners, so coursework doubles as targeted professional development.
Along the way, we talk culture—why Family Fun Night matters to educator families—and the deeper loyalty that comes from being seen and invested in. Big district or small, urban or rural, the model scales because it starts with listening: define workforce needs, credit prior learning, and design programs that fit the work. If you care about educator retention, practical leadership development, and degrees without debt bloat, you’ll find a roadmap here.
If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a review to help more educators and leaders find it.
Welcome to Gale Unscripted, where leadership meets learning and real conversations drive real impact. I'm Ben Wiggins, Executive Director of Gale. Join us as we go beyond the headlines with Georgia's top education leaders. Let's elevate the conversation. Hello, Gale members, and welcome to another exciting episode of Gale Unscripted. Today we have a very special guest, Dr. Mike Dishman of the University of West Georgia. Go West. West Georgia is a proud partner of Gale. They are a very, very strong partner. I'm sure those of you that have been to our conferences, you've seen their strong presence. If you haven't been to Summer Gale before, and maybe this year will be your first year, you will quickly find the West Georgia Hallway, as we refer to it as Gale staff. But anyway, Mike, why don't you take just a couple of minutes and introduce yourself to our Gale members? A lot of them already know who you are, but some of them, this might be the first time they get to hear from you.
SPEAKER_02:Great. And let me begin, Ben, by saying first, the descriptor exciting. In no way is a guarantee that this podcast will in any way be exciting or interesting. It was just a gratuitous observation that been made, and there's no guarantee that you will find this excitement. I am Mike Dishman. I am a professor of education, policy, and governance, and the dean of the College of Education at West Georgia. West Georgia is extremely proud to be the largest College of Education serving Georgia schools and Georgia educators. In fact, this fall, one out of every five Georgia educators, our future Georgia educators enrolled in the university system of Georgia is enrolled at West Georgia. So we are, again, extremely, extremely proud to serve Georgia in that way. We are also militantly focused, as you know, on serving Georgia and serving Georgia schools. As we begin the year, every year we tell the faculty study abroad begins at Alabama. We will focus on other states and other nations just as soon as everything in Georgia is taken care of. But that's and we think we see that reflected in our faculty and our priorities. So but we are extremely proud to be here. We're extremely proud to be a Gale legacy partner. We think Gale does a fantastic job advocating for Georgia educators. And so that is probably the best money we spend all year.
SPEAKER_03:Why don't you tell some of our Gale members that maybe haven't been to Somergale before? Uh some of the things that they will see and appreciate and get to experience uh from the University of West Georgia while they're at Somergale Conference.
SPEAKER_02:Well, one, I mean, a huge hit obviously is the red and blue moon pies. That is true. That is, people love the red and blue moon pies.
SPEAKER_03:And they really are red and blue.
SPEAKER_02:And they really are red and blue. Um and uh one of the things that we do, we we we bring, gosh, uh, and and throughout this, I'm going to be uh talking to Dr. Mary Alice Varga, who is our assistant dean for partnerships and chair of the Department of Leadership Research and School Improvement, as if she's actually part of this. We should have, you know, honestly mic'd her.
SPEAKER_03:She is a member of our live studio audience today.
SPEAKER_02:And if you if you see me reacting like this, it means that I've said something and she's gesticulating wildly completely. Um but I think we take about 20 of our faculty to Gale. And it isn't a reflection of how important we are. It's an in reflection of how important Gale is to us and the Gale membership. We have thousands of Georgia educators who are in our online programs, and a lot of the Gale members really love seeing for the first time their professors face to face. And so that that was wonderful. We also have a wonderful opportunity for educators to talk about programs they're interested in and things that that they may find useful for not only the Gale members, but their schools. Yeah. You know, that uh we invariably have folks want to come up and talk to us about speech pathology and counseling and other opportunities because they they need. And at least once a day a a district rep will come up and say, We will take all your speech pathologists.
SPEAKER_01:Right, yes.
SPEAKER_02:So uh that's that's exciting. And then, of course, it it's a chance we have with our faculty, we prioritize hiring um people I think of as really heroes to the Gale membership. Um I think you know, having Samantha Fury as one of our faculty members is is certainly a wonderful draw for Gale members.
SPEAKER_03:Right. That's right. So talk about um one of the perks or one of the biggest hits at SummerGale occurs on the Monday night of Summer Gale. It's the Family Fun Night, and West Georgia is the sponsor of that. Um Paige jumps in at the end of Family Fun Night with some fireworks, but tell tell the audience a little bit about Family Fun Night and why that's important, in your opinion, for West Georgia to sponsor that.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it was a wonderful opportunity that we had to sponsor Family Fun Night. And it was something that was resonant with me personally being a Gale kid from the 70s. It was many of the current Gale members will not remember. One of the reasons we were at Get Jekyll is because in the 70s, Georgia principals could not afford to take their families to the beach.
SPEAKER_00:That's right.
SPEAKER_02:So the first for my family, uh as the child of an assistant principal, principal, and superintendent, the first trip we had as a family trip that wasn't a camping trip was to go to Summergale. Yeah. And so you know you look forward to it every year. And so I love the idea of us being able to sponsor something that is a a Gale legacy family event. Yeah. And it is wonderful to see the educators with their families, you know, coming in. And and you can always tell the children are raised by educators because every one of them on the way out. Thank you, thank you. Oh, we had a wonderful thank you, thank you. Um the the kind of home training that the children of educators naturally receive. So we're we love that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's a great event. It really brings the family together. You know, being the child of an administrator sometimes in a local community, it's not all peaches and cream. Sometimes uh mom or dad gets some criticism. So I think it's very important for those families to be able to spend time together, both alone as a family and spend time with other families that are going through the exact same challenges they are.
SPEAKER_02:And I I would say, Ben, that is an excellent point because we often forget how isolating it can be to be the child of the school principal or the school superintendent or heaven help you, the assistant principal. You know, it it is something so it's it's great that Gale kids are in an environment where they can talk to others about those same challenges. Yeah. You know, it's uh and you know, frankly, sometimes the the harassment that the kids naturally get from teachers who, you know, are if if only their principal understood what what a misunderstood genius they were, and that you know the superintendent would listen to how they would run the district. You know, and they they decide to take it out on the the principal's kid because she or he happens to be proximate.
SPEAKER_01:That's right.
SPEAKER_02:Why some of those kids could end up you know growing up and going to school law. Um they're so so uh disturbed by the experience.
SPEAKER_03:That's right. Um so Well, we've talked about the the fun aspects of West Georgia uh at Summergale, but two SummerGales ago, you all made a big announcement. Uh there were a lot of administrators out in our audience that had their EDS, their specialist degree, and you made an announcement about if you have your EDS and you're interested in getting your doctorate. Um when you made the announcement of what West Georgia was offering, there was a flood of uh Gale members at SummerGale that made their way to your hallway. Uh so tell us what that announcement was, just in case we've got some Gale members listening today or watching that have their EDS and they've always wondered about getting their doctorate, but they're they're just kind of at that little sticking point.
SPEAKER_02:Well, the EDS as as we look at it is is the EDS historically was sort of a fiction. It developed. You know, the EDS was a degree that we developed in education, but really it's the first half of a doctorate. It's the first 30 hours of your doctoral program, moving from a master's. And we did that in the profession because, well, one, we had lane increases, and people do not finish their dissertations. So it was a way to ensure that, okay, if you go into the program at the halfway point you get a lane increase. So we start off with the presumption that half of a doctorate you've already completed in your EDS. Well, the university has fairly quickly figured out that we could charge you for 12 more hours if you did your EDS instead of enrolling straight through in a 60-hour doctorate. So a great number of doctoral programs were an EDS plus then another 40 hours as is for a 60-hour doctorate. And you could quickly figure it out, well, now I'm into the 70s rather than just doing 60. Well, the way we look at things at West Georgia is frankly, what's good for the profession, not what's good for the university. And and that's one reason I think, a big part of the reason we've been very successful. And so what our faculty did was say, well, it's foolish for us to say if you of these 60 hours, if you take 27 in of the same hours you would take in a 60-hour doctorate to not give you full credit for the 27. So that then turned our doctorate from a 27 plus oh 45 into a 60-hour doctorate. And if you have your EDS and you've done the first 27 hours, your doctorate's only 33 hours after your EDS.
SPEAKER_03:Huge game changer. And I know that was extremely popular amongst our Gale members. And in fact, this past summer, um, I saw a uh former teacher of mine who's now a principal, and um I saw her back toward your hallway. And I pulled her to the side. I knew she had her EDS. And I told her, I said, you need to go talk to West Georgia about this doctoral program they've got. They'll count your EDS toward it. And she said, uh a little too late. I heard them announce that last summer, and I'm already in the program. So that was just one personal uh example of that. But I know there's been tons of administrators and aspiring administrators out there take advantage of that program. That is fantastic. So if you're listening to this podcast and you've got your specialist degree and you're you're thinking about getting your doctoral degree, I I would strongly suggest you reach out to West Georgia and talk to them. And I believe this year at Wintergale, they're gonna have an opportunity to do that. If there's some people out there that have maybe applied to West Georgia or they're interested in making application, that you all are gonna have an opportunity for them to come talk to you at Wintergale. I don't know if all the specifics of that have been set up yet, uh, but do you want to talk about that at all and why you're offering that one-on-one uh opportunity for future students?
SPEAKER_02:Sure. And it's the same reason we do a lot of stuff because Georgia educators ask for it. And so we will be there in our traditional way. Um suffice it to say, our enthusiasm for supporting Georgia educators is not subtle, and that lack of subtlety will be also reflected at Wintergale. And so we will have faculty there to meet with Georgia educators to not only talk about this, but any other degree programs you want to talk about.
SPEAKER_03:That's fantastic. And if you're coming to Wintergale, you will not have a problem finding the University of West Georgia. Uh we already know where they're gonna be. I don't know if we're quite ready to announce that quite yet, but trust me, uh, they will not be hard to find. And just like Mike says, they will have an army of people for you to talk to. It won't just be one or two folks. You you will get customer service and some one-on-one interaction about this.
SPEAKER_02:Well, let's do it. I could be in one of the other aspects of it, and uh while Dr. Varga is here, I'm I'm it's made me think about the faculty in leadership did when we redid our doctorate was not just giving you full credit for your EDS, but we moved away from a traditional dissertation to a professional capstone.
SPEAKER_03:What is that? Tell us what that is.
SPEAKER_02:Well, a professional capstone, the idea of preparating using that for professional degrees in education was more or less introduced and popularized by uh the institution that is not only Tennessee's um education leader, but today Tennessee's football leader.
SPEAKER_00:Oh.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yes, uh the one that's uh Yes. Vanderbilt University. And so what Vanderbilt did about 20 years ago was said, you know, that instead of a traditional educ dissertation, we're going to look at putting school leaders um in situations that replicate what they will experience at the top of their profession. It is a team-based project that is about a thousand hours that requires you to synthesize an actual challenge in education, use data and research, and come up with a solution. And so what our faculty did was building on that. So we have projects that are put forward by school districts that are actually problems of practice. And we put together school leaders on a team, and it's the same number of hours that you would spend doing a dissertation, but it is done in something that is meaningful to the district and advances them professionally and helps the district with about a thousand hours of research.
SPEAKER_03:This is something that's tangible that you can use right there at home.
SPEAKER_02:For example, Cobb County School District, which was one of the founding partners of our Georgia's Best program, made a multi-million dollar investment in a VR project. And they wanted to test the efficacy and the success of the project, and so they put about three of their capstone teams into evaluating different aspects of the project. So what would have ordinarily cost them$100,000 to have evaluated, they got evaluated for a nominal amount of money through a capstone, through three capstone projects. And I think the district would tell you they were very satisfied with the results they received.
SPEAKER_03:That's incredible. You just mentioned something called Georgia's Best. And I know there's people uh um within our Gale family that are they just heard that for the first time. So why don't you very quickly just tell them what Georgia's best is, and then we're really gonna delve into the specifics of that program.
SPEAKER_02:So Georgia's Best began when I following the the DOE's publication of the burnout report. And Chris Ragsdale, who was a superintendent in Cobb and I were having a conversation about what we could do, what's going on here, what's and one of the aspects that came up was educator compensation. And Chris and I said, Well, yeah, we we have good investments in compensation, and particularly Georgia's unique in the commitment it makes to lane increases. We want educators to get advanced degrees rather than just being paid on seniority. And Chris said uh more or less, I don't know why we're we're not, you know, educators are not as enthusiastic about this. And if you've talked to Chris Raxdale, you know every conversation with him begins and ends with what can we do for educators? And so I said, Well, Chris, the average Georgia educator, uh, if she or he pursues a master's degree, even at a state un university, incurs about$29,000 in debt. If they do it through a private institution, it's at least$33,34. And so that means most of their lane increase for the first decade, they put it in an envelope at the end of the month and mail away for a decade. So they don't really feel it. They pretty quickly say, I I was supposed to get a raise for this, but I don't feel it. And so more or less we kept saying, Well, what if we had a a Hope scholarship for teachers? And so that was really where Georgia's best was born was the idea of saying, How do we take the benefits of the Hope Scholarship Program and apply that to degrees for educators? And so we also looked at several other challenges with it. Georgia's best is building educator success together. And the idea was we replicate a lot of trainings. Gale has wonderful trainings, but for the most part, you don't get college credit for it. And we had educators come in and say, wait a minute, I I I did a leadership development program at Gale, and we covered a lot of this stuff. And the university's response was, Well, you didn't pay us tuition for it, so you need to replicate it instead of us you recognizing that you already have these competencies. So we said, Well, what if we brought the you know organizations like Gale and the RESAs and and all the districts, the different ways that educators get professional development? And if they have already mastered particular skills, why are we replicating those? Why don't we then say instead, okay, you've already got this on lock, you've got data analysis on lock. Well, let's now talk about communication, because you've got a problem with communication and build those skills instead of making you replicate what you already learned.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And so the the ultimate goal of Georgia's best is to say, what if the education profession just said, these are the core competencies at different levels that we have for educators, and we all contribute to them, and we ensure that no matter how an educator learns something, she or he gets credit for it.
SPEAKER_03:Wow, that's incredible. So talk to me a little bit more and to our listeners about the Georgia's Best, Georgia Best program. Let's say I'm a superintendent. I just heard you say this, what you did with Chris Ragsdale at Cobb County. Just give me a little bit more insight of okay, you've piqued my interest. Tell me a little bit more. How do I go about this? Should I reach out and talk to someone in particular? How do I go about getting more information? This you really you really piqued my interest on this.
SPEAKER_02:Um what I would say, and and it's uh I want to make clear we that first conversation with Ragsdale then turned into a conversation with a dozen others. Uh Evan Horton at at Kuita, who is another founding partner. Uh there's a whole lot of Evan's thinking in this, um, for good or bad, Evan, if you're listening. And it was one of you you would reach out and and talk to us about you know the possibilities of partnership. What we did in looking at Georgia's Best is Georgia's Best begins with a conversation with the district uh in looking at what are your needs, what are your workforce needs. You remember the days in the 2000s when the four profits nearly wrecked the system because everybody was getting a degree in ed leadership, including people who didn't ever want to be a school leader. And so we begin by having a conversation with the districts and saying, what are your actual needs? Districts pick the programs where they have need. For example, about a third of the students who go through a Georgia's best program get a degree in special education because that is one of the most in-demand areas. And the districts can then pair it to their individual workforce needs. For example, one of the areas that Kuita picked for theirs was they said we want instructional technology, but an emphasis on reading. And so we designed a program for them that was an instructional technology program that had reading embedded in it. And so we would sit down with the district and talk about that. The other thing that it it is is it represents a financial commitment from the board to pay for their educators to get this program, which we looked at and and uh said, and and Cobb did some research on it, and there's state research on it that says it costs a school district between 14 and$28,000 between an educator leaving, finding and onboarding a new educator.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_02:And we said, well, for that amount of money, a school district can pay for the graduate degrees of three educators.
SPEAKER_03:Stop. Repeat what you just said. When a teacher leaves for whatever reason, uh of their own accord, or they were non-renewed, whatever, for them to leave, and all of the manpower and the hours and the time, the effort and energy of human resources and benefits program, the interviews between 14 and$28,000 to replace that person. And now you've got a another brand new person. And everybody's talking about recruitment and retention. Recruitment and retention. You just said that for that amount of money, you all figured out that you could educate how many?
SPEAKER_02:Well, depending on it, uh, between whether 14 or 21, between two to four and lock them in for the two years they're in the program, then a further three years where they are committed to you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:The other thing the districts did that that you know, because you were a superintendent, it's it's the new teacher unknown comp uh quantity. So let's say you have one of your best veterans go out or go to another district. In this very competitive teacher economy, you've lost one of your best teachers. Now you've got an unknown commodity coming in. So you may be looking at 14 to 28, depending on how challenging that person is. And it's going to get really challenging if the lawyers have to get involved. But instead, what you do is you pick out uh two to four of your best educators and you say, Let's make a commitment to each other. Let's we're gonna pay for you to get a degree in this field we need. Yeah. We're going to take a very active role with our district in providing the curriculum and the and the teaching in this. And at the end of it, you get your degree paid for, and we have locked in one of our best teachers for five years.
SPEAKER_00:That's right.
SPEAKER_02:Another great aspect of this is it's a cohorted model. So, for example, with Cobb and COEITA, let's say that you are taking a class in human resources. You are not taking an esoteric class in human resources generally out in the world. It is built around Cobb or Quita HR policy. It is built around Cobb or Quita data. So concurrently with you going through this academic class, you are getting real-time PD for your district. You know what your district's scores are in data. Often the person teaching the class is the person who, if you as the superintendent, said, I want somebody to learn, I want you to learn data from this principal because she or he is the best in our district. Yeah. That's who we put teaching the course. That's right. So we and we have gotten fantastic responses out of that.
SPEAKER_03:That's good. You know, there's so much turnover with new superintendents in their cabinet, at the district office, the directors, uh, principals, uh, so a lot of them in human resource departments, they may be hearing this for the first time and not really thinking about the true cost of the turnover when you lose a teacher going through the hiring process to hire another one. And they may be sitting there at first when they hear this and they go, Well, I don't know. How do how do we come up with$21,000? Well, they're already doing it. Right. They're already spending that money, and you've come up with a way, along with some help from Evan and Chris, to figure out how to make sure that you're investing that money to retain folks. And like you said, you've got a plan there that you're gonna guarantee to keep them for five years. And if I'm an educator and you've made that kind of investment in me, I I I find it hard to believe that I'm not gonna have a certain amount of loyalty and appreciation to them. And so if I stayed with you for five years, regardless of how long I've already been with you, there's a great chance that you may have just secured me for life.
SPEAKER_02:And and it it is hilarious because our third partner is Gwynnette. And Gwinnett came on after we had the first two partners in place, and Gwynette was at the time offering a tremendous like six or seven thousand dollar signing bonus for new teachers. And the it was the idea of paying for graduate degrees, not for teachers, was more appealing than the cash that educators would get to pay for the degree themselves, because it was my district sees something in me. My district is paying for me to grow professionally. This is not just a pure transaction, we'll pay you this money to come teach for us, but you see me and want me to stay for this time period.
SPEAKER_03:This is amazing. And and folks, we're just getting started. This is just part one of two parts that we're gonna talk to. Dr. Mike Ditchman of the University of West Georgia. You've just heard this. I know some of you are out there right now, you're thinking, well, Mike, you've talked about Cobb and you've talked about Gwinnett and you've talked about Caleda, but we're a small district. We are a small rural district. We only have 8,000 students, or we may only have 1,000 students. Um what is what is our opportunities or possibilities with West Georgia? So when we come back for our second episode, uh that's what we're gonna talk about. This is not just for big metro districts. Um, this is something that could be replicated all around the state. So thank you so much for joining us today. And uh, we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Gail Unscript with Dr. Mike Dishman of West Georgia.
