Designing Education

A podcast hosted by Robert Balfanz, director of the Everyone Graduates Center.

Conversations with leaders in education from around the country on bold new ideas and research-based strategies for redesigning American education to more effectively engage all students and equip them for the challenges of today’s workplace and world.

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

Season 1, Episode 11    |    43min

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.

A Six-State Collaboration Reimagines Today’s High School Experience

Season 1, Episode 10    |    44min

The public high school is a uniquely American invention, and our public high schools have played a powerful role in the development of our nation. The challenge is that in today’s world, a high school diploma alone is not enough to usher young people immediately into a middle-class, life-supporting existence. Further, public high schools must take all who walk in the door, regardless of prior motivations, learning experiences, and life circumstances, and find a way to graduate all of them ready for some sort of post-secondary education or training–a mission they are not currently designed to meet.

Over the past five years, a group of six states have been working with the Everyone Graduate Center at Johns Hopkins University on the Cross State High School Redesign Collaborative initiative. Many of these states are using the comprehensive school improvement provisions from the Federal Every Student Succeeds Act to organize the work. Dr. Sonja Robertson, Executive Director of School Improvement for the Mississippi Department of Education, has been part of this effort from the very beginning and joins Bob Balfanz to discuss the many things we’ve learned from this cross-collaborative effort.

Building an Ecosystem of Care

Season 1, Episode 9    |    44min

In this episode, Robert Balfanz is joined by Susanne Diggs-Wilborn, Vice President for College Success for Achieve Atlanta. Our nation’s public education system has always sought to prepare and enable each generation to be ready to succeed in the world. To be on a pathway to adult success requires not only a high school diploma, but some postsecondary schooling or training beyond it. Yet, the supports we provide to students to make the transition from high school to college and be successful have not kept pace with the need. In part, this is because K-12 schooling and higher education were designed as two separate systems with very little connective tissue between them. This makes it easy to get lost or to be denied opportunity into this breach.

Achieve Atlanta is at the forefront of this work; in this episode, Dr. Diggs-Wilborn and Dr. Balfanz discuss ways to help make students into community members, by facilitating the shift from just being accepted to truly belonging.

Expanding the Village: School-Community Partnerships That Multiply Student Supports

Season 1, Episode 8    |    31min

In this episode, Ashley Seiler, Chief Partnership Officer at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri, joins Robert Balfanz for a discussion about how BBBS created an ecosystem of over 100 community partners, three school districts, and 18 schools that serves over 10,000 students in a range of critical supports both in and out of school.

We often say it takes a village to raise a child. We don’t, however, organize our schools that way. The assumption is that everything the school needs is provided by teachers and staff, with little coordination or communication with out-of-school activities that students and families engage with after-school or on weekends. In many ways this puts too big a burden on schools and leaves too many community assets underutilized.

The result is students don’t get the full set of supports and experiences they need, school staff are exhausted doing the best they can without all the resources they need, and community organizations are often frustrated that they could be doing more, but don’t have a clear way to do so.

In eastern Missouri, a dedicated nonprofit partner with a listening ear helps coordinate a community-school ecosystem, offering large numbers of young people an integrated support framework rather than relying on ineffectual shift work.

Nobody Asked Me: A Campaign Illuminating the Voices & Experiences of Students and their Families

Season 1, Episode 7    |    34min

In this episode, Dr. Richard Lofton, assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education and leader of the Nobody Asked Me Campaign, joins Dr. Balfanz to discuss the Campaign and how it sheds light on the experiences of students and families in Baltimore City.

When we think about designing education to meet the needs of the 21st century and provide everyone a robust pathway to adult success, we typically draw on two sources: the adults involved in the current education system and our own experiences. Education is the one field where just about everybody considers themselves experts, because we all have a deep lived experience of going to school. However, relying on these can result in an education system that is much less dynamic than the world around it, and one that doesn’t even ask the students and families that are experiencing it firsthand. Yet they are the most informed observers of where new designs are needed, what they might be, and the challenges we need to address. This is particularly true for the communities and students for whom the current education system works the least: communities and students who live in areas where residential segregation, structural racism, and disinvestment have produced concentrated poverty in underfunded school systems.

It is at the intersection of place, history, and student voice that Dr. Lofton is doing an inventive work to ask those whom nobody has asked and connect their knowledge and insights with a growing coalition of community groups and policy makers to redesign the most broken aspects of our education system.

STUDENTS AT THE CENTER: LINKING LEARNING TO LIFE FOR ALL

Season 1, Episode 6    |    38min

Throughout most of the twentieth century, high schools were seen as the end of formal public education. After high school, some students went to college, mainly those interested in the professions—medicine, law, architecture, engineering, and so on—but most went right to work or started a family. There were some vocational courses offered in high school, mainly because there was federal funding and it was often viewed as an outlet for students not perceived as academically inclined, but by and large, vocational education was not viewed as a means for students to develop and explore career interests or link what they learned in school to their desired futures.

Today more than 75% of good jobs, jobs that can support a family, require a high school diploma and additional post-secondary schooling or training.  Currently, though, about 30% of high school graduates attempt to go into the workforce. After high school, they want to work. It’s an honored family tradition and they want to get on with their lives. But by age 21, most find themselves working part-time jobs with periods of unemployment and not making enough to fully support themselves, let alone a family. They realize the world has in fact changed, and they now need to go back to school for a degree or additional training to expand their range of opportunities. But they’ve been out of school for several years. And so they struggle to succeed when they go back, and they often pick up debt along the way.

There must be a better way, a way for high schools to connect students with stable futures post-graduation, and we’re here to dig into how this can happen with Anne Stanton, President of the Linked Learning Alliance (CA), an organization which works with schools to help them integrate college preparation and career development to give students pathways to adult success. 

NONPROFIT EDUCATION PARTNERS: THE JUDGEMENT-FREE ZONE 

Season 1, Episode 5    |    30min

Farah Jimenez, President and CEO of the Philadelphia Education Fund, joins Robert Balfanz to explore the function of local education intermediaries and examine the roles they play in designing the education systems we need to enable all students to succeed.

One of the unique features of education in the United States is how decentralized and localized the decision-making is. This has the ability to be a source of creativity and flexibility, which are necessary for innovation, but can also be a source of stagnation since roles are constantly shifting.

This constant shift has given rise to another uniquely American institution: the local education intermediary. With long histories in their communities, these organizations often support the development of new approaches and ideas. In this podcast, Ms. Jimenez discusses ways that one such organization has supported the efforts of a large urban school district to develop a college-going culture and help young people develop viable plans for postsecondary success for nearly forty years.

SUCCESS COACHES – THE SECRET SAUCE TO EQUITABLE LEARNING?

Season 1, Episode 4    |    34min

In this episode, Dr. Jonathan Mathis, Senior VP of Education for Policy and Systems Change at City Year, explains how near-peer success coaches can help make schools more equitable and effective for all.

One reason why many low income and minority students do not have a strong pathway to adult success is that too many attend a subset of middle and high schools where a large number of students constantly face the challenges of poverty and discrimination—far more students than there are adults to support them. Shifting that ratio is essential for schools to provide all students pathways to adult success. For City Year, some of the answers lie in a new kind of student support, near-peer success coaches, whose presence can help transform schools to become more equitable and effective.

MAKING HIGH SCHOOLS BETTER ONE DAY AT A TIME

Season 1, Episode 3    |    29min

In this episode, Dr. Martha Mac Iver, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education’s Center for Social Organization of Schools,  joins Dr. Balfanz to discuss her new book, “Continuous Improvement in High Schools.” The book offers practical guidance to high school leaders and teachers on using a continuous improvement approach to enable more students to succeed.

Those designing education systems that work for all students need to resist the temptation to latch onto silver bullets. Context and circumstances always matter, even when educational strategies and practices are evidence-based. In addition, the more we seek to design education systems that work for all, the more we will find ourselves on the knowledge frontier: needing to figure things out in real time, rather than just trying to implement proven practices with fidelity. Using improvement science and a continuous improvement approach can help schools navigate these challenges and avoid potential pitfalls.

THE BIG BLUR: Combining the End of High School with the Start of College

Season 1, Episode 2    |    39min

This is the second episode in a series of conversations with education thinkers from across the country. In this episode Dr. Balfanz is joined by Joel Vargas, Vice President of Programs at Jobs For the Future (JFF), a national nonprofit that drives change in the American workforce and education systems to achieve economic advancement for all.

It has become a common refrain during the last year and a half that we should not return to the pre-pandemic “normal,” but use the disruption to create a better education system moving forward. One big and bold idea from JFF involves reimagining the last two years of high school and first two years of college.

Recapturing Lost Credits

Season 1, Episode 1    |    32min

Nearly two years of pandemic-related disruptions have caused Many young people to miss out on significant amounts of learning and instruction. 

In this episode, Dr. Balfanz is joined by Educational Resource Strategies Chief Executive Officer Dr. Karen Hawley Miles and Senior Manager Eddie Branchaud to discuss credit recovery and the challenges that schools face as they help students get back on track. 

Hear about what Karen and Eddie have discovered as they look closely at the strategies schools across the country are using to help students catch up and thrive. 

Trailer: Designing Education with Robert Balfanz

Trailer    |    1min

Launching April 4, 2022, Designing Education is a podcast hosted by Robert Balfanz, director of the Everyone Graduates Center.

In each episode, Dr. Balfanz will talk to an education leader with a bold new idea to reshape American education so that it works for all students. Together, we tackle some of education’s most pressing challenges and untapped opportunities.  Whether you’re a researcher, education advocate, teacher, school leader, district leader, or education reformer, we hope you’ll find this podcast series to be a source of new insight and inspiration.

And if you like the podcast, help us spread the word by using the hashtag #DesigningEducation on social media.