As the Director of Metrics and LCAP at Azusa Unified School District, Jennifer is passionate about the impact of transformational leadership on education organizations. Additionally, her work around implementation of LCFF and the LCAP process in her district has driven her to better understand how educators can bridge policy and practice to serve ALL students in a collaborative cycle of improvement and growth.

TeachFX head of partnerships, Zach Crago, interviewed Jennifer leading up to Changing the Conversation. Below is a lightly edited transcript of their interview.

What has been the biggest or most valuable "learning" for you in the last year-plus of schooling during a pandemic?

This was the biggest challenge of my 30-year career, and we can see the impact of the pandemic as hopeless and focus only on the barriers, or we can decide to use this moment as a catalyst for lasting change and growth as we view the positive externalities that resulted because of COVID-19 and school closures.

With that as context, here are my three biggest learnings:

1. We must reflect on what we learned and use that to provide more powerful educational opportunities for our students, in particular those that have been historically underserved. We can’t walk away from our experiences and not take away powerful learnings that can be implemented to better serve our students. The pandemic taught us we can make big changes and better serve students.

2. We must continue the partnerships that developed between our school system and our parents and students. We needed each other desperately during the pandemic. It took a team effort to support students in continued learning during school closures. Engaging together allowed us to get through the pandemic and for many students to thrive, we cannot allow this partnership to dissolve. Districts and schools will be more effective if we cultivate the new relationships that developed and listen more intently to each other to address students’ needs.

3. We must be more determined to use data (information, feedback, input...whatever we want to call it) to drive the learning forward. Students will come to us in the Fall at so many different places in their learning, and it is critical we know exactly where each and every one of them is so we can plan effective and efficient learning opportunities for them. It is the use of data that provides the power so we must increase the opportunities to build capacity in leaders, teachers, and students to do just that. 

What do you think we lose when we focus so much of our attention on schooling outcomes (like standardized test scores, grades, and so on)?

When we focus larger amounts of time on standardized tests, grades, and such, we experience the DRIP effect, we become Data Rich and Information Poor. These indicators do not provide us actionable data. They may be great starting points but the data has to be a jumping-off point to dig more deeply into individual students’ needs, such as an analysis of reading comprehension skills. Districts and schools have to have data that provides details about what students need to grow in a particular area, including those aligned to social-emotional learning.

Standardized tests and grades are broad data and lagging data. If this is the only data we spend time on, we lose the ability to impact our students. Teachers know this. We understand why teachers view broad data such as SBAC scores as having little value to their day-to-day planning and teaching. If we don’t use more actionable data, the negative attitudes around using data are given ground in which to grow.

In addition to actionable data that can have a direct impact on student learning, we must provide effective protocols for examining data, and these protocols must always result in instructional changes. We can’t simply provide principals and teachers reports, even if the data is actionable, and expect them to know how to use them effectively. We need to build capacity in educators to access data and effectively translate the results into action. Protocols do this.

What would you like to see educators, school leaders and stakeholders (from parents to employers to college admission teams) talk more about when it comes to learning and strengthening experiences for our students, especially for this Fall 2021?

We need to spend more time talking about the following questions: 

• How can we continue to keep equity at the forefront of what we do to educate young people in our communities? How will we know where each of our students is, where they need to go, and how we will collaboratively measure that progress?

• How can we make learning more relevant for students? I heard this over and over again pre-pandemic and during the pandemic from our students. How are we breaking away from old structures and systems to provide our students what they need to thrive in the 21st century? How will we measure that progress and help students make decisions for post-secondary education or careers?

• What are the “silver linings” of the pandemic? How can educators collaborate with our parents, students, those in higher education, and the corporate work world to identify what we need to continue to do in post-pandemic public education? Let’s not lose the lessons that can make us better able to educate all students and embrace the changes that come with those lessons.