School Improvement
Schools, districts, universities, non-profits, entrepreneurs — if you’re committed to making schools better for our students, teachers, families, and leaders… I want to support you.
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Whether it is by reviewing current questions or helping you to craft new ones, I can support you in getting the information you need to take action or tell a story. We’ll also set up sustainable systems to ensure the data is easy to manage and take action on.
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Creating (or, refining) your logic model/theory of change, mapping out what data you are currently collecting, identifying what new data you need, creating instruments, creating a plan to collect and analyze data in meaningful ways — together we will create a human-centered evaluation that answers your most pressing questions on the timeline you need.
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Let’s get a team together. Work with me and my partners and universities and research hubs around the country — all people who are committed to realistic, actionable research.
The short story: You may not know this about me but I got into research because I wanted to make schools and school systems better. It’s a long story that is perhaps better saved for another time but the gist of it is this — in college, I arguably spent more time volunteering in New Orleans’ recovery schools than I did in classrooms at Tulane. I observed who got to be in the room to make policy decisions — people with money and power. It didn’t sit well with me. The students, teachers, and families who were directly impacted by education policy didn’t have a voice and yet they suffered at the hands of terrible policies.
I pursued my Ph.D. because I wanted to be able to speak out against all the jargon and the numbers and I thought maybe if I mastered life as a traditional “expert” I could help to open that door to the people who truly deserved to drive policy decisions. In graduate school, I continued volunteering in classrooms vowing not to become another one of those detached researchers who didn’t really know what was up.
A few years into my studies, I had the privilege of joining the first-ever formal researcher-practitioner partnership between the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and the School District of Philadelphia. Fun fact: that first partnership meeting was the first time I’d ever been inside the district… and, not outside holding an angry yet clever sign and shouting.
Working with the School District of Philadelphia collaboratively on research taught me that policies do not have to bind the hands of people working in public schools; that statistics do not have to be feared; and that if data is not only rigorous but also meaningful to practitioners, data-driven decision making can be a powerful tool and asset.
Let’s do meaningful research that makes schools better.
My credentials:
My dissertation study explored school turnarounds and what it means to be successful (findings were recently published — open access — in the Journal of Educational Change and you can read them here).
I’ve worked on 4 education-related federally funded studies; led the design of teacher, school leader, family, student, coach, and administrative surveys; led the design of school and classroom observation rubrics and interview protocols for teachers and school leaders; spent over 70 hours interviewing teachers and school leaders; completed 10 site visits, including classroom observations; and have spent over 1,000 hours volunteering and working in schools.
I currently serve as Co-Director and Co-PI of a Bill & Melinda Gates-funded national study of professional learning.
I’ve coached over 150 entrepreneurs on how to measure and evaluate their ideas to make education better.
Who I’ve worked with in this space:
Consortium for Policy Research in Education
NewSchools Venture Fund
Orleans Parish School Board
School District of Philadelphia
St. Patrick’s Episcopal Day School
Student Achievement Partners
University of Delaware
University of Pennsylvania
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And, more!