Derek Mitchell, Becky Crowe, and Julien Phillips | Partners in School Innovation - Transcript
Jeremy Singer: [00:00:00] I'm Jeremy Singer, president of the College Board, and this is the Education Equation. I've spent my career grappling with what truly drives student success. On this podcast, I'll talk with people who are researching, building and scaling solutions that matter. Every episode will go beyond the hype and focus on data and evidence to see what's actually working.
Let's stop guessing and let's figure out what works./ I have three guests today, Julien Phillips, Becky Crow, and Derek Mitchell. And in a slightly unusual role for this podcast, I'm almost a panelist of sorts. So together, we are the three former executive director and the current executive director of Partners in School Innovation, an organization that was founded in the early nineteen nineties to improve teaching and learning in some of the country's most [00:01:00] underserved public schools.
For over three decades, Partners has worked alongside schools and districts to build instructional capacity, strengthen systems, and keep the focus on results. Each of us led the organization through a different era, Julien, the founder, then myself, Becky, and for the majority of the history, it has been led by Derek.
Today, we are gonna talk about the original AmeriCorps-based model, questions about growth and funding, geographic expansion, and evolving theories of action. This is partly a story about one organization, but it's also a broader conversation about school improvement, what it takes to build a mission-driven organization, how you know when a model is working, when to evolve it, and why improving schools is both deeply human and extremely hard.
Julien, Becky, Derek, welcome to The Education Equation.
Derek Mitchell: Thank you. Thank
Becky Crowe: you. Wonderful to be here. Thanks. Great to be here.
Jeremy Singer: So Julien, I'm gonna start with you. We're gonna go back to the early nineteen nineties, the world's first text message had just been [00:02:00] delivered. I think there were ten websites on the web, in the early nineties.
You're a partner at McKinsey, and you've been a board member at Ashoka. So tell us how you came up with the idea of Partners in School Innovation, the origin story. I'm assuming it didn't involve any, radioactive spiders, but tell us how you thought about it from the start.
Julien Phillips: I was actually on leave from McKinsey at the time that the partners' idea first arose.
In fact, I was, helping out the Commission on National and Community Service at the last part of the George H.W. Bush administration to think about national and community service in the country and what should be done. During that period, Bill Clinton was elected. He talked about creating something like AmeriCorps, so we knew it was on its way, even though his term in office hadn't begun.
So during that time, I said, I've enjoyed my career in McKinsey, but I've always [00:03:00] wanted to do something more directly in the public interest." And so I began to think about, would I like to do something in national service? And in the end, combining my Peace Corps background, I was an early Peace Corps volunteer, so always believed in the importance of national service.
I was oriented to social entrepreneurship from my leadership- Ashoka days, yeah ... on the board with Ashoka. And then in McKinsey, my professional background was in managing change in large, complex organizations. And I said, a school system certainly qualifies." So all those things came together. It was clear to me when starting to think about starting an AmeriCorps program, when AmeriCorps would be created, that, these would be young people.
I was no longer a young person. And so I, began talking with Tim Gross, with whom I'd worked with, National and Community Service, [00:04:00] and we agreed to form it together. And her mom had been a professor at Bank Street College of Education. So Kim, as I, was deeply committed to education. We both thought that America's about providing equal opportunity for everyone.
Manifestly, it wasn't delivering on that promise. There are many reasons, but one of them is a highly dramatically unequal quality of schooling. So that's what led us to, Kim and me to decide that we would create the program. We actually created a year before AmeriCorps started because we wanted to gain some experience in schools, so we would be ready to explain what the organization would be doing.
Jeremy Singer: So part of it was the service element. You said, "Hey, I wanna figure out a valuable experience for these young motivated individuals." And then it was tied to the system change of education. And so when did, you develop your initial theory of action, or can you share what that [00:05:00] was?
Julien Phillips: just first to reinforce what you said, when we looked at, Kim and I looked at national and community service across the country, we said m- most of the programs are concentrating on the development of the young people, and that's great, but we wanted to give primary emphasis to delivering value to the people and organizations we were serving, at the same time offering extraordinary...
so our first theory of action was actually there are a lot of very capable, very motivated young people graduating from our universities who would be keen to serve and who care about education and young people. So our first hypothesis to test was could we recruit such people? And certainly, we did.
Derek Mitchell: Yeah.
Julien Phillips: As of course did Teach For America and two or three other programs that concentrated on recruiting college graduates. Our second theory was that it was up to the leaders of a school to [00:06:00] define what needs to be done to make this school much better. Our role was to provide them hands, feet, fast learning people to help them accomplish things they couldn't accomplish alone.
And what we found-- Actually, we found a couple of things. One was there are a lot of ambitious principals and other school leaders. Fewer than we anticipated had a well-organized, cohesive idea about how they could really transform their schools.
Jeremy Singer: So it wasn't just arms and legs were not enough.
Julien Phillips: Yeah. That isn't to say, though, that we had the answers about- Of course not ... what should be done. Neither of us were educational professionals in any sense. But the second thing we found was the schools, of course, at the start, not wanting to risk too much, asked our AmeriCorps members, our partners, as we called them, to take on important things like [00:07:00] organizing parent involvement or organizing and leading cross-age tutoring.
These were things that research had shown would make a big difference if schools adopted them, but schools didn't have the people power to do it, and so they enlisted us. What they found, we found that we were able to start those programs. Those programs made a big difference in the schools where we did it.
And there was no follow on leadership in the schools to sustain what we had started as much as we tried to, build that. But the other thing we found is that our smart college graduates without education background were very fast learners, and within a year and a half, principals were asking them to become masters of a particular field of pedagogy that they wanted to introduce into their school, like writer's workshop or reciprocal teaching, a literacy, a learn to read technique.
And our [00:08:00] people became remarkably effective change agents in helping teacher teams to learn how to use these tools.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah.
Julien Phillips: And so we were beginning to migrate from being unskilled hands and feet to knowledgeable, if in narrow areas. And at the same time, we were learning a whole lot about what it takes to minimize resistance, gain positive commitment to change within schools, changing-
Jeremy Singer: Yeah
Julien Phillips: pedagogical practice within schools. So that was all great.
Jeremy Singer: That's great, and we're gonna come back to a lot of these themes. I wanna talk AmeriCorps later. I wanna talk about theory of action evolution. So that was a wonderful framing. And for listeners, just so you know, the model pretty early, and, Julien, you can correct me, but was to embed a team at a school for multiple years, four or five years.
It wasn't just go in for two months and make change. And that team was typically one, two, three, four AmeriCorps individuals and [00:09:00] then a little more experienced educator. So that was the original structure. But we would be working with school districts in Northern California, but for prolonged times in, in, in a handful of schools.
So I'm gonna make a, what I think is a very imperfect analogy. When I think back, I think Partners experienced a process similar to, startups in the for-profit sector, where you need a really good idea, you need really, a, a really good entrepreneur to start it, but eventually a org transitions. Partners became a, a real ongoing concern, the fact that we're talking about this after well over three decades.
So it's had a lot of success, and a lot of that is Julien's and, Kim's initial vision and how it evolved, but also o- obvious what came next. So a- as we discuss th- this topic, I'm gonna start with Becky, but Julien, you stayed very involved, and we'll talk about that later, as a, board member even when you weren't executive director, so feel free to jump in.
And then Derek, as I mentioned, you've had the longest tenure by far and is pr- probably the biggest [00:10:00] imprint on the org, so you should feel free to jump in. for listeners' sake, I had the shortest tenure leading Partners, and by far the least impact on the success. I feel my contribution was just bridging from Julien, the founder, to Becky.
So I feel good about that contribution, but, that's probably the limit of, mine. But Becky, you take over an org that has had some success, has some traction. As, Julien said, it's learned. It's a learning org. It learned how to-- what the right way to put teams in schools. Not perfect, but better. They became better and better of how to introduce people.
a theory of action had started to evolve, so it wasn't just tell us what to do as much, but we had some views. And you played a big part into making it an org that, that could thrive for a long time. So can you share sort of some of the magic or what you did and h- how you went about that?
Becky Crowe: I'm happy to, and great to be here with all of you. I think setting the stage, we're back in 2002, 2003, so important to set the contextual frame for this, which is that we were going from [00:11:00] basically a more or less data-free environment to a bipartisan passing of No Child Left Behind with very high stakes parameters put on and pressures put on schools and districts to improve math and literacy rates.
And in that context, there were also access to consistent assessments for the first time, so- we could actually look across Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, and understand how third graders were reading, and not only at the general level but at a disaggregated level, so we knew how low-income students were faring or different student groups of color, et cetera.
And seeing enormous achievement gaps in that context and opportunity gaps. And so as we were looking at our data, and as Julien described, I think the, the schools were really driving in the early stages where our partners were being deployed and which projects, which work was most compelling and important for the schools.
And then at this point, as the context is shifting, there's really enormous [00:12:00] pressure on the schools to improve. We had been working in early literacy in particular, and to improve those reading rates. And in many of our schools, we had fewer than 10% of third graders reading at grade level.
And, this is an enormous issue.
This is still an enormous issue across the country. But if you can imagine districts worrying about those very high stakes pressures on teachers to improve these literacy rates. So put pressure on the entire system to basically uplevel the teaching skill in literacy classrooms and get principals and schools really focused on these core academic areas.
There are, many critiques we could talk about and the byproducts of really holding that focus with that level of intensity and accountability for more than a decade. But there are also-- there was a really f- a focusing agent that was useful, I think, for everyone. So in that context, we had our teams in schools.
There was another, contextual piece that happened. We had a Congress at that point that was [00:13:00] holding up AmeriCorps funding, ha- questioning seems to be a theme that will come up again, but questioning, whether that should be a public expenditure at the level that it was. And we were running a talent model, effectively pulling in these young recent college graduates to do this work.
And we were, I remember we had recruited folks from around the country who were planning their move to San Francisco, and we still hadn't heard about the appropriation from Congress in the summer, just a month before they were supposed to come out for orientation. And so trying to manage a nonprofit budget on a maybe yes, maybe no from the federal government- that was comprising the vast majority or, of our funding was also A major factor at the moment in terms of thinking about how can we create more stability. Our schools and districts, can't count on us if we can't count on our talent showing up and being paid. And so we were looking at our model as we were working through this.
The funding did come through. We did have our AmeriCorps members, but [00:14:00] increasingly we were clear that our schools needed support on improving the quality of teaching, and that really got into the guts of instruction in the classroom, and also enabling teachers to have the kind of professional experience that so many other career paths provide, where teachers are pushing each other, learning from each other, sharing data.
Picture grand rounds in a hospital residency, walking around with an expert and hearing the sense that they're making of the data and how they might approach the situation. And we were seeing that model where leaders were committed to supporting teachers to grow and have really rich teaching environment where they could get better every day.
And we were being asked to level up our game too, in terms of more sophisticated data analysis, helping principals think about what the strategic direction of the school should look like, and then how do we deploy our talent against those goals. And so the confluence of those different factors, both external, federal, local, hyper-local in the classrooms, and [00:15:00] our moral clarity about this is not okay to have schools where parents have a, a one in 10 chance of having their kids learn to read.
It's just not okay, and it's still not okay. And so the combination of those things really pushed us to reconsider our talent model We ended up test topping a new model with slightly more experienced, what we call school improvement fellows or school improvement partners. And we had two people the first year tested that, and what we found was that just that little bit more, they were still early career professionals, but having had a few more years, and some more education-focused experience really enabled us to deliver a different kind of value to the schools in this moment.
And we ended up pretty radically shifting our model, the talent model, and the funding model over the coming years. I'm happy to share more details.
Jeremy Singer: Thanks. And I'd like to get both you and, Derek on this 'cause for listeners, the majority of the budget initially was-- Well, there's two sources. It was coming from federal governments for the AmeriCorps volunteers, which were [00:16:00] the majority of the staff, just to be clear, at the time and the early on and when I was there.
And then second was, like, philanthropic, and Julien used a wonderful network that he had. It was a good time in the Bay Area for education-focused, philanthropy. But when you change this model, suddenly the AmeriCorps dollars go away. You're gonna now, you say a, slightly more experienced person you're bringing in, but now you have to pay them.
And so I know one thing you did, and Derek continued, was moving more from federal government philanthropic to pay-for-service, kind of fee-for-service type model. So talk about a lot of orgs face that, 'cause they can find enough money to try something, but to sustain, they can't just keep relying on, philanthropic dollars.
So h-how'd you approach that? Yeah. And Derek, I'd love to see how you'd continue that.
Becky Crowe: Julien, I don't have to remember the-- I remember a specific board conversation where I was trying to make the case to say, "We wanna hire people who are actually gonna be twice as expensive as the current talent model, and we're gonna lose 100% of our federal funding, which [00:17:00] comprise about 80% of our budget, and we're gonna trust that the districts are gonna be willing to pay for this because we are going to adds so much value at a cost level that's really different from anything, any other source of talent that the district might be able to tap.
And, thankfully, we tested it for a year, and the, the board was absolutely incredible in terms of taking on this risk. And it was-- I should say it was a strategic and a financial decision, but it was also really difficult sort of mission. And as you heard, like AmeriCorps is at the heart of this organization, and it does, did, and still in so many ways, the drive for national service is so critical in the world.
And we had to match that with what are the needs of these schools and the students we're serving, and how can we best create an ongoing concern that's able to, match all of these things. and over the next several years, we were able to make that bet and shift to a model that was, I believe, about sixty or seventy percent earned income from schools and districts [00:18:00] and tripled our budget over that period of time.
And I think what the other piece of that lesson was that teachers don't exist in isolation. Leaders of school leaders aren't sitting in isolation, and the work that districts are doing to support, particularly their lowest performing schools to improve the consistency and continuity of leadership at the district level was also critical.
And they had not been the focus of our model previously in a very direct way, but we ended up really linking arms. and Julien, we can talk about Julien's evolution through this too, but he was stayed on working very deeply with one of our school districts and literally linking arms with a, phenomenal district leader in East San Jose.
And you can see the coherence of what was able to happen as a result of that over time.
Jeremy Singer: Do you think the success converting the model and, convincing districts to pay what was essentially a free service for many years? Possible question, but how much would you weigh like It was you had an established track record people [00:19:00] saw and were familiar, and you had relationships.
How much was you had data to show, "Hey, we have an impact"? Because there's a lot of orgs who can't-- who don't successfully transition from philanthropic to, to fee for service. So like what, allowed partners to do that in your view?
Becky Crowe: I think it was a combination of, for sure, the relationships that were built long before we got there, really high trust relationships with district leaders.
And Jeremy, you mentioned this is a four day a week with a team in schools for five to seven years. So there are not a lot of organizations that are rolling up their sleeves side by side with educators with that level of focus, intensity, and they're through, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And so I think that earned an enormous amount of relational credibility.
And then we didn't have-- we had some glimmers of the results that were coming as a, result of this, and even the year of Test Hopping, the school improvement fellow or school improvement partner model demonstrated some outsized [00:20:00] results. But over time, we had some schools at the time, the coin of the realm was double digit reading growth, so 10 percentage points or more during a year, and there were a very small number of elementary schools in California that were Achieving those results, and we had a few schools that were out on the leading edge of
that, and I think-
it helped to build the credibility around what was the highest stakes accountability for districts at that point.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah, that's great. All right, Derek, it's your turn. It is hard to move from, this model of fee for service, but I, would argue you did e- even harder things in not only growing the program in the Bay Area, but making a, very big decision to move it not just a local organization- regional to national. So walk us through that. Walk us through other things, 'cause you also- Sure ... were a big part of this growth. I
Derek Mitchell: think both Julien and Becky alluded to something that was critical in thinking about the impact Partners might have outside of the Bay Area, and it has to do with the fact that we partner with schools and districts, not contract.
We partner with them. And [00:21:00] Becky talked about it as the strength of the relationship, but it's also a kind of deep appreciation for and respect for the adults on the ground who are showing up every day for other people's kids, without the resources to be brilliant, without the, the, time and effort to do everything that's necessary, but they're there every day, and often with a lot of blowback from press and, bad, feelings on the part of, folks in the systems.
They are literally fighting what is the, capital T-H-E, good fight every day. and the fact that we've had such proximity, and we show up and roll up our sleeves and are helping to move the ball down the field every day, created a relational base that was stronger than anything that they had encountered in their careers, and they tell us this in our evaluations and in letters they write to us all the time, that it was a kind of support that they didn't think existed and that produced for them not just the ability to get great results for their teachers and, [00:22:00] students in schools, but for them in their careers, right?
It set their careers on a different kind of trajectory. And so w- when I joined Partners, Partners had just had an incredible report about the impact of our work in San Jose, and I had worked in Oakland before and, in Mississippi and other places, and I looked at those data and I said to myself, "What is making this happen?"
'Cause I understand Partners doesn't just work in any school. We're largely working in schools that are heavily populated by poor kids of color, and that have large percentages of new or under-credentialed teachers. And so when you see double-digit growth like Becky described, you have to be interested in what makes that happen.
And so that was my first thought when Becky reached out and s- and sent me information about the role and said, "Hey, would you be interested?" I took a look at that data and said, "Absolutely." if this is real, I wanna be a part of it. And so the board hired me really to do three things.
The first is to, m- more effectively [00:23:00] codify why our results were what they were, so that then we can reinforce and grow them, right? and that meant looking more closely at how we execute on the ground and try to think about what are the inputs that we're doing specifically that are producing the outputs that got great results.
The second is to build a more robust relational base with districts, right? 'Cause Partners at that time had both school-based partnerships and district-based partnerships, and it was pretty clear that without a district advocacy and support for what's going on the ground, those results wouldn't be sustained.
And so it was really clear that we needed district leaders to know what this is so that they can scale it themselves, in their systems, in places that we ourselves would never touch. And the last was to get the value of what we do into general parlance nationally because, California has a large percentage of the kids that this work was for, something like 40%, but there was clearly communities around the country that could learn from this work [00:24:00] And be able to better serve the students, in their schools if they knew about it.
And so I, took that challenge as one of codification and communication, but then eventually one of scale, right?
Jeremy Singer: Let me dig into that 'cause I think that for entrepreneurs or leaders of y- you know, smaller education nonprofits or just nonprofits in general, like it's a hard call. Like it was a stable org, it had found a pretty nice niche, it was having impact- as you say, with the data. We had y- there was very strong relationships in the Bay Area, and they were, only being strengthened by the success. And then you're like, "Okay, now I'm gonna go across the country to, to Michigan and so forth." that's scary to me. Yeah. I don't know if I would've had the courage you had.
So te- tell us, how was it and what worked and what... And will you also share with listeners what didn't work?
Derek Mitchell: Yeah, sure. So as Becky described, the org had a mixture of fee-for-service and philanthropy that made it actually the organization work and function. And the percentages varied, by 20 or [00:25:00] 30% in either direction depending upon the grant and, the, partnerships.
And so the question was whether that could scale, right? Because California has a lot of philanthropy, other places won't. So that was one really important question.
Jeremy Singer: I'll just point out, like a lot of the themes are relev- were relevant 25 years ago, relevant today. The idea that the Bay Area has a lot of dollars with all the-
LLM money, is also very relevant today. But keep going, Darren. So
Derek Mitchell: true. the other open question that we talked a lot about on the board is whether we would find partners like People everywhere. 'cause it was also pretty clear that our human capital were atypical in their commitment to growth of themselves, their own acumen, and of the commitment to the schools and districts that, we serve.
It was, an avocation and for them, and an education for them. And the question was, If we were to pick up this work and try to do it in large, in other places, would we find people like this who would be willing to [00:26:00] kinda come alongside us and help make this work? We essentially developed something that we called our anchor funder strategy, which was to identify large-scale national funders who cared about the learning of kids in specific geographies, and who would underwrite partners' growth to the communities that they cared about.
And so it took about a year to get that message out there and to get the materials into the hands of, key people. And the first to reach out to us was the Kellogg Foundation, and they were very much bought into how we would do in their home district in Battle Creek, Michigan, but also in potentially some other areas of the country that they had specific interest in.
And so with their support, we were able to, take the work to several different geographies, seed it in those communities, and get actually, in some cases, better results than we were able to get in the Bay. The second funder was William Penn in Philadelphia. They had observed our work and saw a [00:27:00] presentation we did in partnership with, one of the San Jose districts at a, convening and said, "Hey, can you bring this to Philly?"
now the board was pretty skeptical about Philly, particularly, in fact about any of the larger, systems, right? Because we don't have the human capital to show up in a place like Philly and serve anything but a very smallest fraction of the need. And the question was, will we have the kind of intention and the kind of partnering that can make that work if we're only working in a small s- fraction of the need in one of these larger systems?
It just so happened, though, that I had a personal relationship with the superintendent. We had worked together in Prince George's, and through that I was able to convince the board to give a-- let us give it a shot. And at the height of the work, we're supporting two dozen schools in Philadelphia.
Wow. Getting them well out ahead of the other schools in terms of the growth that they did year over year. One of the challenges we faced right off the bat was how California's, I guess the r- right word for it n- [00:28:00] now is woke language, didn't have the same purchase everywhere. I can remember observing a presentation and a professional development session that our team was leading in Michigan, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, by the way, of all places, and, halfway through, a leader raised his hand and asked, "Why are we talking about home loans in this room?"
And so we used the word equity, and he immediately thought- Oh, gee.
Jeremy Singer: I didn't know where that was going. That's hysterical.
Derek Mitchell: By the time halfway through the training. So in my mind, I'm thinking this poor guy, he must be the entire time wondering, "What am I do- what is this about?" So we figured we, we really needed to adjust our language and learn the local context and talk about the work in a way that had power and purchase for the community in which we were working, and that was not something we needed to do back home, right?
Folks got what we were talking about, in the California marketplace. We also learned that our intensity of work could be as [00:29:00] intimidating as it was empowering in some places. As Jeremy described, often we're there many days of every week, and a leader without a clear understanding of how to make good use of a resource like ours would be, come every day going, "What am I supposed to do with this person and how," And so the partnering process needed to be revised itself, where together we would craft a theory of action and a theory of change for what happens in the school rather than them having one that we put our shoulder to. And, and that turned out to be a, a, a good modification also in both the Michigan and Mississippi contexts.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah. So Jared, how did this footprint go, and where are you now and what did you learn?
Derek Mitchell: And so our acre funder strategy was great for getting us there but couldn't sustain us in the places where we were. Districts have different degrees of public dollars to support school improvement, and the many of the places where we went, places like Michigan, [00:30:00] simply didn't have the public dollars to, dedicate to the kind of work- and so we weren't able to stay in several of the places where we did the work, and that was a, that was a lesson and, a painful one, for us because you, you hire these amazing people, you create community among them, you help them get results that are greater than what they were able to get in other parts of their careers, and then you're not able to stay and help them see it through.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah, that's hard.
Derek Mitchell: But for it was, it wa- it was pretty painful for
Jeremy Singer: us. Yeah. I wonder how much-- again, very bold what you did and great leadership. It's interesting to think back to Julien's early point of like- y- there's so much organic growth in just the Bay Area and the relationships and the, a- and that's so hard to replicate and it takes so long, and it just...
I do think f- a, a lot of orgs can underestimate that. and some of it's- not always you can't write it down on a piece of paper, but there's something there. I wanna shift gears for a little bit. [00:31:00] So I wanna go back to the AmeriCorps model, but less like a verdict on AmeriCorps, but I wanna relate it to something today.
And you guys, this may be a stretch, so bear with me. But one of the challenges with AI, or one of the things that when I, talk to people, is AI is replacing more early junior-level jobs. A- and you can see it in different industries 'cause it, some of the tasks they do are m- more easier to mimic or to replace with AI.
I think a lot of us have a fear, by the way, that this is gonna be problematic down the road because y- the way you have a more senior, experienced person is they start junior and they get experience, and if they don't, if you have a much smaller pool of, junior staff, there's not the same people to grow into senior roles.
So it's like we're gonna create a, deficit down the road of, talent to mid-level and upper-level jobs, and talked to a lot of people who scar- who, who's worried about this. Let me also say, two other points. One [00:32:00] is there's really good data that internships and work experience for young people, whether it's high school or college students, has a huge impact on their future success.
And so- getting real work experience, there's no debate, is valuable and makes that person better equipped for the workforce down the road than someone who doesn't- get that experience. And it's sad 'cause it's often tied to, wealth and connections. We can do a whole nother podcast on that. But then I will say one more thing, which is there isn't good data, and I'll even be stronger.
I don't think employers who take inexperienced individuals Often they don't get net, it can often be a drag. Like the time to, train them and to support them, and again, this is not analogous to AmeriCorps, but I'll come back to it, it becomes, a, a net loss. It's a public good and, it's a long-term investment because they may wanna hire that person, and eventually that person could be the GM or what have you.
So there's reasons to do it, but the, [00:33:00] the short-term payback for the employer is often negative while it's clearly positive for most of the interns and so forth. So I, guess with all of that, if you put this whole stew together, should we have more things, that are funded by the federal government like AmeriCorps, where there's a move or tax credits or some way to get more junior, less experienced people, get companies, for-profits, nonprofits, to bring them in so we can build this pipeline 'cause the incentives may not be there.
So I wanna start with you, Julien, 'cause you've thought about this probably the most, but I wanna hear from all three of you.
Julien Phillips: I haven't thought about your specific question, but in general, I think you've got a hypothesis worth exploring further and testing. But I wanna emphasize that at least our model was not putting people in schools to do the most menial parts of-
what people were already doing there. The point of our putting people there was to be uniquely valuable change agents in a narrow area [00:34:00] that they could master fairly quickly and could enable the larger organization to take on. We haven't talked at all about a big breakthrough for us was getting involved with what was at the time called cycle of inquiry.
That we said good general idea, but too scattered, fragmented in the way that teachers pursued it. It needs to become a cohesive, systematic way of continuously improve-improving a school that we came to call results-oriented cycle of inquiry, and later on, results-oriented continuous improvement. The reason I take that little side trip here in our discussion is that we actually were enabling and are enabling schools to learn how to do something they couldn't otherwise do- Using people who were inexperienced at the beginning, I think that has potential even in the, realm you're talking about.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah, No, I think you're right. If you can figure out a narrow enough-- you're, [00:35:00] challenging my assumption of do they add value to the org, and you're saying, "Hey, if it's a narrow and specific enough thing that they can get up to speed to and contribute," you'd argue with one of my setups, which I think is very fair.
Becky, what, about you? How do you think about the current state and then your experience? 'Cause you lived both sides of AmeriCorps.
Becky Crowe: I've been thinking a lot about this lately as I manage 20-somethings coming into the workforce, and Jody Kantor recently wrote a book called How to Start: Discovering Your Life's Work, and I was really struck by some of the things that she crystallized in there that were such a feature of the AmeriCorps members' experience and the school improvement partners as well, which was some of these dimensions of being around, as Julien said, high-stakes work, real work that they are engaged in.
All of the apprenticeship work demonstrates this as well, that they're not, off in a corner working on something without being in the conversations with leaders. And so for our young people to be able to hear the way that a superintendent [00:36:00] or, a principal was puzzling through the strategic direction of the district was a conversation they might h-have access to for another 10 or 15 years in their career.
So I think there's a lot to be said for that exposure early on and what that enables. I always felt like I was blessed with these jobs where, including Julien, where I had mentors who were so wise, and I was almost allowed to eavesdrop on conversations that I wouldn't have leveled into for many years, and it, absolutely accelerated- Yeah
the curve. And I guess the last thing I'll say is that the other piece of AmeriCorps, and I am a deeply-- If I could wave a magic wand and, have national, mandatory national service be a, a policy, I would do it in a heartbeat. And I think one of the things that particularly in this moment where we are, so divided And where, young people have had a big chunk of their lives, not only on screens, but in the pandemic, in really isolated spaces, that something that's underestimated, I think, is the power [00:37:00] of this for our civic fabric with one another.
So the power of having someone from rural Louisiana working alongside someone who grew up in Newark and someone who grew up in the burbs outside of Seattle, side by side, rolling up sleeves, committed with a moral compass and a commitment to giving their time and space. And these are folks who could have jumped right into an investment banking analyst or a McKinsey analyst position and made, five times as much money and had a career path that, stayed on that track.
So I think just emphasizing that, the importance of both the mentorship piece, but also the weaving of people from different backgrounds toward a common goal is really fundamental and I think sometimes underestimated in this.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. And, Becky continues to lead that in her personal life, in all her endeavors.
And I'll just say the network effect of, Partners does not have the TFA network. it's a small fraction of it, [00:38:00] but I'll tell you a funny story. I was interviewing a candidate who we hired, Liz Cutrona, who's from the Detroit Public Schools, and who's a fantastic talent that we brought in, and one of the people I talked to is doing a background check was Jeremy Vadino, who was a, was an AmeriCorps volunteer for us and a partner, and is the CFO of the Detroit Public Schools.
So it was fun to see that. Derek, real quick, and then I wanna do one lightning round. Yeah.
Derek Mitchell: the one thing I'd, just add is it depends upon how soon you're expecting to harness the value of the investment you make in people, right? Because from my perspective, the time and effort and energy and love you pour into building people's capacity is always worth it.
It's never not been worth it. It always accrues huge, benefits for the person receiving the support, for the others around them, and in the, arc of their lives and in the execution and the work itself. Partners has had Partners alumni who started on the ground who have finished as state superintendent of public instruction, right?
and so [00:39:00] there's a, a, a wealth of what's possible when young people are invested in to follow their passion to serve. And so the thing we can't do is, expect to direct that service. Yeah. They'll take it where they need it to go, and the value then is gonna be accrued to whoever it is and wherever it is they decide to, do that work.
And so I would also sign on to Becky and, wave a magic wand and make, national service mandatory. But the, the value of having do that, it's not something we can today predict, but I am 1000% certain that it would create a vastly better community in our country going forward. Vastly better.
Jeremy Singer: So well said, and I will say, part of it is you're right.
There's no question there's a long-term investment that pays off. Unfortunately, a lot of orgs don't have that long-term view, and so part- of what I'm pushing is how do you subsidize or encourage a longer term perspective or a collective perspective, right? Because you are producing, [00:40:00] Partners produce talent not necessarily for Partners for the long term, but for other places.
And, that's equally critical. All right. We're running out of time. I wanna do something very quick. I, have a lot of ideas, and this has been so great, but I'm gonna give you a choice, and I'm gonna go to each of you, and we need to be brief. But if you-- You all have such wonderful experience, and if you were, I'll give you a choice, either a nonprofit, a budding nonprofit leader comes to you and says, "Hey, give me the one, two, three things you would say are, are most important from your experience," or let's say a district instructional leader, so more the education side.
You can choose your venture here and say, "Hey, where should I focus my energy based on, 30-plus years of, Partners experience?" So I start with you, Derek, then Becky- Sure ... and then Julien, you will get the last word.
Derek Mitchell: For that district leader, I would go by the seven to one rule, which basically is if you're gonna spend one million dollars or $1 on stuff for schools, you have to spend seven helping them use it well.
Jeremy Singer: That's great. Yeah, high fidelity implementation actually really d- [00:41:00] delivering. I love
Derek Mitchell: it. Anything you provide, people are gonna have to use. Yeah. And so the investment should weigh into the people and not on the stuff.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah. Yep. I see everybody nodding. I agree. Becky?
Becky Crowe: Jeremy, I'm gonna cheat and flip your question to philanthropy as my audience because I spend a lot of time working with- Love it
partners now. And what I would say is that we are collectively underinvesting, that would be a light touch word for it, in talent across the system right now. Talent had its moment in the early 2000s. It was the sexy thing to invest in, from AmeriCorps members to school leaders, to pipelines for business people to move in, like education pioneers to move into the field.
And this, we cannot do it without phenomenal people in the system. There are phenomenal people in the system already, but we need pipelines across the board, and it's something that I think donors, even when they're running companies that bank completely on top talent, don't always make that translation.
And so that would be my, call to action is [00:42:00] to, lean in on the talent piece again.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah. Super well said. And I'm hopeful here 'cause I think people are seeing where technology, where all these other things fall short and, aren't enough, and it, comes back to you need the talent. It's you can't automate, particularly in education.
It's not gonna solve the issues. Julien, you get the last word.
Julien Phillips: let me say two last words. One, I wanna really emphasize the notion of partnership. Anywhere you are, whatever kind of organization you're starting, you're trying to influence and help other people.
They've gotta be an equal, if different in kind, contributor.
If they're not, your idea's gonna run out of space to thrive before it- takes root. Second, it's wonderful that you got a bright idea, and you need a bright idea to start, but this is a learning game. You gotta be acutely attentive to how that idea really works [00:43:00] with your partners in the endeavor, and the unexpected things that present themselves as obstacles are more likely to be opportunities.
I'll just stop there.
Jeremy Singer: That was, all well said, all three of you. I could not have done it better. So listen, thank you all, for being on the Education Equation. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your wonderful commitment, both to Partners, but, you all have done a lot outside of Partners to help education and equity.
So thank you for all that, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk today.
Derek Mitchell: Wonderful. Thanks for bringing us together, Jeremy. Thanks for bringing
Becky Crowe: us
Julien Phillips: together. Thank you, Jeremy, and thanks for your leadership and what you're doing now.
Thanks for tuning in today. Join the conversation by following the education equation wherever you listen to podcasts.