How best can NewSchools Venture Fund, “a nonprofit venture philanthropy firm working to transform public education for low-income children” (NewSchools Venture Fund, 2014), make investments which result in making Oakland K-12 schools a magnet for high quality educator talent? At all levels of the education ecosystem, from systems level leaders to the teachers in every classroom, human capital is the single most significant factor in influencing educational outcomes for learners (Childress S. , Elmore, Grossman, & King, 2007). Human capital is a system. It includes the people who do the work, the efforts to attract them to the system, the efforts to develop their skills and practices once they are in the system and the conditions that sustain them in the system over time. Like other urban education systems across the nation Oakland struggles to attract, engage and sustain talent. The Oakland Fund, a division of NewSchools Venture Fund focused specifically on transforming the education ecosystem in Oakland, has identified three areas of investment intended to bring about Oakland’s education renaissance. The Oakland Fund’s investments seek to add 10,000 high quality seats, make Oakland a magnet for talent and build a coalition of engaged and active community organizations and leaders to drive the transformation (Oakland Fund Prospectus, 2014). My strategic project was to develop a credible and effective theory of action and strategy for making Oakland a magnet for talent. This capstone focuses on how current research on human capital was contextualized to the Oakland education ecosystem and combined with stakeholder input to develop a theory of action to drive our investment strategy for greatest positive impact. The resultant product provides the Oakland Fund with a clear direction forward in the work of making Oakland a magnet for talent. My approach to the leadership of this project and my ability to effectively adjust that approach to the organizational culture at NewSchools Venture Fund was key to the process of strategy development. It required shifting my frame of mind from that of a site leader, who was successful in transforming school culture because of my ability to get buy in through deep engagement of key stakeholders in all aspects of the work, to that of an Ed.L.D. resident leader expected to produce a credible human capital strategy for the Oakland Fund. Recognizing how different components of the process played out in terms of who needed to be involved in doing the work and how each team member engaged most effectively was key to the success of the project and the source of much of my own learning.

Dramatic shifts in our economy, the nature of learning, and the demographics of students are placing increasing demands on US K-12 school systems to be more responsive to students and our rapidly changing society. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has played a catalytic role in funding an emerging movement of teachers and school and system leaders who are redesigning their learning environments to personalize learning for students. Early results in these pioneering schools are promising and there is growing interest in personalized learning across the education sector. During my residency, I was charged with co-leading a working group to design a strategy for investing in the early stage scaling of personalized learning. The personalized learning movement is not the first to aim at transforming how we “do school.” Drawing on innovation theory and research on the history of movements to innovate the pattern of schooling, I argue that these movements struggle to transform the US K-12 education system because foundations (and the education entrepreneurs they invest in) underestimate the perils of diffusion and do not capitalize on the early adoption phase to prepare for broader scale. I then describe my work to form and launch the working group and our collective efforts to define an investment strategy. From my analysis of our results and my actions I offer three key implications for BMGF and others who would influence transformations in the pattern of schooling through philanthropy or other “outside-in” reform avenues. First, successfully developing an instructional innovation for scale requires investing to codify dominant designs for instruction and organizational infrastructure and building the enabling conditions for wider adoption, including a social movement of education stakeholders to demand transformation. Second, foundations transitioning from incubating an innovation to investing in broader scale pass through a key period of integration that demands thoughtful change management as the organization develops new collective innovation and learning capabilities. Third, I offer reflections on effective education leadership in this era of rapid transition from the industrial era to the information age.

I served as the Raikes Foundation Fellow on Non-Cognitive Factors and Learning within the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement during the 2014-2015 academic year. So called non-cognitive factors are the intrapersonal and interpersonal skills and attitudes which, in combination with cognitive skills, enable students to successfully navigate the learning tasks of school and the unpredictable, multilayered challenges of life beyond school. The Department seeks to drive innovation and improvement in non-cognitive factors to support three of its main goals: increasing college and career readiness for all students, narrowing achievement gaps and safeguarding equity for historically under-served and marginalized populations of students. Energy is growing across the education sector to prioritize non-cognitive factor teaching and learning in national reform efforts. However, much progress and collaboration is required to develop common understanding, identify valid measures and expand the teaching and learning evidence base of this vast domain of constructs. Promising recent innovations, specifically related to improving academic mindsets, have yielded positive impacts and suggest new conceptions of scale. This capstone examines my efforts as a policy entrepreneur within the U.S. Department of Education to capitalize on growing momentum across the sector and a burgeoning policy window to drive innovation in non-cognitive factors. Using the lens of the Kingdon policy streams framework, I deconstruct my efforts, focusing primarily on my role in crafting a national convening on improving non-cognitive factor measure development. Applying the Kingdon framework illuminates the possibilities and challenges of policy entrepreneurship in advancing innovation within this emergent domain from the federal level, with implications for the sector, the Department and my own leadership development.

TandemED is a start-up entity that begins its efforts with a belief that Black community leadership is the key lever for the educational success of its K–12 youth. TandemED organizes and facilitates Black communities to create campaigns that highlight their positive racial identity and self-defined educational purpose toward this end. This capstone examines my leadership of the initial implementation phase of the TandemED community initiative in relationship with the Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS). Focusing primarily on the interactions with the superintendent and executive director of the superintendent’s office, I analyze both the areas of reception and challenge in forming this relationship. The results of my engagement included ongoing support from PPS as TandemED formed a citywide steering committee of highly community-legitimated persons, executed a leadership and campaign academy for thirty-five Pittsburgh youth, and facilitated their design and delivery of various cable television commercials on identity and purpose that generated over half-million impressions within one month in the Greater Pittsburgh region. In order to make sense of the evolving relationship between TandemED and PPS, I utilize the organizational framework established in Reframing Organizations by Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal. In this work, Bolman and Deal offer four key frames from which effective organizations function—structural, human resource, political, and symbolic. Each of these entails specific interests and core assumptions. In my analysis, the structural frame posited the greatest challenge for our entities to partner; the political frame offered both positives and negatives for our organizations to collaborate; and the human resource and symbolic frames helped to form and sustain our relationship. The implication of my analysis is that while a relationship with a public school district at the onset of TandemED city entry is of value, the greater value is found in first establishing a strong community-legitimated effort and intersecting with the district more deeply in later implementation phases. The implication for the sector, namely superintendents and school district leaders, is that there is transformative value in affirming and being responsive to Black community leadership efforts in education.

Young, poor, and undereducated women of color make up the majority of women who are incarcerated in the U.S. correctional system (Covington & Bloom, 2003). Black girls, in particular, are at risk of incarceration when schools leverage policies and practices (e.g. exclusionary discipline) that focus on discipline and control rather than providing a high quality education and support services for Black girls’ development. The restorative leadership program model employs unique methods to engage students and elevate their unique talents and perspectives in a school system that does not “effectively adjust and reform to fit the needs of its entire population” (Dr. Dorian Burton, personal communication, March 26, 2016). The program prioritizes educational attainment for Black girls through physical sports and field trips, critical conversations about what it means to grow up as a Black girl, events to collaborate and build relationships with peer and adult mentors, and workshops to learn personalized goal setting and reflection techniques. A restorative leadership program is an effective tool public middle schools can use to (1) increase the social emotional support provided to Black girls in order to reduce delinquent behavior and (2) reduce the number of Black girls who are pushed out of schools into the juvenile justice system.

This capstone explores a strategic planning process I carried out at the NYC Leadership Academy (NYCLA), a nonprofit organization. Through the development and launch of a strategic plan for the NYCLA alumni network, I learned that nonprofit organizations face strategic planning considerations distinct from those of private-sector organizations. In an effort to reconcile the tension between what I see as organizational solvency and mission fulfillment in the alumni network strategic planning process, I explore the merits and limitations of Mark Moore’s strategic triangle framework and determine how a nonprofit might make best use of the framework in strategic planning. Ultimately, I conclude that the NYCLA alumni network and similarly-situated nonprofit organizations can manage the tension between mission fulfillment and organizational solvency by strategizing for public value. I also reflect on the success of Marshall Ganz’s community organizing practices in engaging and mobilizing the NYCLA alumni network. I argue that nonprofits should leverage community organizing practices to build authentic stakeholder involvement and authorship in the strategic planning process.

This capstone examines the National Center on Education and the Economy’s (NCEE) efforts in its initial planning stage to lead the design of and build support for a proposed national system of teacher career ladders. In this career ladder system, teachers can voluntarily seek advanced certification leading up to the role of Master Teacher, and states can volunteer to use the system and determine how to use it. I describe my role in strengthening NCEE’s relationship with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), in an effort to establish a partnership and move the initiative forward. I also examine comprehensive teacher career ladders and career advancement initiatives in top-performing jurisdictions (i.e., Singapore, Shanghai, and Australia) and within the United States (i.e., Arizona, Iowa, New York, and the District of Columbia). Any national initiative seeking to influence teaching and learning will require the collaboration of many powerful cross-sector organizations and leaders, highly coordinated efforts, and legitimacy to sustain the political support needed for the initiative to be adopted by states and embraced by the teaching profession. Establishing a partnership with the NBPTS was challenging because of the organization’s leadership loss at the start of the project, which slowed the initiative’s planning stage. This was further complicated by a lack of system coherence and alignment, distrust within the public education system, and the system’s resistance to change. Because planning and implementation of a national teacher career ladder system will take years, and states and the profession must buy-in, there is a need to build the capacity of multiple generations of leaders who can carry this work forward within an evolving, decentralized education system.

In the last 30 years, the U.S. education reform movement has focused primarily on increasing school choice, accountability linked to standards, and leadership capacity in our schools. In particular, charter schools have tried to incorporate all three elements in their attempt to provide families with better options for their children. But many charter schools have not fundamentally changed the role of teachers or the organization of the school itself, leading to issues of sustainability and insufficient autonomy for teachers. This capstone describes an attempt to address this problem through the creation of an innovative charter school, Prime Public Charter School (Prime Public). The school’s proposed model would have allowed for teams of teachers to start, manage, and grow their own “Teaching Practices” within a school community, much in the same way that lawyers, doctors, therapists, or private tutors run their own practices. This capstone describes and analyzes the attempt to gain approval for and launch Prime Public in New York given the context of the charter sector and the challenges of entrepreneurship as they relate to school creation. After three unsuccessful application attempts, the school did not gain approval to launch in 2016. Implications include the need for greater resources for early-stage founding teams, a more transparent and supportive authorization process, and a greater emphasis on long-term sustainability and teacher professionalism when considering the growth of the charter sector.

Research confirms that teachers have substantial impacts on their students’ academic and life-long success. However, little is known about specific dimensions of teaching practice that explain these relationships or whether these effects differ between academic and “non-cognitive” outcomes. Drawing on data from teachers in four urban school districts, I document the relationship between individual teachers and students’ math performance, as well as their self-reported self-efficacy in math, happiness in class, and behavior in class. In addition, I estimate the relationship between domains of teaching practice captured by two observation instruments and the set of student outcomes. Finally, I examine the predictive validity of teacher effect estimates on students’ attitudes and behaviors amongst a subset of teachers who were randomly assigned to class rosters within schools. I find that upper-elementary teachers have large effects on a range of students’ attitudes and behaviors in addition to their academic performance. These teacher effect estimates have moderate to strong predictive validity. Further, student outcomes are predicted by teaching practices most proximal to these measures (e.g., between teachers’ math errors and students’ math achievement, and between teachers’ classroom organization and students’ behavior in class). However, teachers who are effective at improving some outcomes often are not equally effective at improving others. Together, these findings lend important empirical evidence to well-established theory on the multidimensional nature of teaching and student learning and, thus, the need for policies that account for and incentivize this complexity.

The existence of significant differences in the civic knowledge, civic attitudes and civic skills of young people from different socio-economic (SES) backgrounds represent civic competence gaps that affect their ability to act as personally responsible, participatory and justice-oriented citizens in their society (Carretero et al, 2016; MEN, 2004; Westheimer & Kahne, 2004). Identifying civic competence gaps, their magnitude, and the factors that account for them should be a priority for researchers, policy-makers and educators in Latin America because they can threaten the strength, stability and legitimacy of democracies in the region (Levinson, 2010). I use data from three nationally representative samples of 8th grade students who participated in the 2009 International Civic and Citizenship Study (ICCS) to identify civic competence gaps between youth from high and low SES backgrounds in Chile, Colombia and Mexico, using eight measures related to civic competence. I document large gaps in students’ civic knowledge in the three countries, and small gaps in their internal sense of political efficacy, intention to participate in future electoral processes and legal and illegal protests, as well as in their attitudes toward corruption, authoritarianism and disobeying the law. I do not find gaps in their attitudes toward civil disobedience. I then use the Oaxaca-Blinder method (Oaxaca, 1973; Blinder, 1973) to identify how 1) differences in access to school resources, positive school climates and interactive civic learning opportunities, and 2) differences in the civic knowledge gains that students from different SES backgrounds obtain from equal school resources, school climates and civic learning opportunities, account for the civic knowledge gaps in these countries. Findings suggest that the largest portion of the civic knowledge gap in Chile is due to differences in civic knowledge gains, but in Colombia and Mexico the largest portions are due to differences in access. In all three countries high SES students have significantly more access than low SES students to the school resources, school climate and civic learning opportunities that are associated with higher civic knowledge, and in every case, the school SES accounts for the largest portion of the explained civic knowledge gaps. Given equal characteristics, low SES students in Colombia and Mexico –but not in Chile- obtain more civic knowledge gains than high SES students from school resources, school climate and civic learning opportunities.