Author Archives: Todd Keffer

About Todd Keffer

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Own It

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130515 Own It-v2-01Without question, this is a difficult time to be an educator.

On our recent visit to a West Coast client, K12 Insight led a series of focus groups to inform the development of a staff survey. Our goal during these sessions was to uncover areas of misunderstanding or discontent and then facilitate a constructive dialogue between district leadership and key stakeholders. Hearing the voices of teachers, administrators and support staff — and then weaving their issues into survey questions — guarantees that we’ve moved beyond superficial pleasantries into authentic conversation.

In practice, this process can be a bit involved, even heated. Teachers — beset by volatile swings in funding, shifting federal and state program mandates, high turnover in district leadership and the pedagogy ‘du jour’  — bring their grievances to the focus group. I can’t blame them for being more than a little on edge. But once one participant unloads their burdens, the discussion can devolve into blame-shifting and careen off course.

One session I witnessed teetered precariously on the edge of this rabbit hole when an elementary teacher named Cassandra decided she’d heard enough. Fed up with the negativity, Cassandra said, “We can’t control the actions of others, but we can control how we react to them. We teach because we love these kids . . . acronyms change and programs change but strategies don’t. Just do good teaching.”

She concluded: “We own it.”

As Cassandra’s words sunk in, the “adult issues” — which generated such anger and frustration a moment before — were brought back into perspective. Participants reconnected with the reasons they chose public school education in the first place. Yes, the push/ pull of workplace politics is as traumatic in our school districts as it is anywhere else, maybe more so. But it’s heartening to hear this one teacher’s overriding commitment to her students’ success.

We should all heed Cassandra’s words. Because it’s time to stop passing the buck and start owning it.

How’m I Doin?

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130220 How I'm Doin-01It’s funny how things stay with you over the years. I grew up in a Connecticut suburb of New York City. While my hometown of New Canaan couldn’t have seemed further away from the Big Apple, every night the local news would feature the pugnacious mayor of New York, Ed Koch.

The chaos of financial uncertainty, public union strikes and real strife between neighborhoods and ethnic communities made New York a national lightning rod. This frustration was captured in the classic Daily News headline: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.” (President Ford didn’t actually say this, but then again, it is the Daily News).

Faced with tough austerity measures, high crime and tense community relationships, Koch inherited a city on the brink. However, he chose to forego traditional machine politics in favor of bringing his message directly to the people. He became famous (or infamous) for planting himself outside subway stops morning after morning to ask the folks who loved him, hated him and re-elected him twice, “How’m I doin?”

New Yorkers then and now are not exactly famous for their reticence. They’ll let you know how you’re doing in very colorful terms. But Koch stood there and listened, dodged the worst of it and made himself accountable to his constituents.

He knew it was better to initiate conversations and explain his actions rather than to stay holed up in Gracie Mansion.

Eventually, every leader is held accountable — whether it’s a school committee vote, budget issue, bond or tax levy request. But we can learn a lesson from the mayor who brought NYC from bankruptcy to surplus. Leadership is only strengthened by asking and answering the community you serve the hard questions.

So – How’r you doin?

How Technology Continues to Transform Education

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1212_04 MOOC-01

This past weekend, when I finally broke down and started to work on my holiday gift list, I came across a concept that uses technology to transform education. It’s called a massive open online course, or MOOC.

The source was an ‘encore presentation’ of NPR’s Weekend Edition featuring Stanford University’s Dr. Keith Devlin — NPR’s resident “Math Guy” — teaching a course to 64,000 students. (When I was young, we called encore presentations reruns, and ‘previously-owned’ cars used, but I digress.) This revolutionary use of technology has the potential to transform the existing university system — a system that is suffering an economic breakdown, with spiraling costs and unconscionable debt burdens.

Dr. Devlin’s key insights include:

“[W]hat MOOCs are really about are building learning communities of people . . .

“Obviously, at a time when resources and costs are of a concern — and when are they not, I suppose — this offers a hope of quality teachers reaching maximum number of students.

This is what gives us goose bumps, because we think for the first time ever anybody in the world with a broadband access can actually have a sense, a virtual sense, of sitting next to a world expert somewhere at Stanford or MIT or Harvard or somewhere. And that’s really kind of a unique situation.”

You can find the full transcript here.

The MOOCs, which have Devlin so excited, along with the noted Khan Academy’s parallel work for younger students, share the concept of leveraging technology to fundamentally alter the dialogue between student and educator. At K12 Insight, we see every day that our approach facilitates a ‘candid conversation,’ which profoundly alters the relationship between district leaders and the stakeholders they serve.

While it can be quite a challenge to engage with parents too busy to attend evening meetings or the reserved third-year teacher, these voices are just as valid as the activist sitting in the front row of the assembly at every public board meeting.

Give your community the sense that they can sit down next to you and have a conversation in the way made possible by K12 Insight.

Maybe they’ll even get goose bumps!

The Right Medium for the Message

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Trying to engage with the typical parent requires breaking through the clutter and static in today’s media and communications landscape. When I was considering this challenge, I looked around my desk to see my office phone, desktop PC, laptop (currently streaming iTunes radio) and smartphone, all bombarding me with texts, emails, IMs  and, my personal favorite, tweets.

As an avid sports fan, I use Twitter to help me stay connected with ‘critical’ developments: A-Rod’s MRI results, Tom Coughlin’s contract extension or Team USA’s performance in the Olympics. But the shortcomings of a 140-character burst are just as evident.

My favorite illustration of this is a tongue-in-cheek effort to encapsulate Shakespearean classics into the format of this brave new world, with Macbeth summarized thusly: “Lady Macbeth encourages her husband to be more aggressive in pursuing career options.”

Sadly, we are all susceptible to information overload. The challenge is to find the appropriate medium for the message you’re trying to drive forward with your audience. If it’s a snow day, then automated phone calls, text messages, tweets and Facebook updates may be ideal. Want to float a trial balloon for a new program with your most engaged citizens? A blog may be ideal, as exemplified by two clients — M Mike Nagler, Ed.D., who writes Mineola NY’s Nagler’s Notions, and Jeanne Collins, who writes Burlington, VT’s Superintendent’s Blog.

When it’s time for you to reach out to your stakeholders and engage in a more comprehensive and rich dialogue, the right medium is a K12 Insight-designed and administered project. Our professionally written pre-survey and post-survey communications, reports and analysis will crystalize the district’s message in the context of meaningful data to support your district’s mission and deliver positive outcomes.

Learn more about What We Do.

Compared to What?

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The summer break is over or nearly over, and suntan lotion will soon be pushed to the back of the medicine chest.  As I reflect on the many on-site meetings to review survey results which I led with superintendents and department heads, a natural question frequently came up: ‘”Compared to what?”

This question is particularly challenging when the district is participating in K12 Insight’s systematic solution for the first year.  Clearly, the ideal reference point for the perceptions of any aspect of the district’s performance is a measurement asking the exact same question a year ago (seasonality has a surprising impact on stakeholder data).  When this data is not available, however, there are a few strategies we employ to enhance our understanding of survey data.

Since our organization works with many districts, we certainly have a sense of what we typically expect and can therefore put the data in that context.  But another technique is to look at other questions that a respondent is presented on the same topic.   If we ask five questions about parent engagement and a specific item’s rating stands apart (high or low) from others in this cluster, it is fair to make inferences about the ‘outlier.’   In cases where we see similar results for items in the same cluster, we can disaggregate the degrees of intensity that we often combine (Satisfied and Very Satisfied, for example), in order to differentiate one item’s feedback from another’s.

Years of baseline data are a wonderful resource, but a thoughtful consideration of data in a district’s first year implementing the K12 Insight solution can yield meaningful information.  While the best answers to the “Compared to what?” question may take time to uncover, during a district’s first year with us we can answer an equally powerful question:  “Where are we now?”