Rick: Hey, everyone.
This is part two of our discussion with former D.C.
Schools Chancellor, Kaya Henderson.
It picks up right where we left off in part number one.
Welcome back.
You know, one of the things that obviously superintendents wrestle with all the time
are some of the fault lines in communities.
D.C. certainly have these, racial divisions, but especially also neighborhood and community
divisions.
In D.C, it's the river.
Talk a little bit about how you try to work with all the different parts of the community...
Kaya: Yeah.
Rick: As a Chancellor, is there anything you learned about how to try to address these
concerns, listen to these folks, kind of lead more effectively?
Kaya: Yeah.
I think the hardest part of my job as Chancellor was managing these very different communities
who all had...who all loved their kids, who all want what's best for their kids, who all
have different ways of getting there.
And who all care about one another in varying degrees, or not.
And, recognizing that I was the Chancellor for everybody.
One of the things that Michelle Rhee and Adrian Fenty, who was Mayor at the time...
They had a belief that if we could get the wealthier folks on the Western side of town
to buy back into the school district, that that would attract everybody else, right?
And so you saw lots more building modernizations in the Western...Upper Northwest.
You saw lots more investment there and it was kind of a trickle down approach to school
reform.
And what I found or realized was that families East of the river who were in most dire need
and who we had failed over and over and over again and who didn't really have other options,
they were...the trickle was not fast enough.
And that we owed them as much as we owed the folks that we were trying to get to come back
from private schools or from Montgomery County.
And so, you know, I think I tried to be evenhanded, recognizing that some folks had gotten a lot
and other folks hadn't.
I really wanted to prioritize our most vulnerable kids and I felt like it was easy to make the
case for that.
But even communities in the middle, they needed to feel like I was their Chancellor and I
was looking out for their kids as well.
And so if there was a new program that we were instituting, we might concentrate really
heavily on wards 7 and 8, but also make sure that other wards got a piece of the pie.
It also meant saying to some of the wealthier communities, "It's your turn to take a seat
now, right?
Like you've gotten a lot."
And I think when you sit down and talk to people...like another big lesson that I learned
was around engagement, right.
When you sit down and talk to people, most people are reasonable.
And when you explain sort of the trade-offs that you're making...because, as a superintendent,
you are always making trade-offs.
You can never make everybody happy.
And so the question is, "How do you make the least people as least upset as possible?"
But I mean, literally...and I'd take the boundary and feeder pattern process that we went through,
you know, if...or school closings easier, right?
If I'd just close schools, everybody's mad at me.
When I give you all the data and say, "How should we do this?"
And people look and say, "Wait a minute, you're spending $17,000 at this school and $6,000
at another school?
That's not right."
"Okay, well, which one should we close?"
"Well, you can't close that because..."
When people start to have to wrestle with the same kinds of conundrums that I had to
wrestle with, then they get a little sympathy and they're like, "Oh, this is hard, right?"
You're like, "Well, then you tell me which schools we should close."
And that way it's not Kaya Henderson closing schools.
We make the decision jointly.
And when we made the decision jointly, right, people...it was the same year.
I closed 13 schools the same year that they closed 50 in Chicago and 20-something in Philadelphia.
Where in Chicago it brought a teacher-strike, where in Philadelphia people were chaining
themselves to the superintendents' doors.
And here, we had no problems whatsoever because we had engaged with our constituents and they
had to wrestle with the same problems that we wrestled with.
Rick: You know, one of the initiatives I remember you pushing was...I think at elementary, you
said you were gonna have an art teacher in every...
Kaya: Art, music, P.E, foreign language, and library for every...
Rick: Now talk about that a bit, because I think some folks think well, "Geez, wait a
minute!
Reading and math isn't where we want it to be anywhere.
On the contrary, how can we afford to put dollars into art, librarians, these things,
when we're not taking care of business?"
Kaya: So, the biggest...I think my biggest perspective or my most useful perspective
as superintendent was parent, right.
And, you know, I'm an upper middle-class parent who wants what's best for my kid, just like
upper middle-class and wealthy parents want what's best for their kids.
Well, if your kid is a struggling reader, right, you get him help, right?
You get him or her tutoring or you go to Kumon or you do whatever, but you don't say, "You
can't go on the family trip to France this summer," or, "We're gonna stop your piano
lessons," or, "You can't play football."
Right?
And, effectively, that's what we were telling kids who were struggling.
When wealthy people understand that all of those activities and all of those enrichment
things actually help kids learn.
And so, if you look at the research...I mean if you wanna go purely academic, you can look
at the research between the confluence of music and math, right?
And, I mean there are lots of studies that link the arts to academic development.
But more than that, our job is not just to turn out people who can read and do math.
Our job is to turn out citizens who are whole and ready for society.
And that means that kids, especially kids who wouldn't otherwise get these things at
home, need to experience these things at school.
And so, for me, it was not cool that on some sides of town PTAs thought that foreign language
in the early grades was really important and so they paid for it, right, when on the other
side of town, that wasn't even an option.
We said, "What do we want for our own children?
We're gonna set that as a floor for every kid in D.C. public schools."
And then if PTAs wanna build above the floor, perfect.
I'm good with that.
But we know that early language development happens in elementary school.
And so to start kids in foreign language at 7th or 8th grade is creating an achievement
gap.
And I was unapologetic about making sure that those kinds of enrichment activities, that
field trips, that international trips, that everything that I wanted for my kid, which
is to play an instrument, to excel at a sport, to speak a foreign language, to be a digital
native, oh, yeah, and to read and do math, right.
I wanna make sure that that was in place for all of the children at...
Rick: Well, what kind of reaction did that get from the community?
Kaya: It was met with widespread celebration and acclaim, especially for families east
of the river who watched these programs leaving their neighborhoods and going west of the
park.
And they also saw families leaving their own communities to be able to take advantage of
that.
You shouldn't have to leave your community to get what I think are the basics in education.
Rick: You know, it's funny because one of the things that does too is it gets us beyond
these conversations we've been having in recent years of just focusing on closing gaps, in
which we're talking about some folks not...it's not only you're talking about every family
and every...
Kaya: No, this is for everybody.
That's right.
I want...I was the Chancellor for 50,000 kids and I need my kids who are high performers...I
mean one of our big goals was to improve test scores but also to double the number of kids
who were advanced because not okay to just bring up the low performers.
I owe those high performers more acceleration and enrichment.
And I think that, you know, a lot of times people miss the point that like, you know,
we...districts, at least, have to please everybody.
We have to work for everybody.
Other people get to be boutiquey, right?
But we're Target.
We sell water hoses and we sell, you know, food.
We sell clothes and we sell houseware's like...and we've gotta do it well for everybody.
Rick: So last question.
As you work with...you know, you're mentoring superintendents nowadays, you're mentoring
entrepreneurs.
Are there a couple pieces of advice you find yourself kind of routinely sharing, repeatedly
going back to?
Kaya: Yeah.
I feel like I'm a little bit of a drum major for justice around family engagement...family
and community engagement.
I think lots of times in our field, as educators, we feel like we're the experts.
And we tell parents, "Just drop kids off, you know, in pre-k, and we'll give them back
to you in 12th grade and it'll be all good because we have degrees, and we've gone to
school," and things like that.
And when you really engage parents and community members, things don't go as quickly as you
want them to go.
And sometimes they are messy and sometimes they are contentious and all of that.
And, you know, we want what we want, how we want it, now.
And we fail miserably to engage families and communities and often take waves.
And so, the single biggest piece of advice that I find myself giving to lots of people
is how to effectively engage families and communities.
People get now...I think we've had somewhat an epiphany in our field, that parents are
important.
But we need to do it in a more authentic and engaging way that gives them a real seat at
the table and not in a perfunctory way.
And so people are...
Rick: How do you know if you're doing it the one way versus the other?
Kaya: Well, I mean, it's fairly easy.
If you're telling parents what's going on and there is no sort of way for parents to
tell you what they want, then, it's a problem.
If you are, you know, putting people out in front of the community just to get your agenda
through, you're not doing it the right way.
If parents actually...and community members actually can help drive decision-making in
ways if there are bodies set up, if there are, you know, opportunities and vehicles
for people to engage.
And, frankly, you can ask people like, "Do you feel like we're meaningfully engaging
you?"
And reasonable people will say, "Actually, yeah.
You know what, you have gone out of your way to ask us what we think about this and to
let us weigh in."
And I think we've gotta get...when you do that, like, the results, one, they just stick
better.
The results actually ultimately come faster, even if the process was a little slower.
It just...the payoff is so huge and I feel like I'm helping people understand that, and
how to do it.
Rick: So...and on that, I mean, right, there's...forever, we've had these communities with these processes.
Clevelands of the world have had hundreds of community leaders and people sit down,
and there's long conferences and the schools don't actually seem to get better, So, how
do you do this in a real, kinda meaningful way where you're not finding yourself sitting
around long, boring tables hour after hour?
Kaya: Yeah, I sat around a lot of long, boring tables until we thought differently about
parent engagement, right.
And we asked ourselves, "We're all busy parents.
We work all day every day.
Like, what do parents care most about?"
They care about helping their individual kid do well in school, right?
And so if we ask parents, if we are specific with parents, right...and this sort of comes
out of my experience, at the time I had a first grader and the teacher was saying, you
know, "Read for 20 minutes at night with your first grader."
Question.
Read what?
I was a middle school's math teacher.
I don't know what a first grade book is versus a third grade book or whatever.
What do you want me to read?
Is he reading to me?
Am I reading to him?
Are we reading together?
Like, well, I need some specific direction.
And we always ask parents to help without being specific.
And so, parents care about helping their kids.
Let's give them specific ways that they can help their kids excel, and let's show them
how their help is actually helping their kids progress.
The second thing parents care about is their kid's school, and so parents will do anything
to support their kid's school.
Again, you must be specific about how they could help the school.
Not in a bakesale-y kinda way, but like, with real issues.
If the principal is grappling with issues, you have parents who may be expert in those
issues or who may just be willing to put extra hands and boots on the ground, engage their
parents in meaningful work at a school.
And then, thirdly, maybe, some set of parents cares about what's happening in the district.
And so, we should create opportunities for those parents who want to engage in that way
to engage, but we shouldn't expect that everybody will or want to...wants to.
And so we revamped our approach to family and community engagement, first concentrating
on the parent.
And who do parents wanna talk to most?
Teachers.
And so teachers became the front line of that level of engagement and then principals became
the second line of engagement and the district became third.
And that was a complete inverse to how we have been approaching family engagement before.
Rick: That's fantastic.
Kaya, any last words of wisdom?
Kaya: Yes.
I think, you know, for young reformers who want to change the world, I wanna remind them
that I've been working in the education reform space for 25 years.
And I feel really...I've worked really hard.
And I feel really proud of a lot of the work that we've done.
But what is still tremendously elusive is quality at scale.
We have not figured out.
None of us have.
Districts haven't.
Charters haven't.
Private schools haven't.
None of us have figured out how to ensure that every single kid, no matter who they
are, that hits our door, gets a high-quality education.
And so I want us to have an appropriate amount of humility about this work, because it's
not gonna...if it hasn't changed that much in 25 years, I'm worried about how much longer
it will take to get to where we need to go.
It doesn't mean we should stop working because we've got kids sitting in front of us, but
it means that we've got to start thinking about very different ways to get more kids
to a higher level of education.
Rick: Beautifully said.
Thank you so much.
Kaya: Thank you.
Always a pleasure.
Rick: Hey, everyone.
That's the end of our discussion with former D.C.
Schools Chancellor, Kaya Henderson.
Thanks for watching.
As always, let us know what other topics you'd like AEI Scholars to cover on VIEWPOINT, and
be sure to check out the rest of our video and research from AEI.