Rachael Maves: Hello everyone, you are listening to the Rachael Maves podcast and I'm Rachael Maves, your host. Today we are talking to Brittany Miller. Brittany is the chief innovation officer and executive director of the Center for Outcomes-Based Contracting at the Southern Education Foundation, where she leads efforts to transform educational partnerships through outcomes-based contracting. Under her leadership, the center has expanded from four pioneering districts to 60 agencies across 25 states.

impacting over 29,000 students and establishing a model where at least 40 % of provider payment depends on student outcomes. An early innovator who helped develop some of the nation's first outcome-based contracts while at Denver Public Schools, Brittany brings both practitioner experience and strategic vision to scaling the center's impact. She holds a doctorate in curriculum studies and teaching from the University of Denver and enjoys scuba diving and snowboarding in her free time.

Welcome, Brittany. I'm really excited to have you joining me today.

Brittany Miller: Thanks, Rachael. Nice to be here.

Rachael Maves: So we always start off, we're big at Parsec about stories and understanding the why for people. And I'd love just to give you a chance to share a little bit about your journey and why you chose education and especially how you ended up where you are now in Outcomes-Based Contract.

Brittany Miller: Thanks so much, Rachael. So I started out as a teacher actually in the classroom and just had a real passion for education, both for teaching kids and also just understanding how this system that's something that is, you know, something that everybody experiences. So everybody has a strong opinion about it because because they experienced it, right. And families, of course, have strong opinions about like what's happening for their own kids. And so they have, you know, both.

Rachael Maves: That's so true.

Brittany Miller: that experience of being in school and then also like having kids in school. So there's a lot of opinion about like how to do education right. And all of those are so critical. And I think we all agree that we really want to do right by kids. And so it's really a matter of understanding like, how do we do right by kids in a way that's aligned and doesn't drive the teachers and their students in the classroom crazy. And I think that that's the part that continues to drive me and is something that I find

really valuable in the work that I do now. So I started as a teacher, worked my way up through the school district world and Denver Public Schools initially, and always was on the instructional side. Like you said, my doctorate is in curriculum studies and teaching. So how am I leading work nationally focused on contracting, which might typically be more of a business role. And that's really by design and the way that OVC works because what I found when I was at a district leadership role,

and moved into the academics division where we were doing a lot of buying is that there was a lot of things that we were purchasing and we would have a great relationship between the provider and district at the outset. But then when we actually got into them working with our schools, with our teams, et cetera, things would start to go awry. And what I've learned over time is a lot of it comes from that story that I shared. Everybody has an opinion about how to

make things right for kids. And without being really clear about what right looks like or what good looks like, we can all just kind of get in each other's way and make the lived experience of a kid in a classroom confusing, right? And incoherent for what we actually need to achieve. And so when I got introduced to outcomes-based contracting and did this for the first time myself, you know, I talk about, it was during the SR funding time and I was the,

Rachael Maves: and

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Brittany Miller: led a department that was investing all of our Esther funds that were for outside of the school day and the traditional school day. And so what the high impact tutoring OBC did that I led is it enabled us to get really clear about how we were using our resources because it was really clear about what we expected for students to have happen. And so that's important from a financial perspective. But the more important thing and like the big picture for me is that it also allowed for us to get

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Brittany Miller: really, really clear about the most important and valuable resource of all, which is of course student time, right? So we only have so much time with kids in the classroom on a daily basis. They only have so much time before they're passed on to the next grade level. And so getting really, really clear about the things we're asking teachers and students to do in the classroom in order to accelerate their learning requires us to get super clear about how is that part of their overall coherent learning experience.

Rachael Maves: Yeah. Yeah.

Brittany Miller: And then how do we really dive into that in a way that enables teachers, students, the provider, the district to be really focused on the same thing and then having a common way to measure that and then align all the systems around it. So.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, so I want to jump into more about outcome space contracting. But before we do that, a little bit just about like what was your draw to education in first place? Why did you become a teacher? And then like how did it like really hit you for this business side of it coming from curriculum? I'd love to hear that story.

Brittany Miller: Yeah, you know, so I was actually an international studies and Spanish double major. I thought that I was going to be like, you know, some foreign service person or something. And then I think that it was my maybe junior year or sophomore year, of the two. I took a course on like the history of education in America. And I was just I was fascinated. I was like, I had no idea that all of these different factors ultimately impacted

Rachael Maves: Hahaha

Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Brittany Miller (05:40.866)

the thing that, you know, is a universal degree in problem. Exactly. Yeah. And so I got really hooked at that point. I ended up minoring in education. I couldn't major in it without extending my time in university and ended up ultimately joining Teach for America. So that's how I started out with Teach for America. And it was like a career change into education for my undergrad. So I knew that I wanted to stay in education long term.

Rachael Maves: Everyone experiences, right? Yeah, yeah.

Brittany Miller: right when I started teaching. I've just always thought that it's such an important part of our overall kind of society because it's something we all experience. And I think that, again, everybody really cares about it a lot. So how do we take that care and passion and make it more coherent and aligned for kids instead of just kind of what we can see in a lot of classrooms is.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: That's right.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Brittany Miller: Okay, yeah, not in terms of the way the classroom is working, in terms of like the system that's impacting what's happening in the classroom.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Yeah, so what drew you then into like this new sector? Because I mean it is a big shift when you go from public service and this is something I'm in the midst of experiencing right now into either the private or non-profit. What was that impetus for you?

Brittany Miller: Yeah. Really the impetus was outcomes-based contracting when I decided what I was going to do next. I left Ember Public Schools in the middle of 2022. And so I started OVC when I was a district leader in 2021. I was just amazed by how much more productive I could make my relationship with my provider when we had everything really clearly spelled out in the contract.

Rachael Maves: you

Brittany Miller: And, you know, we've been working on different implementation challenges, you know, forever in our district. It's like every district does, right? It's really hard to get things implemented at scale effectively. And under an OVC as a middle manager, you know, I had bosses above me, below me, the side of me in schools, everybody, right? To be able to say, this is what we all agreed to. It's actually in the contract and we're all accountable to this thing, which for our end of the bargain as the district was.

student attendance, right? So we had to ask students to 70 % or more of the tutoring sessions they were assigned to. And so that allowed me to be a much more effective middle manager with all those different humans, because there was one thing that we were all accountable to on our end. And then the thing on the provider end was, we're going to get the outcomes for the kids as long as they show up and attend, right? So that relationship was really valuable. And then in terms of like moving from instruction into the business world,

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Right. Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Brittany Miller: as a female leader in this space, what I really appreciate is that I worked in district for long time. And a lot of times in district leadership, you tend to see, and there's no statistics that I'm quoting on this, but like my experience is that you see more female leaders in the instructional roles and more male leaders in the business roles, right? Yeah. And so having a seat at the body and cable as an instructional leader,

Rachael Maves: Yeah, that's 100 % true.

Brittany Miller: can be challenging, right? There's of course the gender dynamics, but there's also the fact that as an instructional leader, we know a thing or two about like how you actually educate students and make sure that.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Just a little bit, yes.

Brittany Miller: On the business side, like in the past that hasn't translated to a contractual relationship, right? And so it gives this gender dynamic a more even playing field is what I've seen because I was able to talk with the financial leaders in our districts about why we had to engage in this type of partnership. And it really enables them to be more attentive to what the academic function needs in order to be successful.

Rachael Maves: Yes. Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Brittany Miller: when the outcomes and the implementation criteria are actually in the contract, right? And so that was something that really drove me to wanna do more of this work is seeing how we could really uplift the voice of the people that really understand how to educate students alongside their business colleagues that understand how to negotiate a contract so that that partnership can and our resources are more aligned to what kids need.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, yeah. So at it's because we have some people that listen that aren't educators. We're to have some people who are listening that this is the first time they're hearing about outcomes based contracting. So could you just give like what is your 30 second elevator speech around at the base level? What is outcome based contracting and why is it important?

Brittany Miller: Yeah. So in an outcomes based contract, we're talking about how the contract between a school district and their service provider that's delivering services to students, their relationship works contractually, right? In a typical contract in education, when you're buying something as a district leader, you pay for the services that are delivered. And there historically has been very little tracking of whether those services actually made it to students or not. And

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Brittany Miller: whether or not outcomes were achieved, right? And so what an outcomes-based contract does is it creates a relationship where the provider receives a base payment upfront for the services that are delivered like you would in a traditional contract, right? And then there's a large portion, we recommend at least 40%, is contingent on meeting agreed upon student outcomes. And so what that does is it creates a mutual accountability relationship.

Rachael Maves: Yep.

Brittany Miller: between the district and provider where the district is not going to pay the full amount if the outcomes aren't achieved. But then the part of it that makes it really sticky is that there's a language in the contract, we call it the mutual accountability language that articulates what the district has to do in order to hold the provider accountable for those contingent payments. So that's kind of the way that it works. And we've been doing this in high impact tutoring work.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Brittany Miller: in educational technology, instructional intervention, so your products that students do like the adaptive work online with, and then in teacher professional learning for their high quality instructional materials.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, yeah, that's great. And I love one of the things that you said earlier that I think is critical around the work that you guys are doing is that one, it requires the vendor to actually provide like clear guidelines for successful implementation to the district. And then the district to say, OK, this is our part. We have to do this if we want to see it be successful, because I feel like that right there is often the missing gap.

of the implementation piece. It's exciting work that you're doing. So from that lens, Brittany, being a former practitioner and leading that work in curriculum, now being on this side of outcome space contracting and leading this work. In our current educational context and climate, what keeps you up at night?

Brittany Miller: Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that the thing that keeps me up at night, more broadly speaking, within our educational climate is that our schools are not getting funded at the rate that they need to in order to serve students effectively. Right. And that's not to say that there isn't wasteful spending in education. There is. And I can talk about that a lot in terms of how we see can help us get better at that. And at the end of the day,

ensuring that schools are well funded and that teachers are making a competitive salary and that our students are living or learning in environments that you know have the building set up that they need in order to be successful and like the HVAC needs and the AC needs right like all of that is expensive and what keeps me up at night is knowing that a lot of the services that students need in order to be successful.

are getting cut as a result of continued funding declines in education. So that certainly keeps me up at night and why I'm very passionate about the work we do, not to say that we need to, you know, defund education or get rid of the dollars that are available. I believe we need more dollars and we also need to do a better job of realizing efficiencies with the dollars we do have, particularly from grant sources that we can really use to drive toward, you know.

Rachael Maves: That's right. Yeah.

Brittany Miller: students getting what they need and being successful.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, well, I'd love to hear just your ideas for solutions about that because I don't know what your experience has been, but coming from the practitioner lens, I mean, this is a real muscle that districts one haven't been trained in and two is so critically important and necessary, but need that support of what does that mean and look like? How do we really get clear around ROI and make those tough decisions based off of the data and metrics that we have? So as you think about

what that looks like in school districts, what are one or two ways that would really make a significant change in addressing those issues.

Brittany Miller: Yeah. So I'll talk about the five ingredients that we say are critical for an OVC. And that impacts a lot of the system surrounding not just that individual contract, but kind of how the overall system functions. And so those ingredients are a clearly defined student population, right? So don't buy things for everybody all the time. And we see a lot of that in the tech. But like actually focus on who needs it, right? And what the data is at the baseline.

Rachael Maves: Mm.

Rachael Maves: Hahaha

Brittany Miller: The second ingredient is clearly defined outcomes and metrics. So getting really clear about not just we want kids to grow a year in math, but like we want this particular subset of students to grow according to this assessment that actually is a part of our infrastructure and system and accountability framework. Right. The third agreement is contingent outcome payments. It matters that you have dollars that are contingent because it is a power lever.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Brittany Miller: quite frankly, that keeps everybody in check to make sure that the agreement is upheld. And then the last two we talk about together are mutual accountability and continuous improvement, which means that you outline in the contract. So in legal language, you're saying, I, district, commit to this, you, provider, commit to this, and will be a violation of the contingent payment part of the contract if we don't do those things. But here are the remedies we're going to do along the way if we don't get it right.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Brittany Miller: the first time because guess what? You're not going to, right? Implementation is hard or we wouldn't be where we are. And so those remedies really articulate like, what are the things that you can do along the way in order to make the partnership more successful for kids before you start to say, okay, great. Now the contingent payments are at risk on one side or the other. And then with that, the way that we actually make sure that that happens in implementation is through the continuous improvement framework that's built into the contract that says, these are the moves that we're going to commit to having.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Rachael Maves: Mmm. Mmm.

Brittany Miller: And we talk about like, you you all have talking meetings and then there's working meetings. We all like working meetings better, right? And so in a working meeting, right, we're going to have the people that need to be there, which is really valuable for a provider because they frequently get the run around with district leaders. We're busy people and we're like, we like you, but we don't have time, right? So they do need to show up, right? And then with that, these are the data sets that they're going to review. This is who's in charge of bringing the data. And this is the purpose of the meeting and what the decisions are that we're going to make, right?

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yep.

Brittany Miller: So all of that is outlined again in the contract with like when data will be available. So it's just a much more clear and coherent arrangement in order to really drive toward student learning.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, I love that. It's interesting because this model is being talked about more more and more. And I've seen it in varying implementation stages, I'll say, Brittany, where what you're talking about makes perfect sense. It's so dialed in, it's so critical and clear. And then I've seen it where those pieces actually don't happen. And it ends up being really messy. And it still has that of OBC name on it. But it's not.

I would argue with those critical components, not truly OBC. Are you guys starting to see that as it becomes more more popular? And how are you thinking about that type of risk mitigation for that work?

Brittany Miller: Yeah, absolutely. So we hear a lot about OVCs in the wild and we're like, can you say more about that? I'm like, it's an endearing term, but let's talk a little bit more. But one of the critical ways is just getting really clear about that definition. So over the past several years, right, we've had these successful examples over and over again when we've directly supported this partnership with the district and provider. Well,

Rachael Maves: That's a good way of putting it, obesity's in the wild. Yum.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Brittany Miller: once something works, people are going to want to do more of it, right? And so we have developed the standards of excellence for outcomes-based contracting for two of the verticals or product lines that we're working in for high impact tutoring. And then for ad tech interventions, where we have a full year of data now to say, okay, we understand well enough what this needs to look like. It's the same five things, right? But then there's specific language in each of them in terms of like, what does a mutual accountability language actually need to look like for an ad tech intervention?

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Brittany Miller: And so that's all documented in our standards and then our contract templates that are on the website, you know, open source, anybody can download them and use them. So that's like the resource part of it. The way that we're thinking about it in terms of this balancing act that we have to do always in leadership and systems work in particular, right, is how do you create that balance of support and accountability for the folks that are doing work in the system? And so we think about that in terms of the support being

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Brittany Miller: either these open source resources or coming to our convening that we had a few weeks ago, our cohorts where we have districts that work through this and are in much deeper partnership with us alongside their providers. And we just launched a provider learning series as well, right? So that's all the support function in terms of like making sure that people understand it. And then there's the accountability function which is also really important. And so what we've been doing from that perspective is starting to work at the state level. So we're working with

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Brittany Miller: four states right now, we're working on confirming our fifth as we speak. And with that, we're working with them to say, great, let's do that direct support model with your district staff at different LEAs that really want to take this model on. We'll also do some training for providers so they understand it. And then through this partnership, let's identify what the infrastructure can look like at the state level to also have that accountability function, right?

Rachael Maves: Yes.

Rachael Maves: Hmm interesting. Yeah, yep.

Brittany Miller: And so then that can come from more of the grant making where we can start to say, great, if you're going to say that this is an outcomes-based contract, let's actually evaluate it according to five criteria. And then let's make sure that we're tracking the data so we really understand what's working for which students under what conditions. So we can do better with the resources we have available and make sure quality is getting into the classroom.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I just think this is so timely, one with budget constraints that we have that everyone's talking about right now at the federal and the state level, but then also this massive sweep of AI and technology. mean, even just getting clear around what is it that you're trying to accomplish with this and what is that success criteria? What would you expect to see once this is implemented? I think it's just a game changer at the very beginning. So this is our last question.

super interested for Nady here where you go with this one, but what question in education are we not asking that we really should be?

Brittany Miller: Yeah, that's a great question.

think that the common theme of the question that we're not asking in education that we should be is what does this actually look like for the student and the teacher in the classroom tomorrow? So if we can stay really grounded in the lived experience of a kid who's using this technology, who has this whole environment around them that is a part of their experience, it's not just about what's on the computer screen, right?

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rachael Maves: Yes.

Yeah.

Brittany Miller: then I think we can get a lot more clear about how to make all that stuff align. Because when you have it really clearly defined in terms of what success looks like, and you just stay focused on the student experience, we've found over and over again that you can shore up a lot of the other kind of like confusing factors that impact how that happens for the kid in the classroom.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Well said. Great place to wrap up our time together. Thanks for your time, Brittany. I really appreciated it.

Brittany Miller: Yeah, okay.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Rachael.

Rachael Maves: And just a friendly reminder, when it comes to return on investment with your school vendors, always open the conversation up to your students, parents and guardians and families. Their input on how well something is working is invaluable to decision making processes. To that end, we at Parsec have developed our Parsec Real platform that allows for greater community input while alleviating the lift for admin and school staff. So check out Parsec Real and how it could help you and your team by visiting parseceducation.com.

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This transcript was created from the episode's captions and lightly edited for readability. It may contain small errors; please refer to the audio for exact wording.