Rachael Maves: Hello everyone, you are listening to the Rachael Maves podcast and I'm Rachael Maves, your host. Today we are talking to A.J. Crabill. Improving student outcomes is Eric Journey or A.J. Crabill's relentless focus. He currently serves as the senior coach at effective school boards and as the director of governance for the council of the great city schools. He recently served as the conservator at DeSoto Texas Independent School District during which DeSoto made double digit literacy gains

and improved from having F ratings in academics, finance, and governance to B ratings. He served as deputy commissioner at the Texas Education Agency, and he spearheaded reforms as board chair of Kansas City Public Schools that doubled the percentage of students who are literate and numerate, and eventually led the KCPS to full accreditation for the first time in decades. He received the Education Commission of the State's James Bryant Conant Award.

and is the author of one of our company's favorite books, great on their behalf, Why School Boards Fail, How Yours Can Become Effective. AJ, thank you for joining me today.

AJ Crabill: Thank you so much for having me.

Rachael Maves: So just given your background at AJ, the work that you've done, really being able to speak to true results, I cannot wait to hear how did you do this career in education? What led you into this crazy field of ours?

AJ Crabill: I think like

Like some folks that I've run across, I feel like more I got pulled into it rather than I went looking for it. It certainly wasn't part of a concerted effort or game plan.

Rachael Maves: Mm.

AJ Crabill: in terms of my school board work and that largely was an outgrowth of my parent advocacy and serving on the parent association for my kids school and then becoming the head of the parent association for my kids school and then you show up at one too many meetings and next thing you know you're on the school board. And one thing led to another and I've just had the real blessed opportunity to serve.

Rachael Maves: Hahaha

AJ Crabill: On the governance side of public education, I've had the opportunity to serve on the management side of public education and had the opportunity to serve at the state level. And it's just really been a blessing to get to see challenges from a bunch of different angles and also really inform my thoughts about how we can really begin to maneuver public education in ways that are aligned with improvements in student outcomes.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Rachael Maves: I'd love to hear just a little bit because you do bring a unique lens, AJ, and having held these different spaces and seats from that parent lens to an active school board member to serving as the Deputy Commissioner at a state education agency. Tell me just a little bit if you don't mind about...

looking at education from each of those experiences, what is one or two things that really resonated with you in those times?

AJ Crabill: Well, so one thing that certainly stands out and I think it's wise to stay permanently grounded in is that if there's something miraculous happening in public education, it's definitely not happening in the boardroom. It's definitely happening in the classroom. That's where the magic happens. The more that we can create school systems that set teachers up for success rather than set them up to fail, the better off our students are going to be. And so then it becomes just this obsessive focus on what does that look like? What does it take to help each teacher

Rachael Maves: Yeah. Yeah.

AJ Crabill: each classroom be the best version of themselves? What does it take to remove obstacles out of their way? What does it take to make sure that we're incentivizing our most effective teachers to serve our students who are furthest from educational justice?

Rachael Maves: That's right.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

AJ Crabill: These are the types of questions that we become increasingly obsessed with over time is what can we do to set teachers up for success? What can we do to make sure that they are located in a place where our students who most need them have access to them? How can we constantly be supporting improvements in the quality of instruction that students are experiencing? And how can we constantly be increasing the quantity of quality instruction that students are experiencing? What all of my experience tells me is that as we do

things is we stay really really focused on the things that matter most. That even the most challenging circumstances that our students present are impotent compared to what's possible when a school system is intensely focused on improving student outcomes.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, so hearing you say that and that laser-like focus, I'm curious for that next question of what keeps you up at night. Is it this? Is it this piece of what does it mean and look like to ensure that teachers have that space to really focus because we know that's where the magic happens? Or are there other things that as you have your ear to the ground and you're listening and hearing from all these different lenses and perspectives that you feel like...

Gosh, it's these two things that we really need to be addressing.

AJ Crabill: Yeah, so this is where perhaps my controversial ideas start to come into play. Things that can be up at night really can fall into two different buckets. One is, what are we doing to really enable...

Rachael Maves: You

AJ Crabill: our most effective teachers to stay in the profession and to stay in the classroom and be really great in that space. I do not believe that teachers are widgets. I don't believe that every single teacher is equally effective. I don't believe that everybody is called to teach.

Rachael Maves: Mm.

AJ Crabill: I think it is incredibly hard work. It takes a lot of skill and mastery. Some people just are more effective at it than others. And certainly it's also subject dependent, you know, folks who might be brilliant at teaching math, but in high school might be a nightmare if you try to get them to teach pre-k. So, right? Exactly.

Rachael Maves: I can attest to that personally. I can attest to that.

AJ Crabill: The question is like, and then part of the challenge is we've constructed our school system such that.

If a teacher needs to earn more in order to take care of their own family, their own children at home, often the only access to that is by actually exiting the classroom. So if we've got folks who really are exceptional, but who have additional family needs at home, we're actually incentivizing them not to stay in the place where their exceptionalism could be most transformative. We kind of bully them into having to go become assistant principals and principals. Even if that wasn't the cause

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yes.

AJ Crabill: on their heart. Even if the calling on their heart was to stay in the classroom. But if the needs at home are demanding, obviously people are to make a logical choice and take care of the needs of their family. Why aren't school systems then creating our funding structures such that they actually enable our most effective folks to stay where they can have the most profound impact? I'm a big fan of principals, big fan of superintendents, big fan of school boards. They have a powerful role to play in the value chain of improving

outcomes, but the real world still lives in the classroom. And so, know, in an ideal world, like how do we, how do we incentivize our

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

AJ Crabill: best and brightest across the nation to be in the places where we need the most in classrooms where our students who are furthest from educational justice. In the world that I would create, the conversation would go something like, hey, your scores are really good. You could probably go to law school. You could probably go to bed school. could probably be a really good engineer. But you're not quite good enough yet to be a teacher. That's just another level of excellence.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, right?

AJ Crabill: in med school. But we're not currently doing that. We're not incentivizing, we're not showing that we value educators as much as we show that we value these other professions.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

AJ Crabill: So that's one thing that certainly keeps me up at night is how do we incentivize our folks who are most effective to not only be in the profession, but be in the classroom specifically, and not any classroom, but really be in the classroom that is full of our students furthest from educational justice. So that's one thing that keeps me up at night. Another thing that keeps me up at night is on the other end of the spectrum, in the boardroom, in the world of governance, that

Rachael Maves: Yes.

AJ Crabill: I hate to say it and I don't mean to suggest that I have a better solution, but most of the incentives that school board members encounter are aligned with the focus on adult comfort and adult privilege, not aligned with the focus on student outcomes.

And as long as we continue to select school boards the way we do, we use a democratic process. That's probably always going to be the case. So then the question becomes, how do we, within the context of a democratic process, how do we train board members and how do we support school boards and design the work of school boards such that the natural incentives that would lead folks to be focused on what's comfortable for adults begin to into

incentives that cause people to lean in the direction of what's really great for children.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

AJ Crabill: But that's not where we are today. I think of my time on the school board. And when people came up to talk to me about, you're that school board guy, I didn't hear people asking, hey, notice that our third graders are not fully literate on grade level. What's the strategy that we're deploying to make sure that those students get the education they deserve so they can really live a choice-filled life and really contribute to themselves in our community? That's not the question I give. The question I give is, my cousin Ray Ray needs a job. What can we do to get Ray Ray job? My cousin Pookie and them, they

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

AJ Crabill: pencils can get the pencil contract.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

AJ Crabill: This particular teacher likes this particular curriculum, so how come they can't use that curriculum? Why are you saying they have to use this other thing? These teachers want to hang out with teachers, pay teachers, and use something from another state that's not even relevant to our standards here. Why can't they do that? These are all things around how do we create comfort for adults? These aren't things that are inherently focused on how do we create outcomes for students. But such is the nature of

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

AJ Crabill: of my experience.

that the incentives that school boards encounter really nudge them in the direction of focus on adult comfort and preference, not a focus on student outcomes. And so this keeps me up at night. Then the question has to be, how do we shift the inherent incentives that school board members fail? Because school board members are great people. The problem isn't that we've found the dredges of society that serve on the school board. fact is quite the opposite. Normally school board members are the best people

Rachael Maves: Yes.

Rachael Maves: Ha ha!

AJ Crabill: like the people that you would want, know, taking care of your kids, like these are the people who tend to show up on school boards, but then they're encountered.

Rachael Maves: Yes. Yeah.

AJ Crabill: they encounter this system of incentives that lead them away from the thing that was written in their heart that drove them to run for the school system and run for the school board in the first place. And so that's one of the other things. On one end of the spectrum, worried about how do we really create a set of incentives such that our most effective teachers stay in the profession and stay in the classroom and stay in the classroom where they're talented and do most. on the other end, how do we create

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

AJ Crabill: create a set of incentives that make it easy, natural, common for school board members to be focused on student outcomes rather than seduced into a focus on adult preference.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, I'd love your thoughts on this AJ just thinking about some of what you shared about school board members because I agree with you. Same as with teachers. don't people go into education, whether it be to teach to serve as a principal superintendent, the majority of the time, because they really do feel like this moral imperative, like I want to give back to society. And I think that same thing about school board members. And I wonder if if

part of what school board members end up without even realizing they're getting caught in is this culture of that we have an education around the next shiny thing, right? It's like, now this new thing, and we're seeing this with AI right now, right? Like this is coming out and this is coming out and this is gonna solve the problems and this is gonna, and we just stay in this constant place of chasing after something as opposed to the discipline.

AJ Crabill: Thank you.

Rachael Maves: of having strong systems and structures and data interrogation and what's working and what's not in those honest conversations, how much of it do you think that then impacts school board members, that same kind of culture and experience?

AJ Crabill: Certainly. And the good news is, I recognize the exact same phenomenon you described. So what you're saying is exactly, I see the same thing. The good news is, that to me is very solvable. That is a solved equation. Now the only question are people willing to deploy the solve. And the core...

Rachael Maves: Yeah, that's a good question.

AJ Crabill: I think the core kind of causal mechanism at the heart of that behavior is that school systems, which is to say the humans that make up school systems, tend to align with the leadership that they encounter. In our coaching work, we refer to this as parallel process, that whatever the leaders are doing, the people who subscribe to their leadership

Rachael Maves: That's right.

AJ Crabill: leadership are more likely to do the same. So if what the leaders are doing is saying, hey, we all need to go left, then people subscribed to the leadership are more likely to go left. And leaders say, hey, we should go right. The people subscribed to the leadership are more likely to go right. So this phenomenon actually is a great tendency of humans as long as the leader is staying focused on student outcomes. So if the leader in this context of school systems, the school board, is saying, here's what

community said our children need to know and be able to do. This is the North Star and nothing is going to be of a higher priority than our children knowing and being able to do this. The strategies that you use, we're going to be slightly agnostic relative to those. We're constantly going to be evaluating the data for children to see based on whatever strategy you use was the result that we got closer to children knowing and being able to do these things that will set them up for a choice for life. And then you

define that very narrowly, we use smart goals, specific, attainable, results-focused and time-bound, is that you define very narrowly, here's exactly what needs to be true for children. And it's all of our children, across the spectrum, whatever the services they need, whatever language they speak, that there is an aspiration that we have for our children, and we've quantified that. This is exactly what needs to be true for children. Now, every single thing that the superintendent and the staff do, the main obsession of the

board is, is it moving this? Is it causing this to move in the direction that we intend? Are more children able to demonstrate the knowledge and skills that the community wants for its children? And as measured by this specific, whatever measure the board has set, whether it's the board wants to see children grow in metacognition and how are we measuring metacognition? Does the board community want to see children grow in literacy? Let's have a goal of all of you. Are we measuring

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

AJ Crabill: accept which children are growing in that area. When the board becomes obsessed with this focus on student outcomes, it listens to its community, it defines these smart goals about what students should know and be able to do, and says, are constantly going to be coming back to this. And if this is growing, superintendent, you and your team are doing your job. If this is not growing, doesn't matter what you try, it doesn't matter how much you like it, it doesn't matter how much other people like it. If it's not actually moving the needle for children, you're not doing your job. And at that moment, your job is, are we going to shift to change or pivot?

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

AJ Crabill: with this. When that type of behavior exists on the board, then the incentives to kind of chase the shiny thing of the day begin to diminish because in the actions of the board saying here's a specific metric of what children need to know and be able to do.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

AJ Crabill: what the senior administration wind up chasing is whatever the whim of the board is from a day-to-day basis. as that basalates all over the place all day every day, today it's the shiny thing, tomorrow it's that shiny thing. I heard this on Twitter page, I heard that on Twitter book or whatever. And so we're chasing all this stuff. The staff then wind up having to chase all this stuff too. the board settles in and says this is the thing and for the next five years we'll be dialing on this.

Rachael Maves: Yes, that's right.

Rachael Maves: Yes, that's right.

AJ Crabill: single month we're gonna ask for data that shows us are we moving on you won't be able to hide you won't be able to obfuscate you won't be able to pretend we'll be looking for receipts every single month are children receiving the blessing they deserve in this narrow area and when the board makes that how it shows up then it allows the entire organization to settle down like okay all this other stuff

Rachael Maves: That's right. Yes.

AJ Crabill: isn't going to get us any praise or accolades from the board. The only time the board is going to be happy is if they see movement on this thing. that means we've got to in into this thing. And when boards debate that way, it just frees people up from the rat race of chasing the next shiny thing and instead allows people to dial in and get focused on how do we actually improve outcomes for students in the domains that the board identified in its goals. And so this is a solved equation. This is absolutely doable. We've seen numerous districts across the country choose to behave this way.

Rachael Maves: Yes. Yeah.

AJ Crabill: to become intentionally focused on improving student outcomes. And the results that come from that, the results that certainly we saw in the South of New York City and so many of the other places where folks are doing this work across the country.

Rachael Maves: So I'm curious, AJ, as you've supported a number of different systems now that have taken on this approach, like listening to you and when I read your book, the first thought that I had is if I put on my former soup lens, and I'm guessing, so push back if this isn't accurate, but I would assume that leaders would have a little bit of trepidation around can we trust that

a group that typically doesn't end up being educators understands and knows like what the like what is the most important thing to focus on and then similarly a question if you're a board member and you don't have a strong background in education to hear some of what you're talking about I wonder do they feel like the same trepidation of am I qualified to be able to make this judgment what are the best practices

AJ Crabill: Mm-hmm.

AJ Crabill: Yeah. Yeah. This is such a cool...

Rachael Maves: Who's, what do you mean third grade? Why is third grade important? You know what I mean? Like, so I'd love to just get your thoughts and experience.

AJ Crabill: Yeah. No, this is something important insight. And the thing that you're pointing at is the thing that I wish everybody in America would hear. So I'm so grateful for you asking this question is because often what people think certainly what you know, I was led to believe and what

I've heard so many other people repeat, is if you're going to build a school board, that means you have to have expertise in education, or you have to have been a superintendent or a principal or a teacher, or you have to be an attorney or be an accountant, have one of these professional expertise. You have to bring some type of professional profession to the table. And if you're not, then you're not really qualified to build a school board.

This is profoundly flawed. And so the good news is all those things are false because what they miss is what the actual job of the board is. The job of the board is not to be management one layer up. So they're like a super layer of management that we will manage the managers. This is how people often think. This is a profoundly flawed way of the give outs governance. That's just not the function of governance. The function of governance is

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Rachael Maves: That's right.

Rachael Maves: That's right.

AJ Crabill: is completely different. It's not management one layer up. The true function of governance is community one layer down. The true function of the board is one layer below the community. It is not to think of it as one layer above management. It sounds like semantics, but when you shift this to being more viewed, it starts to click into place.

Rachael Maves: Mmm. I love that. Yes.

That's right. That's right. No, it's not.

AJ Crabill: So really my job is to represent the vision of values in the community. It's not to be an education expert, it's not to be a finance expert, it's not to be a legal expert. My job is to listen for the vision of values in the community.

Rachael Maves: That's right.

AJ Crabill: and be responsive to that and figure out what does it take for me to be representative of the vision and values of the community to the organization. That doesn't require any of the expertise that we described. The only expertise that's actually required in that moment is a willingness and a capacity to go out and listen for the vision and values of the community and then to work with your colleagues to write it down and make the vision plain. We refer to that as goal setting. And so then the board has hired, conveniently, an education expert, if they did the job well,

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Rachael Maves: you

AJ Crabill: They've got an education expert on tap that they can then collaborate with. Okay, we've heard this is the vision and values of our community. Superintendent, now we're going to collaborate with you to identify what are the goals that we're going to adopt for the next five years. So the board owns the goals. The superintendent doesn't own the goals. The superintendent is not the community's representative. The board is. The job of the board is to represent the vision and values of the community. The job of the superintendent is to implement.

Rachael Maves: That's right.

Rachael Maves: That's right.

Rachael Maves: That's right. Yeah.

AJ Crabill: the vision of values. And so the board's sitting there as the community's representatives, community one layer down. The job of the board then is to say, what is the vision of values? Superintendent, if we're going to codify this into a set of goals, help us think through what that might look like. And so there's this collaborative process at the end of which the board winds up with a set of goals. They're informed from two key areas.

listening to the vision of our community and listening to the educational needs of students as represented by the superintendent and the confluence of that is where the goals come from. This is also important because in the way we do it with our coaching, all that listening to the board does gets condensed down to a one to five page summary document of all the listening. What are the themes that we heard most frequently? That way the board always has a receipt. So somebody in the community says, hey, why did you these goals? Well, here's what we heard.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Rachael Maves: That's right.

Rachael Maves: Mmm.

That's right. Yeah.

Yep. Yeah, that's right. Yes. Yeah.

AJ Crabill: music.

We didn't just pull these out of thin air. didn't go on social media and take a poll. It actually went out in the streets. We left the board meeting, we went out to the community, and we listened to folks. And based on what we heard, hear the themes, and then we married that with insights from our superintendent. And we encouraged the superintendent to do the same thing, show up with a one to five page summary document that talks about what are the needs of children, what are the highest needs, highest leverage needs of children. And then now the board has that as a document. So here's the other document.

Rachael Maves: That's right.

Rachael Maves: Yes.

Rachael Maves: Yes.

AJ Crabill: we looked at, we talked about what are the needs of our children right now.

and data. And then the commons of those, you know, the summary document about what the vision values of our community are, the summary document about what the real educational needs of our children are. And then we worked those together in collaboration with our superintendent. And that's how we came up with our five-year goals. In that context, you don't have to be an education expert to serve on the board. You just have to be willing to listen to the vision values of the community, to work with your team, your superintendent, your board, to write the vision down and make it plain, and then make that the North Star.

Rachael Maves: Yes, yes, that's right.

Rachael Maves: Mm.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, well and talk about such a foundational requirement of trust, right? Like trust that the school board is doing their role of being that listener representative community, the trust that the school board has to have in the administration to know deeply then how to translate what they're hearing alongside of educational best practice and what their data is saying that they can move the needle then for kids. I mean that's a that's a lot of trust and foundational building that has to happen to get to that spot.

AJ Crabill: There is certainly a certain amount of trust there, but we generally argue for trust but verify a worldview is that I wouldn't want the community to trust that the board did listening. I don't want the board to have receipts and say, look, here's a summary of the listening that we did. You don't need to believe that we did listening. Here's the evidence. Yeah, absolutely. And so similarly, I...

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that anchor document that everyone can come back to. That's right. Yeah.

AJ Crabill: I want there to be a trusting relationship between the board and superintendent. I also expect the superintendent to show up with receipts and say, actually here is the evidence of what we're doing to increase our focus organizationally on accomplishing the goals that you all have identified based on the community's vision. And that every single month, half of the board's time and its board meetings is then dialed in and focused on what progress, what evidence is there, what receipts are there to describe any progress made relative

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yes.

AJ Crabill: to the goals that represent the community's vision. That's this constant, constant, every single month without fail, half of the time. So, you know, if a board meets for three hours a month, great. Our question is, did you spend an hour and half of that really having a conversation with your superintendent about progress toward the goals? Oh, well, we met for five hours this month. Great. Did you spend two and a half hours, you know, actually have a conversation with your superintendent about...

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yes.

AJ Crabill: Are we making progress with goals and what's the evidence of that? That is the board says we're gonna spend half of our time on this Then it really causes the organization to dial in as opposed to if the board is every single month It's a different priority a different thing a different journey Then the superintendent is forced to kind of chase after all of that. You know Probably one of the most quoted stories in the book Is about the board that had this hour-long debate about the colors

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: That's right. Yeah.

Rachael Maves: That's right, yes.

Rachael Maves: Yes. Yes.

AJ Crabill: Yeah, and...

And the sad part of the story isn't just that the board meeting was a squandered to people's time, that it didn't actually focus on student outcomes. The sad part of the story is that in the following weeks, the local paper got involved and they put out an opinion piece. But the opinion piece was about student outcomes, it was about the color of buses. And the local union got involved and they put out a questionnaire to the members. But the questionnaire was about student outcomes, it was about the color of the buses. And then following the board meeting, the superintendent puts together an hour long presentation. But that presentation is about student outcomes, about the color of buses.

At the end of all, the board doesn't even take any action to do anything. We just keep on doing what we've always been doing. But critical time, somewhere in that school system, somewhere in that school system, little AJ was struggling. In a third grade classroom somewhere in that school system, during that two week period, little AJ was struggling. And what he really needed was his teacher to be able to reach him and support him in a more powerful way. But during that two weeks, the teacher was struggling. His teacher wanted to make a difference, to carry all the caring in the world and end working hard, but the teacher needed some support.

Rachael Maves: Yes.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

AJ Crabill: The teacher was looking to the principal to provide that support. But within that two weeks, the principal was in a place of struggle. They wanted to be a better instructional leader, but they were struggling in being able to provide the quality and quantity of support that their teachers need. The principal was looking to the superintendent to provide some of that support, but the superintendent wasn't available. The superintendent wasn't available to provide support to the principal.

Rachael Maves: three.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

AJ Crabill: because they're busy focusing on the color of school buses. And this phenomenon is happening every day in school systems all across America. It is that we get so dialed into things that are necessary, but not essential to the improvement of student output. Like we have to have buses, we have to serve lunches, we gotta have books, we gotta have desks. Like all of these other things are necessary, but if all we spend our time focused on is all of these adult inputs.

Rachael Maves: Yes.

AJ Crabill: then we stray away from making sure that we're focused on student outcomes. And that has a trickle down effect that winds up impacting our principals, it winds up impacting our teachers, ultimately winds up impacting our students. And so this isn't important. It's not just a kind of a logistic thing or an academic thing. How leaders spend their time informs how others who subscribe to their leadership spend their time.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

AJ Crabill: And so boards get less focused on student outcomes and more focused on adult inputs, so does the entire organization. And as the board gets more focused on student outcomes and less focused on adult inputs, so too does the entire organization.

Rachael Maves: That's right.

Rachael Maves: Yes, yeah, I love that. Okay, this is our last question for our time together AJ. What question in education are we not asking that we should be?

AJ Crabill: How do we dramatically raise the salaries of teachers? The reality is we can do that without.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, okay.

AJ Crabill: adding any more money to the system if we were willing to reprioritize, if we were willing to run school systems in a much leaner fashion and instead say, you know what, we want to make sure that our most effective third grade teachers are never incentivized to leave the classroom. What would it take to make sure that all of our most effective third grade teachers are making six figures? So that if they want to go be an assistant principal, they can be. They'll just take a pay cut. And like, if that's what's on their heart, they'll take the pay cut, they'll go become a principal.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

AJ Crabill: But if what's on their heart is to be a teacher, we've incentivized that. And so I don't think we are rigorously, I think we pretend that there's not enough money in the system. But in a lot of school systems, know, across California and such, know, people are spending so much money per pupil that if we actually ran the math, we could afford to significantly increase compensation for teachers. I don't think money solves everything, but I do think money signals values.

Rachael Maves: Yes.

AJ Crabill: and that we aren't signaling the value of instruction as powerful as we can be, think is a real missing.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, yes, yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, I love that. Well, thank you, AJ, for our time together today. It was just great to connect with you and hear the passion and excitement that you have and for such a, I would say, a critical piece that is often misaligned. I appreciate the work that you're doing.

AJ Crabill: Thank you so much, and I can't wait to join you all for the conference in February. I'm super psyched up and looking forward to it.

Rachael Maves: Yes, yeah and that's a perfect segue to the outro. A friendly reminder everyone that Parsec Education is hosting AJ for an exclusive two-day workshop ahead of our annual summit in February of 2026. There are still a few tickets left so if you and your board members are ready for a hands-on small group experience really touching on the key things that AJ and I talked about today don't miss this opportunity. Join us February 2nd and 3rd in Fresno, California.

and start your journey towards transforming your school system as AJ guides attendees and identifying high impact areas for immediate improvement. Secure your tickets now by emailing hello at 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.