Rachael Maves: Hello everyone. You are listening to the Rachael Maves podcast and I'm Rachael Maves, your host. Today we are talking to Bill Hite. Bill is the president and CEO of KnowledgeWorks, an educational nonprofit dedicated to making education meaningful through personalized Competency Based learning. Previously, he had served as superintendent of the school district of Philadelphia, where he led Innovative School models and Community focused redesign. Under his leadership, the district expanded, success, uccessful schools and launched in District turnarounds.

Bill was recognized as the 2020 superintendent of the Year by the national school Foundation Association. Bill, thank you for joining me today.

Bill Hite: It is a pleasure, Rachael, thank you for having me so on the podcast and part of what we value at Parsec is elevating stories and really understanding kind of the why behind things, and I'd love for you just to kick us off with why did you choose a career? Education. Yeah, I mean, I often think about that and somehow I believe the career chose me and the reason I say that was because I had no intentions of going into education. In fact, when I came out of college, was working a few other jobs and had a one of my former College professors call, he reached out to me. Coaching. And so then I would go to work my full-time job and then after the job I would go to the high school to coach, and that as a as like a part-time hobby, job, slash job, right.

And so then I started enjoying like the part-time more than the fulltime and thought like wait, so what do you all do the rest of the day? And it and like how can I be engaged with these young people more regularly than I am currently? And so then I started. Teaching. And one thing led to another and became a coach of three Sports in high school football. Because I played football in college first, softball and wrestling, which I'd never wrestled before but I really enjoyed it, and so I coached all three seasons and then I started substitute teaching and then became a reading teacher at the middle school level and then at the high school level, a marketing education.

Teacher and then an administrator, a principal and then a district administrator, and then from there you just it just kept. It just kept evolving. But it was the sense of the sense that I was contributing something more in working with the young people than what I was doing at my job at the time, and it was the thing that I really enjoyed. I enjoyed seeing their growth. I enjoyed seeing their energy. I enjoyed seeing the young people's enjoyment and some of that changed when I became a principal and administrator.

It's like: don't enjoy yourself so much during the time. You should be doing other things and other school related work. But I just really enjoyed being around young people and it presented for me just new opportunities. To be more engaged in my community, more engaged civically, more engaged with the growth and development of young minds and of young in character. And the young people I don't know for whatever reason looked up to me as a mentor and as an advisor and as a coach and so I just had the opportunity to lean into that and when I was young I really enjoyed that. And then at and that ran counter to when I was in college and one of my one of my past fail classes was teaching drivers it to International students and.

The that for me, but I had a real desire to teach anybody anything, right it's. So then, when I got into coaching, that was very that was a very different feel and it felt worthwhile and it felt like I was making a difference for the young people. Some were from my communities, others were not. It allow owed me to interact with young people that I had not grown up with. These were very different communities, in some cases a lot more affluent than some of the young people that I knew growing up and that were direct peers of mine, and so it just gave me insight into how I could be helpful in the development of, like, a young citizen, a young man, a young character, and helping those individuals to think about, like a cont, a real contribution that they were making to their community and to their families and into their environments.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, so, out of curiosity, Bill, were you coaching high school students? As my assumption?

Bill Hite: Yes, so I'm.

Rachael Maves: I'm always interested talking with other Educators because I was a former High School teacher too and it's the age that I just love and everybody I found kind of finds their Niche. You know it's either like early Elementary or middle school or high school. So I'd love to like just hear from you, as you were coaching and then eventually taught High School, like what is it about that age that really hit you, that prompted you to want to pour in a different way?

Bill Hite: Yeah, I mean, I think, a level of so when I so this goes back to several things, I mean, and I grew up in a time when it was important and you got advice from family members and family stards to be seen, not heard, and to not ask any questions, and I mean all of the things that run counter to how the brain develops in young people. And so then, when I was interacting with these young people and they were, they had a maturity and they inquisitive and they were genuine and they really just and they were funny and it was just a real difference from how I had experienced my time in high school growing up, and I just thought, man, this is fantastic, like the and you, and it carried with it a whole different perspective. Of how educational environments needed to become a lot more responsive to, like the young people we were trying to serve. And I had a part of the marketing education class, as when I was a substitute, one of those classes was a fashion merchandising class and they were in now I was just out of college, right, and all it's like 26 females in the class but were young, they would get and they were like genius and seniors and so you had like that. And then I remember like in with my friends, like going like out, and then seeing like those students and my friends were like well, wait a second, like can we stay here? I was like no, we cannot stay here, let's grow right.

So like, but you all know them. You can introduce us. No, I'm not introducing you to elu one reling right so, but it was quite the difference and I often compare and contrast that with my work as a middle school administrator. And, like many people say, you know, it takes a special individual to do Middle School. My problem with middle school was that I started in high school first and so then going to middle school was very different, and so dealing with the Adolescent behavior and some would say the pubescent behaviors that Middle School young people display,. That just became an annoyance for me.

It's like, but like, why did you hit? Why did you hit him? Oh, I didn't hit him. Well, no, I just saw you hit him. Well, no, I didn't hit him, all right. So then, well, a high school child may say: oh, my bad, you know, I'm sorry that happened, and they was just on up to it.

The Middle School child would just: did not it until you give up, right. So it was such a difference in a contrast, but I really enjoyed. Someone asked me when I was in Philadelphia and they said: like you know, if you had, if you could retire and do anything, what would you do? And I was like be become a high school principal again, and that's how much I enjoyed the young people with whom I Associated and still associate. Many of them are grown up now and they're professionals, some are Educators, some are politicians, some are business owners. Their judges, their law, I mean.

So they and they keep in touch. And in fact, I was walking through the airport in Philadelphia and I was boarding and I had a mask on and it was cold, I had my like a cat with a hoodie on top, yeah, and the young lady that was taking the boarding passes, she said, Dr hyp, you were my high school principal in Richmond, Virginia, and I'm just like, oh, for goodness sakes, so you've just it's. You know, you take. There's a level of Pride associated with seeing young people grow up to be successful and to think that you had a very small part and their growth and development, whatever that may be, is really inspiring.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, there's something about education where I mean it is that value add for the rest of your life, isn't it that it?

Bill Hite: Yeah, I mean you to be able to see your kids, that what they go on to and the great things that they're doing, and those reconnections, like those relationships, never go away. It's just, it's pretty powerful. Indeed it is.

Rachael Maves: So I'm interested, Bill, if you don't mind talking about this. I'm always fascinated by career Educators that then move into the for-profit and nonprofit space, like because I'm experiencing that now at Parsec. Having been in public service almost the majority of my career and now being in this place at Parsec, it's been a like a huge shift for me and you're the CEO of KnowledgeWorks, which is an amazing organization. I'd love for you just to share a little bit about kind of the focus that your company does and then how you made that jump too, if you wenter mine, yeah, I mean.

Bill Hite: So we actually focused on. Creating learner centered environments, and we work and we partner with systems and States to create those learner centered environments that are responsive to what the learner needs, how the learner may need it and in the appropriate amounts of support that are necessary. And we do that primarily through personalized and Competency Based learning and that really, for many individuals, becomes a mindset shift in terms of thinking about Mastery and skills versus, like the thing that our system is designed around, which is time, but really thinking about learning and the evidence of learning through Mastery or a Mastery based approach, where young people are demonstrating their ability to do something and through that Mastery then they can advance. And we do that with. We have been in about 23 different states working with thousands of young people and Educators to create the conditions or quality, personalized and Competency Based learning to occur. And so it is everything from the work around policies and structures to the develop Vel M of and sustainment of leadership.

And thinking about leadership r large, not just leadership for the P for the purpose of being in a primary position, but leadership instead to carry forward and to sustain the work around personalizing Competency Based learning. Because what we've seen is when it a system or District or a school may be doing great and then the leadership changes, yeah, then all of those great things then leave or change with the leader, and to build a network of leaders around this work at every level: the teacher level, the teacher coach level, at the administrative level, at the district level, at the state level. Then you're able to sustain those efforts and not only sustain the efforts but to support other individuals and to encourage other individuals to do the things that are very similar. So that's one that's one aspect of their work and, I would submit, the primary aspect of their work. We also have an educational for foresight team that does. Forecasting and we're about to put out our seventh forecast educational forecast and that team has recently done new jobs for the new educator, jobs for the future and they wrote a paper around that.

And we have a policy and strategic partnership team, impact and Improvement team. And then we have started around this leadership point of having what we call a network of leaders and it's called lead for Learners and it is really about a national network of individuals who are interested in personalized and Competency Based learning and how to create, develop, sustain those types of.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, that's amazing. So what brought you to KnowledgeWorks? I'm just curious, like, what Drew you to that organization?

Bill Hite: Yeah, so I was familiar with KnowledgeWorks from some of the other work that KnowledgeWorks had done over the years, and KnowledgeWorks is an organization that has evolved over the past, and so they've done work with stra Partnerships, with strive together, and they've also done work with new tech Network, which is an association that I had when I was superintendent of Philadelphia or in Philadelphia, and we did some work with Carnegie to create new and different and Innovative schools and we used actually new tech as a vehicle to help us do that work. And then they had done some work around. Some data analy, data analysis early years and my early years in Broad, and so I was always familiar with the work that they had done and the work that they were doing through some of those other forms. But then the thing that Drew me to them was really the insightfulness of, like their forecast documents, of the probabilities, or predicting, using probabilities to predict things that could happen in the future, to get systems ready for those things. And those things were exciting to me because it actually was very responsive and it was calling out those things that I was frustrated with on a day-to-day basis but didn't quite know how to move them from, like the silo or sporadic approaches in which they were occurring to a more systemic approach. And so one of the one of the things that Drew me to KnowledgeWorks was the work that they are doing to trans form educational approaches through compet, through personalized and Competency Based learning.

That is a lot more responsive to what Learners need, how they need it and in what doses.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, that I honestly that's how I even know about KnowledgeWorks is I mean, it really is the reputation of being that student centered. How do we? Whenever we're planning and looking at and designing, the student is at the middle. It is understanding and knowing deeply where they're at, what they need and then how they can show exactly what you're saying: the competency and Mastery of what it is that they're learning it's.

Bill Hite: Yeah, I have a lot of respect for the work that you guys do and, Rachael, we do that work based on where systems are, so we also personalize our approach and so you could come in at a variety of different levels and those and, depending on the level, and you may be just exploring or you have explored and now you want to kind of carry out more things and so we could help you there, or you have it one or two schools, and now you want to expand that to a system we can help, depending on where systems are or Partners may be, and really focused in on all of those, in all of those areas, and so we don't come in with a prescrib. Set of processes or strategies that then we apply to everyone. We actually apply those things based on what the organizations or the partners may be.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, I, and that. I think that's critical. I mean, every LEA or local Education Agency or District or school or Charter is so different. That's I love that. I do want to hear from you a little bit at like: we're in such an interesting time in education and we have been right for gosh what. The last eight years.

We went through the pandemic and now we have all these, this churn that's happening in education right now. When you think about that, the state and where we've been, what keeps you up at night? What are the one or two things that are really Weighing on you?

Bill Hite: Yeah, I mean, I the. You know, I used to say this as a coach, then I said it as a teacher, then I thought about it as a principal and then I thought about it as a parent, because that I mean. Then there were different things and then I thought about him as a systems leader. And now, thinking about it from the P, from the perspective of a CEO of a nonprofit and a grandfather now with children who are School AED, who are now experiencing some of the same things that I experienced as a child, that some of my, many of my students experienc as a child, and so the thing that keeps me up is like we still have a system that's not working for a majority of the children who are utilizing that system, and that's evidence by a couple of things: engagement, you see enroll declining enrollments, you see postgraduation, re remediation needs, you see Workforce shortages now in terms of the like teachers and all other support staff, and but the thing that becomes so frustrating is and we're doing the same thing, and not only are we doing the same thing, we're advocating for the same thing. So it's just like you know, no, keep doing these things right. And it's like, well, these things didn't work for me, they didn't work for my students and they're not working for my grandchildren, and right.

And so there are. So I think we have seen like incremental things right, so that are sporadic. That may be. Episodic and what we, what I'd like to see more, and what I think about and these are the things that keep me up at night is: how do you create transformational change at a systems level, right, and what does it take to do that? How do we be move Beyond, like pockets of Excellence or the Coalition of the Willing, so that these inst instances are not just isolated moments, but they're, they're, it's a movement to National transformation.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, I, that's a. I think systems leadership and thought leadership is such a critical component that I see as missing often in the education sector and a great conversation to start to Res resurrect, because it, unless it happens in that system's way, then exactly what you said will continue: it'll just be these small little pockets that we see of changed and we actually won't ever overhaul the system that needs to be shifted. Yeah, so do as you think about that. Do you have one or two like practical ways that you would recommend moving forward that you're thinking about?

Bill Hite: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the ways is to shift to personalize, confidency based learning, which is that could actually change how and what we assess. Right, so that you suppose we were assessing for learning or Mastery versus like time, right so that? And what I mean by time is, you know, we classes of 45 or 90 minutes a day it is so many days in the year, it's so many years to graduation and this whole thing and then learning may or may not occur during that period of time, but then you know, you move through like a progression of things.

Rachael Maves: That exactly.

Bill Hite: So I do think you know the, this notion of like. How do we think about and you know, when I say this, a lot of people get confused around oh, he wants to eliminate, like, our ability to assess young people. It's like, no, that's not what I'm saying at all. I think assessments are critically important. However, I do think that they can be changed to allow a young person to demonstrate what they've learned, based on what states require, what districts may require, what communities may need in terms of their learning, and so that this notion of Shifting to personalized Competency Based learning could create the opportunity for us to think very differently about. Time and instead replace that with learning or Mastery base and then focus on like methods to assess individuals around, like the that approach versus like the a to0 I can you remember all of these things that we provided for you in this period of time?

Yep, that's right.

Rachael Maves: Well, and then the onus is so much on the teacher of pending where students are at and trying to differentiate that instruction within the classroom for those who have mastered it and they're ready to go deeper, to move on, and then those that are, you know, maybe kind of get it and are doing all right, and then those that really need that extra, additional support. And how do you address that within one classroom, in one setting, multiple time over time throughout the week? It's, it makes it challenging, it's all it. We're. We're not designed to be able to be successful in that space.

Bill Hite: No, I mean. And. You like. You know the in the business world, like and I noticed from now working in the like the School of Management at Yale with the Bro Center like those individuals are. They just want you to like try. I mean you use Innovative approaches that are evidence-based, but like if you're going to fail as quickly as you can and then I learn from that and move forward, right and.

But then failure in our educational system like denotes a whole different thing, right, so it denotes like real failure. And so then individuals will say, well then I'm not going to. Students and adults will say, well then, I'm not going to try like these new things, because I know that if we don't get this thing right, then I'm quote unquote failing when there's learning in like that whole process, right, and so making sure that we have ways or new ways to track progress, using performance-based assessments, maybe Mastery transcripts, to replace the traditional type of graving assessment approaches, I think is one way to think very differently about our work moving forward.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, for a final question, Bill and I always love this one, it's interesting to hear where people go with it. But what is one question in education that we are not asking right now that we really should? Be.

Bill Hite: Yeah, I mean, this kind of goes back to the first question. You asked, like how did you end up in education? And I said education chose me. I didn't. I didn't choose education. There was a variety of reasons I didn't think I could choose it, not withstanding my experience trying to teach drivers a to International students.

Right, so, but that. But I think you know one question. That we're not asking. That we should ask is like: how are we rethinking educator roles? Like so and I mean there're, you know, there it's. No, is there is no confusion about the fact that there is an educator shortage right now, like in a Workforce shortage.

Yeah, teachers, administrators, people are leaving the profession in greater numbers, fewer young people are pursuing education as a professional pathway, and those who are aren't staying long. And so what if we stop asking how we might attract and retain more teachers as we know them today, to the earlier point I was making, and instead ask what structures and roles might best support learning, given our aims and our hopes for young people? Right, so maybe people will be more interested if we weren't so focused on time, if we weren't so focused on assessments, and maybe to maybe the teacher shortages today of symptoms of shifting Paradigm for learning, both for students and adults. And so I do think that we need to engage in deep design work to discover better ways of organizing schools and therefore Staffing with new roles that are responsive to this emerging era in education. Right, and so you know, once again, if time is the driving factor and have never enough time to ask individual uals to do all of the things that actually have to be done within that period of time, then, like you know, people are saying, yeah, no, it feels too confining, too restrictive, I don't think I can inovate in there, I'm not allowed to take risk and to fail. I mean, and so what if we rethought those roles based on what we need?

And I mean and the emerging things that are happening today, like AI for instance, like so how do we think about, like individuals who were there to support, like the ecosystem around education, versus just what's happening with the teacher and the student? And so I just think rethinking the educator roles is something that we could begin to ask and just a you know, a Shameless plug here: the future educator roles. That was done by our educational foresight team is a great document to use as like a conversation starter for what type of roles we may think about in future.

Rachael Maves: I love that. I'm writing it down so that I can Circle back on that one later. So much for your time today.

Bill Hite: I really appreciated this conversation and, Rachael, it was a pleasure being with you. Thank you.

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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.