Rachael Maves: Hi, I'm Rachael Maves and you're listening to the getting real with leaders in education, where we strip away the layers and get to the raw, unfiltered stories behind the leaders shaping the future of Education. My guest today is Christine Pitts, founder and principal of Pitts Consulting and the founder of the education policy hot list. Founded in 2023, Pitts Consulting collaborated with National Education groups and local Advocates to provide strategic IC research and policy leadership, created a national policy agenda and engagement strategy for new education technology and established National research Partnerships on urgent education topics. The education policy hit hot list, of which I am a huge fan, was founded in 2020, which is a weekly publication that summarizes the top news on us education policy, including digestible takeaways from the latest education research, actionable insights about current education ation policy developments and a rundown of the current education events to know about prior to Pitts Consulting and the education policy hotlist, Christine served as director of impact and Communications for the center on Reinventing public education, research and evaluation, manager for Portland Public Schools and policy adviser for NWEA. Christine, thank you for joining me today on the Getting Naked with educational leaders podcast.

Christine Pitts: Thank you, Rachael. Thanks for having me.

Rachael Maves: So I'm really excited for our conversation today. We're just keeping it informal and wanting to hear from leaders like yourself a little bit about why you chose education I mean of all the fields. What is it that Drew you to a career and education and that story behind it?

Christine Pitts: Well, I love this question always. I think I've known since I was a kid that I wanted to be a teacher. My grandmother was a third grade teacher and we would run errands on the weekends together and I just remember being all over the city, whether it was at the library or the grocery store, and people would come up to us and stop us and they would say: do you recognize me, Miss? Tibio and I remember at the time I would think my grandma is famous, that's right, so excited about it, but you know, as people would stop her, it just shed light on how she really did change their lives. And then also you know this idea that the way the interaction she had with her students really helped shape our community in our small town. So in college, when I was at a Crossroads, kind of making a decision, was I going to go down this path?

At the time I was in dance school and I was like: am I going to be a professional dancer and get my MFA and all the things, or am I going to choose more pragmatic? Path, teacher seemed like the more pragmatic path. That's what I did and know. What's interesting, though, is I was thinking about this is my grandma would always say to me: don't do it. She always not to be a teacher, which I thought was fascinating, and I absolutely went against her advice. But I think she knew that Society was getting complex, complicated, the role of the profession was changing, and I think she kind of knew that it would be hard for me to do all the things that I wanted to do.

I will say, you know, as I entered the profession, and then also just the seeds that she had planted in our relationship, I think I was able to find these little opportunities to lean into, like what is it about my classroom experience that then led to my work as a researcher, my work as a policy adviser and then now kind of as like a parent advocate with my own kids. So I totally get why she was saying it, and I think she knew that it was an opportunity for me to build, you know, something bigger.

Rachael Maves: I love that and I wrote down what you had said, that she impacted lives and even as a child you saw that, the impact that she had on the people, totally, which is why I think we go into education and I know you've had a little bit of kind of your own tumultuous Journey recently, with a lot that's going on in education. Tell us a little bit about what keeps you up at night. I mean, we've just gone through this massive pandemic. The impacts that we're feeling in education are still reverberating today and I think we probably haven't even seen the full extent of it yet. And as you think about even your own kids, your community, what you're seeing as a researcher, what are those things that keep you up at night?

Christine Pitts: Yeah, so this year I'm kind of exploring this idea of setting new tables, Rachael. Because what I'm finding, both in my day job, you know, as a education researcher and policy adviser, and then also in my own Community, is that when we actually need a new idea, we're having the same stale conversations, right. And when we need urgency, when we need people to be screaming at the top of their lungs, we're we're like hearing silence right, we're not hearing anything at all, and that's what keeps me up at night, and it's not about any one topic or area of work in particular. It's kind of this glossing over effect that's happening. So, unfortunately, what we're seeing is kind of like the same cast of characters having the same conversations as we were Generations ago, and yet the issues that our children are facing are vastly different. You know, you have this cultural context that has evolved enormously and I feel like is evolving more rapidly than ever, whether it's climate change or AI or social media, different kind of expectations on children today and our youth, expectations from both peers and adults in their lives.

And that isn't even including, like I didn't mention, the systemic racial inequities and barriers that happen in schools. So I just I get confused in times when we're having policy conversations, whether it's at the state level or kind of at the national thought leadership level, why we think, you know, our stale Solutions are going to solve these new problems, and they might not seem like new problems right away, but I think that's because we take the problem out of the context. If we look at these challenges within the context of society and all the things that our children are fa facing, I think we'll see that we definitely need new tables with a brand new set of cast of characters. Right, like, just, you know, using students as an example, instead of inviting one student to a committee, could we invite five, could we invite seven? You know what would it look like if we actually committed to democratizing the conversation?

Rachael Maves: Yeah, well, and you and I have talked about that a little bit, about student voice, like how do we capture, Elevate, encourage student voice beyond that Liker scale, that one to five? Do you agree? Strongly disagree, but I want to. I want to come back to two things that you talked about and ask you to elaborate on a little bit. But I love this image of we need to set new tables, and you mentioned students. Who else do you feel like is vitally important to those conversations that isn't sitting at that table right now?

Christine Pitts: Yeah, it's, either they're they're not at that table or at they're at the table and they're being. Quiet. I would think you know if I think about you know, the most recent thing that happened to me is the teacher strike in Portland, which was our first strike in the history of our city, and so we really had no nothing to like even base the reaction on in the time frame of the strike occurring after the pandemic. What we need, needed at the table, was Business. Leaders whose future Workforce was being impacted by students being out of school. I mean, I think part of this is really owning responsibility for the future of our children and their success.

So at the table, you know, in addition to students, I'm hoping the businesses will start to engage in this commitment to the success of our communities. And I think a lot of this gets watered down because, you know, as someone who does someth thought leadership work, we talk at the national level but these Solutions really need to happen locally, like that's right, the ideas can be shared, but the way that they're adapted needs to be local. So, businesses I think our community organizations were brought in during the pandemic in really new ways because schools, either physically or because of safety barriers, like couldn't reach students. Right, they couldn't go to every single house, knock on the door and make sure that children and families were okay, but Community Partners could and we saw them step in a way that was just brilliant and led to Big gains, whether it was attendance at school or just support, like paying bills, accessing online learning. And what I'm hoping is that we will continue to invite those Community Partners in and not just invite them in similar to what I was saying about students, but also ensure that they have just as much Authority and power within the conversation as our systems do, and so one of the things that we've been talking about in some of my work with students and research has documented that when you have students involved in a. Conversation.

The outcome is much more impactful if you also have Community Partners at the table, and I thought that finding was fascinating and makes a lot of sense, like makes a lot of sense when you have Collective groups together. You're kind of allowing everyone more access into the information just the Baseline level of understanding, and then people can actually engage in the conversation and it's transformative. It's not a checkbox anymore, it's not. We did the engagement piece. It's really that where people get their voices are actually heard.

Rachael Maves: Well, it, I would assume it, also builds a different level of understanding, right, because it's so easy when you're not in schools daytoday to have thoughts, opinions, ideas of what's supposed to happen, but all of a sudden you start having conversations and engaging and it creates this space of. This is what this is really like. And now, how can we come alongside and be a support? What do you tell me a little bit I about? Like I hear community members, I hear students. What about parents?

I mean, you mentioned even at the very beginning, yeah, like you're a parent yourself within the system. Tell me a little bit about how you see them coming to this table in space.

Christine Pitts: Yeah, I think it's critical to have parents in this conversation and in any conversation about schools and also any other related Social Services. I've lately been trying to disentangle what we do in schools from what other social sectors can do. I think the thing about parents that is fascinating right now is it so easy for us to use parents as this monolith iic voice, like parents think, fill in the blank. And one thing is that should be a red flag. During a strike, it was definitely the case in that on social media commentaries in some of the news organizations not all of them we were hearing from the same group of parents, and anytime you notice that a narrative doesn't include diverse perspectives, that should be a red flag. You should be like: wait, I might not be hearing the whole story.

So the one thing I will flag like, as I say, invite parents to the table is make sure that the parents are inclusive of the diverse needs across a community. So do you have parents from obviously, all racial ethnic subgroups, our multilingual parents, our immigrant and Refugee communities, because everyone's going to be tackling these issues in different ways and they're going to have different needs, just like our students do. So, yeah, I definitely think parents are critical and also, I think, being really mindful of the power dynamics when parents are in the room again, just making sure that things are accessible, that there is, first and foremost, a level of trust established. So this comes to mind a lot in a lot of the big policy conversations that we're having in education right now: things like changing funding formulas for an entire state, district budgeting, maybe closing schools due to declining enrollment or different needs. I think you can't kick off those conversations with parents and you've never met them before.

Rachael Maves: [speaker uncertain] That's right.

Christine Pitts: Yeah, you have to ensure that you've been doing this hard work and adding these layers of interactions with families so that, when you're ready to have that hard conversation, that the trust has already been tested right. And that takes time, which I think a lot of people in our field have been calling for this but it's just time for us to recommit to those more nuanced relationships within a community and not expecting things to change overnight. I say this all the time and I mean it and that anytime I feel like I want to do something right away, it's kind of my gut is like: oh, you should probably slow down, take a step back Runway, right, yeah, take a step back. I think we do this in education a lot. Where it's like we want to be, have the sense of urgency, it feels like the most reasonable response and it probably is important. But maybe we should also think about what it would look like to lengthen the runway on planning and implementing whatever the initiative is.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, I love what you just said, because it leads to fatigue of the system. Right, we get in this habit of jumping into one thing, expecting huge results immediately. It doesn't get what we want and so then we jump into the next thing and we just perpetuate the cycle. Somebody I was talking to recently said: isn't that the definition of insanity? And I thought: yes, it is, but yet we still perpetuate it within our systems and I appreciate that, especially around. It's the same thing with how we engage our stakeholders.

If we continue to do these Mass massive initiatives but then don't see any results, maybe it's not the mass, just one more massive initiative that needs to change. Maybe it's taking that step back to do exactly what you said. Do we build the runway? What does it look like to build our relational Capital so that we're not just taking withdraws out of that bank but we are putting in before we even ever ask to make a withdrawal of something? I mean?

Christine Pitts: I think a great example of this right now is students mental health needs. I feel like we're treating as a system, we're trying to put the 1990s solution in place, and this is a very different world.

Rachael Maves: [speaker uncertain] Yeah, like we can't. We can't post for a school psychologist position or a counselor or therapist position and think that's going to be the solution. Solve it.

Christine Pitts: Yeah, it's really, and I have two middle schoolers now, so this is kind of like the world I am living in, which is what is? You know, what impact does Social media and screens have on these kids? You know what are the nuances between that type of Engagement, sports, academic learning, like I was saying earlier, like the layers of Burden that we've put on our children, whether it's the pandemic and our lack of response or the advancements in. Technology. The solutions really need to meet the moment, and I think we need to listen to kids.

Rachael Maves: That's right, like when our youth start talking and they're saying these things, even if they're just small little hints, you know you have to be quiet and still to hear them, and it's time for us to kind of create space for that, I think, as a community. Yeah, well, that's the perfect segue into the next question around. What are two ways that you feel like we could move forward?

Christine Pitts: Yeah, I think you know our eyes were really open during the pandemic with the big infusion of federal relief funds. You know it felt. Like so much pressure to make the right decisions with the funds. At the time I was working in a school district just for one year, but I remember thinking, oh, wow, like this is a huge opportunity to make investments that we've always wanted to make. And I don't mean like fixing parking lots, I mean like really upgrading football fields. That wasn't the type of.

Thing. Yeah, it just felt like a moment and but you knew like that feeling was kind of like bubbling up, but you also saw the crisis that was happening, like in your community, in your schools, in people's homes, and so I think it was a little bit. You know, we were shortsighted in many ways and we're going. It was a short amount of time. It yeah, and of it, yeah, I mean all the things we know about good policy and implementation and accountability. We literally built in none of that with.

That's number one is like there's no back stop here, it was just like a freefor all. So I think and I bring this up because I think now, because that happened, we have an opportunity to really redefine accountability as the asset that it should be. So you know, in Oregon we are kind of in our, I would say, like, Mississippi low. Like Mississippi, has become this gold standard for how to make improvements. Student Oregon recently was one of the only state who had shown math scores still declining since the pandemic, and so we have a moment right now to really say, okay, we are going to reset our expectations, we're going to believe deeply in what our children can do and can achieve, and we're going to make commitments with our Resources, with our time, with our follow through and our measures, and we are going to tell this story because that's all accountability really is like.

Rachael Maves: [speaker uncertain] That's right.

Christine Pitts: This people have blown these accountability systems way bigger than they need to be. This is an opportunity to tell our very complex, beautiful stories that have pivots. They're not always going to be, you know, a perfect, linear journey, and they shouldn't be, because we have really complicated communities and I think setting new tables is part of that. It's saying, you know, maybe it's not the same old measures that we should be using, or maybe it's the same measures but not used in the same ways. Maybe it's the same measures and other types of measures. But I think if we really start to see accountability as an asset and not as this stick or this way of coming down on systems or people, it's going to be very different and I think what that looks like is really building our Villages.

You know, one thing that kept coming up during the pandemic and then our response to the pandemic was this question of: are the children okay, are how are the. Doing and it's like we keep answering that question at a very high level, but I don't think we've actually done the full unpacking, yes, of how they're doing.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, I agree completely and I have to laugh a little bit because when I was trying to anticipate what answers you might have to this question, accountability was not one that I saw coming, but I it resonates so deeply with me because I fully agree and I we talk about this a lot at Parsec, but even before I joined parek, how do we get better at developing an understanding our data story, because right now, the only story we ever discuss is the test at the end of the year? Yeah, and it's not a full story, but it, I still believe, is vitally important. I, how will we know that we as a state are continuing to decline in math unless we have that type of an assessment? And what are the other data points that are contributing to that? What is our leading data that's going to help us understand what's working and what's not? And are we being honest with one another?

Christine Pitts: I mean, I go back to my parent teacher conferences every year. I mean it just gets me, it gets me and I know it's the same for almost every parent out there. I get the report card. It's like okay, but kind of confusing it, I may or may not have my map scores or my phonic screener scores with it, so I'm emailing for more information. Then I go to the conference and I feel like it's kind of like when you go to your physical with your doctor and they ask you all those questions like you know, how many chocolates do you eat a day, or whatever, like I'm not really tell the truth. I'm gonna like: how often do you exercise every day, ma'am, every day?

So that's kind of how I feel like these parent teacher conferences are. It's like it's this feeling like: okay, is the teacher G to be upset if I'm not reading to my kid every night? And the teacher's probably feeling something like: is the parent going to be upset if I tell them their kid or their child is struggling in MA reading? You know, it's like we're masking all the time and so we don't actually know how our kids are doing. Like I was just saying, we're not actually creating a village where we feel like we're here for one another. We're still all very alone grappling with these issues, and so I wonder if you know, part of the solution is actually being okay with vulnerability yes, in our shoes, whether it's as a parent, as a teacher, as a researcher, as an advocate, as a policy maker like, can we be vulnerable and say, shoot, I didn't know that?

Or I wonder, if I would have known that, what would I have done? Or let me be very honest and like: let you know, your child is still about six months behind grade level, and here's some things that I'm going to work on the classroom here, some things you could do at home, and let's make a goal together for what they could do by the end of the year. I think we just need to have like a lot more honest conversations, Rachael, you know, yeah, and, I think, a lot of support of how do we do that?

Rachael Maves: Well, you know, because that's our Gap right and it's too bad, because we're when we've got to the place in society where we need help figuring out how we communicate with one another and interact as human beings. Maybe that says a little bit more about just our Norm. But that's a that's a topic for another day, Christine. So I want to just end with this final question, and this question is actually not meant to be for a discussion. We wanted to create something that just leaves our listener with a thought-provoking huh, that when they go it sticks with them, and so I want to pose to you: what question in education are we not asking that we should?

Christine Pitts: Yeah, I don't know, I thought a lot about this one, Rachael. I was trying to make it thought-provoking and I don't know if I did, but I really. You know, it's the same question I've already asked, which is: how are our children doing? But we need to answer it differently, it. You know? I feel even weird asking that because.

I read dozens of articles about how our children are doing every week and I still don't think we actually have a full picture, because we're glossing over the really important, Rich details of What's Happen, happing in their lives. Yeah, and I think if we started there and then built out this kind of holistic picture of what's Happening, we might be able to address them more in a way that's transformative, you know, in a way that has a lasting. Impact. But as a former Elementary School teacher, since my kids are in middle school now, my framing has been shifting a little bit and one of the things I keep asking myself every day is: like, are my kids invisible at school? And it's something that I really think about when I go to the back to school night or the school carnival and I see families and I see children in school buildings. You know, I wonder: like, is that kiddo being seen?

Every day?

Rachael Maves: [speaker uncertain] That's right, is my kid being like this?

Christine Pitts: It seems very basic, but these are the things that I think if we actually started solving for more of the nuanced issues that, we would probably be able to see a lot more clearly what we need to do.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, the importance of being seen I it just can't be understated. Thank you, Christine. My guest today has been Christine Pitts, founder and principal of Pitts Consulting. Founder of the education policy hot list. If you have not subscribed, please go subscribe. Thank you, Christine, for joining me today on the getting real with leaders in education podcast.

Christine Pitts: Thank.

---

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.