Innovating Education: An Interview with James H. Shelton III - Page 6

Written by John Kim

One of the questions that the districts ask is how rigorous does the causality have to be?

For me, validating it against student achievement is what is important. We all know how to do basic statistics to figure out whether it’s  correlated, inferred, all that good stuff. Until we exhaust every option, I won’t accept that we can’t develop tools and resources that allow us to figure this out. So people just need to get moving on this—that’s all.

The other concern that we’ve had around this is that there’s a luxury goods mentality towards professional development. For some districts, professional development is the first thing that goes when there is budgetary pressure. We’ve been trying to promote the notion that it should not be a seesaw or roller coaster of resource allocation. But I think linking professional development to student achievement, the crucial thing you added to the legislation, will actually provide the framework to not give it up, to not take it off the table.

That’s great.

More broadly, what do you want to see achieved or changed in this office during your tenure?

This office has a really broad mandate. I would define our objectives in two categories. One is that we want to invest in the creation of breakthrough models that are going to change outcomes for students, teachers, and productivity. And we’ll do that through all the different venues that we have: the Innovation Fund, a push on the charter front to get more innovation in that space, teacher quality and teacher recruitment grants, and even a look at our arts and financial literacy programs for opportunities to push the envelope and really craft solutions that drive a different level of performance. The second major objective is to make systemic changes to foster innovation in education. We want to lead—along with our partners at IES (Institute of Education Sciences) and the rest of our department and through partnerships with folks on the outside—the transformation of that ecosystem so that you wind up, in a short period of time, with a systemic approach to innovation in the education sector.

“But the real innovation work that has to happen is figuring out how we actually increase our productivity to the point where people get better outcomes with fewer resources than we spend today.”You are broadly defining success as creating an environment in which innovation can happen.

Yes, nationally.

Focusing more on you, you have a very interesting and unique background. You bring to your role at the Department of Education a  background in business and management, a pretty distinct perspective. At DMC, our three areas of focus are student achievement,  operational efficiency, and financial savings, and we’re specifically interested in the intersection of those three - the sweet spot as we like to call it. I think your background and perspective really resonate with our membership.

I feel really fortunate that a lot of things I’ve done come together nicely to support the work I’m doing now. A lot of what I am working on now is about best practices, new processes, tradeoffs, and making difficult decisions in changing environments. Between my work doing both non-profit and for-profit investing, doing consulting, even as far back as when I was doing computer systems development work… Computer systems development!

That I did not know about you.

That’s how I started off. I started off as a computer systems guy, and then went off to business and ed school. I find that I use all of it. It all really helps with problem-solving. I feel very fortunate for the set of experiences I have had. I feel very honored to be here. On one of my first few days on the job, I was here on the seventh floor; someone had just finished talking to me about Idaho and Montana, and I look out and see the Capitol from my office. I realize that the future of all the kids in the United States and its territories are in my purview; they are my responsibility. My job has gone from trying to have influence on this entity that’s supposed to serve all these folks to being responsible for the
entity. That’s a weighty responsibility. I feel really honored to be in this role. I am confident and hopeful that I will be able to deliver on it, but I
am ever-conscious of the fact that there have been many, many committed, smart, courageous people before me who have tried and not done well in improving outcomes for our kids.

Thank you, Jim. We are excited to have you in this role.

john j-h kim is ceo of the district management council.