From Silos to Systems: Building Collaborative Cultures in Public Education -Barnett Berry

PODCAST Season 7 EPISODE 2

Barnett Berry

Author

The Future of Public Education 

Introduction of Guest BIO – 

Barnett Berry serves in variety of research and consultative roles to advance school redesign and the teaching profession, currently working with school districts, states, and philanthropies focus reinventing public education. Berry is Senior Research Fellow at the Learning Policy Institute as well as a senior advisor to several organizations: RedesignEd, 2Revolutions, and the Center for Reimagining Education at the University of Kansas. 

Barnett has been a high school teacher, social scientist, professor of education, and senior leader at state education agency. His work with the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, spurred his founding of the Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ) in 1999, a non-profit the led for 20 years to advance a bold brand of teacher leadership essential for an effective and equitable system of public education. In 2021, Berry was honored by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards with the James A. Kelly Award for Advancing Accomplished Teaching.  His latest book is The Future of Public Education: One District's Journey to Transform Schools and Systems (2026)

Interview

Agents of Change: Leaders/Innovators.

• 30,000 Ft. View – Why so we, as a society invest in education?
• What drew you to education as a practice?

·       1.     Why has school transformation been so difficult? What are the major obstacles?

·       2.     What did you learn from AUHSD and school and system transformation? 

·       3.     The book has a lot to say about the teaching profession. What are some key takeaways? 

·       4.     The book suggests that the district is far from perfect— and has to make major shifts in order to take the next leap forward. 

·       5.     What are you working on next? 

• What are the biggest challenges to you?
• What would you like decision makers to know?”

Podcast/ website/ book shoutouts

The Future of Public Education

Transcript

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Liza Holland [00:00:02]:
Welcome to Education Perspectives. I am your host, Liza Holland. This is a podcast that explores the role of education in our society from a variety of lenses. Education needs to evolve to meet the needs of today and the future. Solving such huge issues requires understanding. Join me as we begin to explore the many perspectives of education. Welcome back to Education Perspectives. We're so excited to have our first second-time guest, Barnett Berry, joining us today.

Liza Holland [00:00:35]:
He is here to talk about a new book, The Future of Public Education: One District's Journey to Transform Schools and Systems. Welcome, Barnett. So glad to have you back.

Barnett Berry [00:00:46]:
Oh, great to be back, Liza, and thrilled to engage in a conversation about this because everything that needs to be done to reinvent public education for every kid and what they deserve in the future is being done somewhere. Just the pieces of the puzzle have been so darn hard to kind of glue together.

Liza Holland [00:01:08]:
Hear, hear. Well, for consistency's sake, I'm going to kick you off with our 30,000-foot question again, because maybe some of this has changed in your perspective. Why do you think that we as a society should invest in education?

Barnett Berry [00:01:21]:
Oh my. I think some of our founding fathers got it right. I don't think you have a civil and just society without an educated society that not only knows how to master the fundamentals of dealing with the complex world in which we live in, but also how to navigate complex relationships in an increasingly rapidly changing world. So I think we need public education now even more than we did when the Jeffersons and even the Washingtons wrote about the importance of public education in our Founding Fathers' documented— documents.

Liza Holland [00:02:04]:
Yeah. Great answer. I agree with you wholeheartedly. So tell us a little bit, since we had you here last, what are some of the things that you were involved in outside of this book, which we will get to next?

Barnett Berry [00:02:16]:
Well, yes, and I think it has a lot to do with my very long career efforts of studying, advancing, and trying to lead the professionalization of teaching. So it has a lot to do with what I learned with a very deep dive in Anaheim starting back in 2022 when the Stuart Foundation funded a study for me and some colleagues of mine at UCLA at the time to look at some high school districts, secondary schools, which are well known for their traditions, bell schedules, and teachers teaching in siloed classrooms, how they were cultivating a brand of teacher leadership for more what might call whole child, whole adolescent systems of teaching, learning, and assessment. Well, we— I stumbled across Anaheim because of this study and learned a great deal about it. And I will tell you, I've never seen a district that has done more to find and cultivate a growing mass of innovative teachers who lead bold reforms from the classroom without leaving the classroom. But I also learned the limits to what those teachers can do in spreading their knowledge unless the district made a number of strategic moves, both with its post-secondary partners as well as its community partners. And this book kind of tells the journey of what the district got done, what it didn't get done, why, and how a system of leading teachers where every teacher leads in some way with students as copilots in the process is the path to finally professionalizing the profession that makes all other professions possible.

Liza Holland [00:04:05]:
You know, I'm so glad you bring this up, and I just so admire your work in this area because with the teacher crisis that we have going on across the country, we've got a lot of disillusioned teachers out there that are not empowered to do everything that they could potentially do. So I'd love for you to describe a little bit more about how this teacher empowerment works, maybe give Anaheim as an example. What kinds of things are you doing?

Barnett Berry [00:04:29]:
Okay, let me describe what Mike Matsuda, the superintendent who's also now become a good friend and colleague as we're working on a number of initiatives, him based in California and here I am back near my grandkids in Columbia, South Carolina. But I think the most important thing Mike did when he became superintendent in 2014 Because he was all about kids having purposeful learning and a relentless focus on test scores. While the academic foundations are essential, don't get me wrong, I'm not making a case against measurement and testing, but I am saying that Mike saw something bigger. And he shifted the focus and created a value architecture so that teachers had freedom. He unyoked them from test score, did away with the formative assessments that most teachers in most school systems are doing every 3, you know, 6 weeks or 4 weeks, whatever, and gave them room and space, release time, stipends, created a bunch of hybrid roles so teachers could both teach and lead, retain their pedagogical credibility with their teaching colleagues. And they went, had a remarkable run of over a decade, and graduation rates soared. Kids became more involved in civic engagement projects. Literally, they were— kids were creating ideas that the city of Anaheim funded.

Barnett Berry [00:05:51]:
And more kids were getting industry certification as they kind of tripled down on career pathways and getting kids to really focus on developing what they— some people call the soft skills, durable skills. They call them the 5 Cs. And they even got to a point, and they're still at it, of trying to measure and uplift the kids' mastery of those 5 Cs in the context of learning academic content. And letting the public know that your kid, these kids are developing these collaboration skills, they're getting these types of projects done, and it's having this type of impact on them as a learner, them as a successful later college student or someone who's engaged in a new career in cybersecurity, whatever. And they've been telling a big story. And I will tell you that probably the most powerful marker of their success is the recent bond referendum. They had like a 70% approval rating to make another big investment in capital improvements in that district.

Liza Holland [00:06:53]:
And for context, Anaheim is not a super wealthy district, right?

Barnett Berry [00:06:56]:
No, no, no. They have a few enclaves, the district, of some wealthy families on on one side of the city. But no, not at all. About 80% free and reduced lunch. And most of the kids that are not are kind of sequestered in a few schools on one side of the, of the district. Yeah.

Liza Holland [00:07:15]:
Yeah, that makes sense. But it sounds to me like they're using one of those powerful C's of communication to be able to actually let the community know what it is that we're doing. And schools don't typically do that very well.

Barnett Berry [00:07:26]:
You know, Mike himself did a— you'll love this, Liza. He's actually really good, just like you. Yeah, he does his own podcast. He had about 20,000 to 25,000 followers, mostly local.

Liza Holland [00:07:37]:
Fantastic.

Barnett Berry [00:07:38]:
But to get the word out, bringing teachers, kids, and so forth. Yeah. Into the mix.

Liza Holland [00:07:44]:
That's fantastic.

Barnett Berry [00:07:46]:
Yeah. So I learned a lot about— I learned a lot about how they cultivate teachers as innovators and even instigators.

Liza Holland [00:07:54]:
Yeah.

Barnett Berry [00:07:55]:
But I also learned of the systems they did not have in place. that were tamping down the impact that these avant-garde teachers could have with their colleagues who were still, too many, still siloed in their own classrooms.

Liza Holland [00:08:10]:
You know, that siloed is synonymous with education, right? And the ability for teachers to even have time. Actually, I've done a lot of interviews with teachers and their number one most precious resource is time. And I think that we really need to stop and think about that a little bit. And the fact that they can have time and collaborate across, it sounds like there were a bunch of things in Anaheim that, that were created to make that happen, and it needs to be intentional.

Barnett Berry [00:08:37]:
Right. They didn't go so far, but they're working on it now to do what— one of my favorite schools in the country, my favorite, one of my favorite high schools, it's been pretty well documented over the years, is Hillsdale High School in San Mateo County, right out, right up a stone's throw from SFO, San Francisco Airport. Uh, anyway, uh, in that high school of about 1,600 kids, all organized around Ted Sizer's Coalition of Essential Skills— Coalition of Essential Schools, excuse me— principles of years back. Small learning communities, interdisciplinary teams, high school teachers looping with kids in teams. And teachers, because they rethought— a made-up word here— the curriculum a bit, they gave up some stuff, gave up some programs. They're willing to do less so they can go more. Go deep with kids. Teachers have— high school teachers— anywhere from 3 to 10 hours a week of collaboration time, meaningful collaboration time led by them.

Liza Holland [00:09:38]:
Perfect.

Barnett Berry [00:09:39]:
It can be done because it is being done.

Liza Holland [00:09:43]:
So what did they do in Anaheim to kind of create the psychological safety for these teachers to be able to do this? Because I see that as a major hindrance, is the, the culture in which teachers are trying to to move right now is not always conducive to this good collaboration and innovation.

Barnett Berry [00:10:02]:
Taking the heat off of teachers for test score performance was one. 2, placing a premium on student voice. Early on in Mike's tenure, he launched something they call Soapbox Speeches. It's like a kid's version of TED Talks. Every kid has to research something they care about and make a public statement. They put a lot of resources into it to make it a big deal. And then I think the third thing he did— the district is just beginning to work on the kind of redesign that Hillsdale did some 20-plus years ago, much needed, by the way. But I think the most important thing Mike did after those two other— those two pieces was one, that he also created a number of roles.

Liza Holland [00:10:49]:
Mm-hmm.

Barnett Berry [00:10:50]:
for teachers to play where they both taught and led simultaneously. Going back to what I said a few minutes ago, so that those who are trying to spread pedagogical expertise had the pedagogical credibility with the colleagues with whom they're working. That was— I think those 3 pieces were just absolutely major. And then the next piece that I would add to is much more macro, In a sense, build the resource base, the shared data sort of mechanisms, as well as kind of the vehicle to continue to work on shared purpose for public education. It's not a one-and-done, Liza. If you ask me 3 things why really good ideas in education don't go very far, One is this lack of shared purpose and understanding for the public purpose of public education, particularly in the age of AI. It's becoming more— it's rapidly changing. The second was, we already talked about, schools operate in silos from each other, as do teachers.

Barnett Berry [00:12:28]:
And the third thing is reforms of the past have either been too top-down or too bottom-up, and we've never got the top-down, bottom-up pieces of the puzzle, the leveraging of it all right. And I, and I think even Anaheim wasn't quite on the mark with that latter one, and they weren't quite on the mark on the second one either. They desiloed a large number of teachers who got great stuff done that led to great outcomes for kids, but there's still too many teachers left behind, and that's what they need to work on next.

Liza Holland [00:13:02]:
Yeah, and that's the thing that I have to encourage everybody listening to remember is this is not a one-and-done process. There's no revolution that happens where all of a sudden it's just perfect. It's layered. It's a huge boat to turn. It is a huge, huge boat to turn. And every little tugboat that we can get out there rowing the boat in the right direction is going to help. And they need to iterate and they need to be able to fail at things and not have it be a catastrophe, but just, this was a step in learning. Right, and it happens at a systems level just as well as it happens at a student level.

Liza Holland [00:13:39]:
I'm so proud of what the progress that has been made in both of the districts that you are bringing forward. I'd love to talk a little bit more deeply. You, you mentioned teachers and students being copilots in learning. I think this is a huge piece of the puzzle that we need to lean into if we want to build lifelong learners. Because it's no longer sufficient to just go through and get your bachelor's degree and then be done. In this day and age, we need to constantly be learning, unlearning, and relearning. So tell me about what that looks like with the teachers and the students being copilots in learning. Can you kind of, and maybe give us an example of how that's working?

Barnett Berry [00:14:20]:
Well, first of all, in large measure, broad strokes, you see in many cases Teachers and kids co-creating new ways of teaching, learning, and assessment. You see, because Anaheim's a community school district and has some resources from the state to integrate student support systems in, like, mental health supports, you know, social-emotional supports, physical needs, you know, food pantries and so forth to take care of kids' basic needs. so they can focus on their academic opportunities and so forth. Anyway, so the other thing that was really important they've done in their community school work, they began to integrate instructional shifts in teaching and learning through that community school structure. And I think, and they're just beginning on this part of the journey, and this has a whole lot to do with Making sure that while you unyoke teachers from test scores, you're not lowering academic expectations, not at all. So they have done a lot of work to help kids and teachers together, and then kids with teachers together to begin to create new ways to demonstrate what they knew from what we call authentic tasks, performance tasks, portfolios. But then actually utilize the data and evidence from those portfolios to tell future employers, to tell college admission officers what kids know and can do. Now, they're still in the early stages of that work, but that has helped them begin to tell a different narrative that the success of a, of a school district is not just on the basis of a standardized test score administered once a year.

Liza Holland [00:16:16]:
Absolutely.

Barnett Berry [00:16:17]:
And they're using AI in very cool ways with a very powerful nonprofit, if you believe it, nonprofit tech partner, the eKadence Learning Foundation, that's helping them. It's the coolest tech company I've ever been exposed to.

Liza Holland [00:16:31]:
I'm honored.

Barnett Berry [00:16:31]:
That's for sure. Led by Tim Nguyen. He and his family had to flee Vietnam when it fell many, many decades ago. Tim's still a very young man. He was very young when his parents and his family came over from Saigon. And he started— he was a computer science major at UC Irvine and later with some colleagues created a piece of software that every credit union in America bought, literally or almost literally. And he sold his company. And Tim's one of those guys that, yes, he's made a lot of money, but he's not doesn't need to make any more.

Barnett Berry [00:17:15]:
And he's created this nonprofit foundation to measure and uplift the emotional and social side of learning as well as the academic side of learning. Because as a second language learner himself, I wish you— Tim's a wonderful story, it'd be a great interview. Um, he, um, as a second language learner himself, there were teachers who did not see him as a whole child. So he's got a technology with AI-enabled tools to help schools and teachers and kids and parents really know where kids are, what they care about. And they, and they even have an AI tutor, a real tutor that the kids of Anaheim co-developed with the software engineer. That tells you a lot about— so that has been a big help for the district to tell its story. And it's still, by the way, it's still very early stages, uh, of that development. But they've got— they've developed algorithms to assess and synthesize vast amounts of data of kids' mastery of critical thinking as they learn how to meet the English language arts standards or social studies standards, or how do they demonstrate collaboration skills in doing the same.

Barnett Berry [00:18:27]:
You know, that's where Anaheim has been pushing on the edge of really creating system-wide change. And it's still a story in the making, by the way.

Liza Holland [00:18:41]:
It's evolving. Absolutely.

Barnett Berry [00:18:42]:
It's evolving, but it gives— they give me hope.

Liza Holland [00:18:45]:
That's exciting. And it's also good to hear of a specific example of where AI has been embraced and is actually making a benefit. One of the things that I hear all the time is, my God, we've got all these skills, but how do we measure them? And it's a good question because it's not as easy as, you know, a Scantron test is. And so this type of technology could really help in our pathway to infusing that more into education. I'd like to talk just a little bit more again about— we've talked about how we are changing how you demonstrate learning. We've talked about different types of ways that kids can, you know, kind of make connections and learn some of these skills. What about voice and choice? Has that factored in in Anaheim?

Barnett Berry [00:19:34]:
Yeah. In fact, it's a little awkward sounding, but they created something called their— when they unhooked teachers from test scores, this Career Preparedness Framework System, CPSF. It's a mouthful even as an acronym. But anyway, there are 3 components to it: academic knowledge and its use, soft skills, the 5 Cs, and student voice. Those are the 3 pillars that anchor their curriculum efforts.

Liza Holland [00:20:02]:
So what does the student voice look like if you wanted to visualize that?

Barnett Berry [00:20:05]:
You know, well, it goes from kids being co-developers of the software. Yeah, it goes behind the AI tutor.

Liza Holland [00:20:12]:
That's an excellent example. Yes.

Barnett Berry [00:20:15]:
It goes to, you know, students voting members of the school board. It goes to every kid being expected, supported to give a TED Talk every year.

Liza Holland [00:20:26]:
Well, I think those are absolutely wonderful, and I didn't mean to push so hard. It's just that so many teachers that I talk to don't have a comfort level with this co-design and co-development type of a piece and giving students a choice. It's a scary sort of a thing, but it's also a really important sort of a thing. So I'm really glad to hear that it's one of the 3 pillars there.

Barnett Berry [00:20:48]:
But let me— I'll give you 3 more quick examples of teachers and students together, more richly described in the book and in this, and to some extent in like this recent CAPA article I just shared with you. 2 teachers in particular, then a third. First, Sabina Giacumas, a biology teacher a few years back struggling to engage kids in some part of the curriculum around nutrition and so forth, does what many biology teachers do, starts a— with her kids, a design of a garden outside her biology classroom. It's Southern California, so it's a little easier than Maybe in northern Minnesota in the winter. But that said, she does that. And before you know it, because of Mike's approach to leadership by walking around, engages Sabina, encourages her, supports her. And then between the two of them, but with her and students as the lead, they develop that small garden to a 2.5-acre working farm in the back of the school where now thousands of kids of, you know, of the district, not just the kids at Magnolia High School, have access to interdisciplinary learning through a working farm where the kids not only learn concepts in science but also marketing and entrepreneurship, and most importantly perhaps, serving their community wholesome vegetables in probably the most dense food desert in all of Orange County. So that's Sabina.

Barnett Berry [00:22:25]:
That's awesome.

Liza Holland [00:22:25]:
Yes, that is an excellent example.

Barnett Berry [00:22:28]:
And Sabina is the classic teacher, somewhat introverted, reluctant to call herself a leader, a teacher leader, but she is a bold one. Um, by the way, she's also said— when I asked her in an interview, and it's in the book, she said something, uh, asked a question about other teachers. She said at least 50% of the teachers in this district can do what I've done here. Under the right conditions. We can return to that later. The other teacher is Jason Kollar, a middle school teacher who's also a community school teacher lead. So he brought the instructional chops into the schools of South Junior High School's approach to community schooling. He had time to do that, but he also was teaching his kids social studies content.

Barnett Berry [00:23:11]:
I think he was doing a middle— maybe he was doing something on— was some world history lesson, and they were bored out of their mind. And he realized how much his kids were into gaming. And while he's a relatively young man, he has done his fair share of some of that. The last thing he liked was Minecraft education, but that was their favorite— or Minecraft.

Liza Holland [00:23:32]:
Yeah.

Barnett Berry [00:23:33]:
So next thing you know, the kids and him develop a Minecraft elective where they apply their social studies content to solving community problems. And within— listen, this gives me goosebumps to tell this. It's fully pinned in chapter 3 here, but it gives me goosebumps. Within like 18 months, this young man and kids started moving this across the school, through the district. Then he ends up in 18 months leading the charge, developing a partnership with Fullerton College and an esports gaming pathway for the district. And now he teach— he teaches a class at South. He teaches a class at a high school. I can't remember the name of the high school.

Barnett Berry [00:24:17]:
And he teaches a class at Fullerton College. Those are his 3 classes he teaches now. One junior high, one senior high, and one community college. And then the other time he's leading innovation.

Liza Holland [00:24:27]:
Oh, what a great career pathway too.

Barnett Berry [00:24:30]:
Yeah.

Liza Holland [00:24:30]:
Love that. Yes.

Barnett Berry [00:24:31]:
Yeah. Yes.

Liza Holland [00:24:33]:
Yeah. Oh, those are 2 amazing examples. Thank you.

Barnett Berry [00:24:36]:
Yeah. Yeah, those are, those are 2 of my favorite. Yeah.

Liza Holland [00:24:39]:
So you were talking about how so many great things have happened and they've moved forward, but it's not finished yet and the story's not finished. Tell me a little bit about the areas that they weren't really able to make the movement forward that they ought to and what those might be.

Barnett Berry [00:24:55]:
Okay, I'm gonna do this quickly and forgive me for reeling off. Hopefully I can remember in somewhat order that Michael Fullan sketched out a framework for reinventing education that was kind of the conclude— in his concluding chapter of his 2025 book, the 6th edition, I believe, of The New Meaning of Educational Change. My co-author and partner here, Michael Fullan, one of the most well-known educational change maestros, scholar activists in the world on these matters anyway. So Michael had these 8 factors that you have to put together over time, and the book chronicles how the district did so and how they didn't get so far on these 8. But the 8 are shared purpose and meaning is one, belonging is 2, time, the four-letter word for most teachers, right, of education reform, autonomy, good leaders, Together, teachers and administrators together. I love this one, teachers and students together. Community linkages, think Anaheim Collaborative Community Schooling. And then AI.

Barnett Berry [00:26:07]:
Great evidence on the first 7. AI could be, if it's used properly and humans remain in the loop, it can be an accelerator of it all. Anyway.

Liza Holland [00:26:16]:
Absolutely.

Barnett Berry [00:26:17]:
So as we got through working through our analysis and back and forth amongst the 3 of us and putting this book together, I changed the term or the factor of autonomy to a connected autonomy. Insufficient numbers of teachers and kids were responsible for each other's success.

Liza Holland [00:26:35]:
That's a good adaptation. Absolutely.

Barnett Berry [00:26:38]:
And I will say this, and there's some great work all over the country once again trying to break up the one teacher, one classroom model of teaching and learning. Liza, if we There's no one silver bullet. But if we don't, we don't crack that nut, we're not going to save public education. We're going to burn teachers out. We're going to burn parents out. They're going to be running off to all kinds of opportunities. And the kids furthest from opportunity would be even further left behind. We've got to break up the one teacher, one classroom model of teaching and learning.

Barnett Berry [00:27:11]:
The district is just beginning, I think, to make some headway there, but they've got to They've got to help teachers who are so used to, understandably so, teaching their content in their classrooms.

Liza Holland [00:27:22]:
Well, we're pushing them out of their comfort zone too. And if we don't give them enough time to be in that growth zone either and to collaborate, it's going to meet with a ton of resistance. So that makes a lot of sense.

Barnett Berry [00:27:32]:
There's a very strong union in California that you, you know, in Kentucky where you live, a couple of jurisdictions are fairly strong, but most of the South where I've lived, 98% of my life, teacher unions are not very strong, if at all. California has strong ones. The unions were not against— the union leadership was not against this redesign, but they were concerned that the district would not give their teaching college sufficient support and room to fail. Even in a district that has given teachers a ton of leeway, But I think a misstep, we did it too much teacher by teacher by teacher or small groups of teachers. We need to be much more strategic about how we go about developing the system of leading teachers. One of my favorite sort of thoughts that's actually getting ready to develop into a major initiative with one or two organizations that I'm consulting to right now, but is the system of leading teachers. A place like Anaheim places a huge value on knowing every kid by name and story. And by the way, their AI tutor that eKadence created with the kids, it has all this information about kids.

Barnett Berry [00:28:51]:
It's all internal, all private safeguards, right? Privacy, all that. But they have all this information about what kids care about, what they're good at. And so you've got to— you struggle with the math concept, you love baseball, the next example that comes out of the tutor to help push your thinking is a baseball example, not a ballet example.

Liza Holland [00:29:10]:
Right? Yes. And that relevance and context to give kids— I mean, it's answering that age-old question, what do I need to know this for?

Barnett Berry [00:29:18]:
Oh yeah. In fact, they have an app. They've developed it. They have an app for that now that kids develop with you.

Liza Holland [00:29:24]:
That's so great.

Barnett Berry [00:29:25]:
But my point is, though, what they have done— going back to teachers— so they place this huge premium on knowing every kid, all 26,000 of them. by name and story. They have 1,150 teachers. Why don't we know every one of those 1,150 teachers by name and story?

Liza Holland [00:29:44]:
Ah, yes indeed.

Barnett Berry [00:29:46]:
And why not the same kind of way we go about trying to, with AI, prosocial, by the way, AI-enabled tools, that prosocial means humans are in the loop, they make the final decision, all that. But if we, if we were able to create A way for every teacher has a chance to not only know themselves more deeply, but their colleagues know each other. And then we have a way to help distribute expertise. Because if we want to go to a system that's going— of teaching and learning and assessment that gets kids ready for the age of AI, then no teacher— and whole child, whole adolescent education systems— no teacher can know it all. So the mark of a school district that makes headway on this is going to totally reinvent their HR and PD offices and apparatus and become brokers of teaching pedagogical expertise and help not just— their job becomes less to train teachers for this, that, or the other. Their main job is to go find expertise and help it move from place to place.

Liza Holland [00:30:55]:
I think that's delightful. And I talk to so many teachers who are like, I wish I could just do PD that's going to help me. It's not just the standard. It's like we standardize everything in education. We're trying to standardize all the PD as well. And wouldn't it be economically efficient to actually have the teachers within your district teach one another?

Barnett Berry [00:31:16]:
Absolutely. And with virtual communities of practice, which we know how to do— my old organization, no longer in place, but CTQ used to do this. With the right types of communities of practice, with teaching teams, with a genAI teaching assistant by their side, not only are going to be able to create a different learning environment, a rich learning environment for kids, but for themselves. But if you don't redesign the school day and teachers are only doing this at the margins of their personal and professional life, then it will not go to scale.

Liza Holland [00:31:55]:
Yes.

Barnett Berry [00:31:55]:
That's why I'm going back to Hillsdale High School, by the way, an initiative that was led by teachers 25 years ago to turn this school into this kind of a place of belonging where every kid just loves to be there. But like I said before, they redesigned the schedule so that And the kids graduate meeting all the A through G requirements for the university system in California, which are very rigid, by the way, which many people are trying to change right now. And many of the universities are trying to hold on to it. But that said, they do all that and teachers still have 3 to 10 hours a week of collaboration time, depending on the nature of the week and, and so forth. There's some fluidity there.

Liza Holland [00:32:39]:
They will get so much further faster in creating that time. They absolutely will. And I'm really hopeful that maybe AI is going to be able to take away some of the drudgery of teaching. You know, this whole, you've got to write down a full lesson plan for the week and all this kind of garbage. That can be done in seconds with AI. And why not use that time to collaborate, to think about new ways to be able to, you know, infuse other types of learning into your lesson planning? All that kind of a thing.

Barnett Berry [00:33:10]:
Creating more space. You know, here's what we, we don't want to wholesale give a bot our lesson plans. Kids know it and teachers don't know, have a sufficient frame for what they need to facilitate learning if they totally wholesale it out to artificial intelligence. However, it can help teachers assimilate massive amounts of evidence about what kids know and do, what they've accomplished, at how to customize lessons for different groups of kids who need different things at different times. And if you take that and put it into a structure like Hillsdale has created, with teachers are— high school teachers are looping with a team and the same kids for at least 2 years. And if you are creating the kind of space where teachers who know those kids well have access to the kind of data and evidence that, like the eCadence Learning Foundation, is producing for Anaheim, its teachers, its students, and its parents. When you have that, we have an opportunity to actually do something that the vast American people want in public education, including Democrats and Republicans. They disagree on many things, but when it comes to education, there's strong consensus.

Barnett Berry [00:34:30]:
And I encourage you to look at some of the polling data done by Frank Luntz. What everyone wants, the right wing and the left wing, they want kids to graduate with real-world skills. They want them to be in schools where they're engaged, and they want kids to care about schools and loving to be in school.

Liza Holland [00:34:49]:
Yeah.

Barnett Berry [00:34:50]:
And that's what they want. They want kids to be able to be successful when they leave high school, whether it's career, college, and civic life. We have the potential to create that system because pieces of that system can be found almost anywhere. What we need are new structures, policies, incentives, and space for what you were talking about earlier, for educators in particular with kids and parents to redesign schools while they're still maintaining the hard work of teaching kids every day?

Liza Holland [00:35:29]:
Academic rigor. Yeah, it needs to stay. That needs to be an anchor, but it's not enough anymore.

Barnett Berry [00:35:33]:
But AI is changing the nature of what academic rigor is now. Academic rigor is now— is about how you use the knowledge.

Liza Holland [00:35:43]:
It's all about the application and the process because the content is in your pocket, right?

Barnett Berry [00:35:48]:
That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Liza Holland [00:35:51]:
So, well, and I will clarify, I do not think anybody should turn over everything to AI. I do believe that it is an amazing time-saving tool. And if you are able to give it the essence of your knowledge, it can save you a ton of typing time. How about that?

Barnett Berry [00:36:10]:
Absolutely. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Liza Holland [00:36:14]:
I tell you. You know, you have kind of answered my last question, which is about what do you like, what would you like for decision makers to know? I think we don't get enough time really focused on the teachers. Can you give us maybe 2 or 3 takeaways that you that decision makers ought to be thinking about as far as teachers are concerned?

Barnett Berry [00:36:34]:
Yeah, there is so much underutilized talent amongst our teachers. I would say get serious about knowing every teacher in your system by name and story, and I would say rethink your induction, evaluation, and compensation systems to place a premium on the spread of pedagogical expertise and its use and create that system with teachers and students by their side leading the way. That would— and I will say it sounds pie in the sky, but I've seen elements of this already, Liza. In many places. I've seen Anaheim do a lot of this, and it gave me great hope, and it was a great honor to work with Mike and Michael in putting together this story that's now being used for some networks now to help them do more than just school change, school improvement, school reform, but the reinvention of public education itself. If we don't reinvent it, Well, we're going to lose it. And that would be another nail in the coffin to our civil society democracy and hopes for a better world for everybody.

Liza Holland [00:37:58]:
Well, let's absolutely build that world together. And do check out Barnett's book, The Future of Public Education: One District's Journey to Transform Schools and Systems. I am looking very much forward to reading it in detail myself. And Barnett, thank you so much for joining me again here on Education Perspectives. You have so much good thing, you know, so many good things and examples and ideas to offer.

Barnett Berry [00:38:22]:
Well, I've just been blessed in my life to work primarily with so many teachers around the globe, including some amazing teachers of late in Fayette and your neck of the woods, Lexington, Kentucky, that have taught me so much, Liza. I just have been— have had the unique opportunity to kind of help elevate and amplify what they know and can do and care about.

Liza Holland [00:38:45]:
I love it. Thank you again. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Education Perspectives. Feel free to share your thoughts on our Facebook page. Let us know which education perspectives you would like to hear or share. Please subscribe and share with your friends.