Tips and Tricks for Great Survey Design … and a Survey for You We have all taken TONS of surveys in our lifetime. We get surveys when we make an online purchase, when we speak with a customer service agent, when we want to get a free gift card, and even when we go to… Continue reading Tips and Tricks for Great Survey Design … and a Survey for You
Start the School Year By Hearing from Stakeholders Growing up in New Jersey, the day after Labor Day always marked the start of a new school year … and the day I finally got to wear the new outfit I had carefully planned and crack open my new, pristine notebooks. If you couldn’t tell, I… Continue reading Start the School Year By Hearing from Stakeholders
The “How” of Data Tracking: Conditional Formatting I’ve written a lot lately (here and here) about WHY tracking your school or organization’s data is so critical right now. As schools begin to reopen, I’ve heard from educators of so many different configurations for what school is going to look like: some totally virtual, some in person, some… Continue reading The “How” of Data Tracking: Conditional Formatting
Don’t Be Like Myers-Briggs: Measure Your Impact When I started my doctoral program at Vanderbilt, I certainly didn’t expect to get into a … heated discussion, shall we say? … with the professor of my first course. We were discussing characteristics of effective leaders, and our professor mentioned that the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, one of… Continue reading Don’t Be Like Myers-Briggs: Measure Your Impact
Now is the time. Fear. Uncertainty. Frustration. Isolation. In recent conversations with districts across the country and in analyses of surveys for clients, these words have come up a lot. Families, educators, and community members are feeling a whole lot of unpleasant things as we grapple with how – or if – we can simultaneously… Continue reading Now is the time.
Making the Most of Microsoft Excel I love a good spreadsheet. I mean, I really get excited about it. You may have read on the About page how my business evolved from the development of a really fancy spreadsheet. True story. Now I get to help others learn to use Excel to improve their work and watch… Continue reading Making the Most of Microsoft Excel
Why is it so hard to get a survey translated? I admit: I didn’t think it was that hard to get a survey translated. Over the past few weeks, I learned just how wrong I was — and ate a big piece of humble pie in the process. With colleagues, I’m working on a landscape… Continue reading Why is it so hard to get a survey translated?
Lifting Up All Families’ Voices Around School Reopening It’s easy to feel discouraged and upset when you turn on the news these days. So much is happening to progress the fight for racial equity and justice in this country that even a global pandemic seems to have taken the backseat. The truth is that without… Continue reading Lifting Up All Families’ Voices Around School Reopening
We have to do better. I still remember how scared I was during the 2015 riots/uprising in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray. I understood the pain and outrage in the black community over the death of a young, black man in police custody, but looking back, I didn’t really get the depth of the collective… Continue reading We have to do better.
It’s funny how things work out sometimes. Tamara Hamai and I have been sowing the seeds for our new program, Evidence for Engagement, for months. Our partnership happened so organically – a meeting of the minds for two evaluators who have experience with and a passion for organizations that serve youth and families. We’d been toying… Continue reading Evidence for Engagement