The Future of Education in Washington State with Superintendent Chris Reykdal

Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal has been at the helm of education in this state for seven of the most challenging years in education in recent memory. But that hasn't dissuaded him from seeking a third term this November. In this episode, Reykdal steers us through the complex terrain of educational policy, public opinion and a changing world that will demand innovation and adaptation from educators as we move into the future.

It's a candid look at the public school system's resilience and adaptability in the face of a world irrevocably changed by the pandemic, where student populations are declining, educators often find themselves under attack from vocal detractors in their communities and a mental health crisis plagues classrooms across the country. Reykdal finds hope in the transformative potential of dual-language programs, equity, inclusivity and the possibility of reimagining the ways our high schools can best provide the education all students need for future success. 

Throughout history, Reykdal says, public school systems have come under attack from various quarters. This, too, shall pass, he believes and the job of educators is to keep their eye on the prize - learning according to the needs of each child. While he never contends the job is or will be an easy one, Reykdal frames the future of education in Washington State with a refreshing optimism as he vies to continue leading the state's 295 public school districts and their combined total of more than a million students.

Find out more about Superintendent Chris Reykdal online at:

• Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction
• And his official campaign site, Elect Chris Reykdal.
  
  
  

"Outliers in Education" is a project of CEE, The Center for Educational Effectiveness. Find out more at effectiveness.org.

Produced by Jamie Howell at Howell at the Moon Productions.

Transcript

Ad VO: 0:05

Outliers in Education is brought to you by CEE, the Center for Educational Effectiveness. Better data, better decisions, better schools. To find out more, visit effectivenessorg. I think we really need to change how we look at what we do in schools. Everything that we do as educators, it just comes back to people. I love it, even when it's hard, especially when it's hard.

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 0:32

Ultimately, I mean, this is about what's best for kids.

Eric Price: 0:38

Howdy everybody. I'm Eric Price, joined as always by Mr Eric Bolz from the Center for Educational Effectiveness, welcoming you back for another episode of Outliers in Education Bolzie. Given the lightning quick changes in technology, the ever-shifting student demographics and harsh political winds gusting at us from all directions, charting a course for the future of education seems about as easy as wait for it. Let's say, piloting a sandworm through a sandstorm. Hmm, is that a Dune reference EP. Exactly my 80s brother. Most of us couldn't even climb on top of that bad boy, much less figure out how to direct it. He's been charting the course for education in Washington State for seven years now and he has some big ideas about how the next seven years might look, as he is looking for his third term as state superintendent Straight out of OSPI.

Eric Price: 1:28

It's Washington State Superintendent of Public Chris Reykdal. Superintendent Reykdal, we're so grateful that you've joined us here today. Well, thanks for having me. It's good to see you all. You know being a superintendent of the entire state of Washington. It seems like a massive job to me, and I have known the last couple of superintendents and have worked with them both. There's a lot of stuff that goes on that just isn't a lot of fun. What is it that kind of keeps you going and keeps you motivated?

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 1:55

in the role. Well, I think it's the unique nature of it in our constitution. To be honest with you, I don't lose sight ever that the real magic of teaching and learning happens in classrooms and, candidly, on buses and playgrounds and cafeterias and libraries and on the athletic field. So what's really cool about this role is we build a team who's increasingly got experience in schools, who say, gosh, let's make sure that we're really supporting school districts that's our relationship and empowering principals and teachers and all kinds of educators. Let's trust that they know what they're doing.

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 2:26

So then our role is really how do we translate their needs and interests to the legislature? And of course, those are 147 separately elected people plus the governor. They have their own vision, and so part of what we do is kind of meet them in the middle and figure out shared solutions that are bipartisan and across all the entities, and then we're translating back to our school districts. Hey, you had a passion and an interest and a direction. We use data. We promoted that the legislature took a little twist on some things. Here's where they landed, and so then we're responsible for then you know, the accountability of the system. So we really don't lose sight at all on our purpose, which is what keeps us motivated, and when we do it well, we're resourcing and empowering our school districts, and students are having success.

Erich Bolz: 3:08

You're no stranger to campaigns, obviously no stranger to close campaigns, and we happen to also know one of the candidates in this upcoming race, reed Saris, pretty well. It seems to us that you have a lot of similarity in terms of your platforms and, really, your hopes and dreams for kids across the state of Washington. What, from your perspective, distinguishes you from Reed Saris' platform in this upcoming campaign?

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 3:32

Well, I never talk about other people, they got to talk about themselves. I talk about me and kind of my vision. So really it's all about experience having been a classroom teacher on a school board and you know higher education is a big part of my background 14 years and then serving in the legislature again. This office has got to translate school district needs and policymaker needs, and so the breadth of experience is really really critical there. And then, from a vision standpoint, you know it is about closing gaps.

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 3:57

The entire purpose of public ed and its origin was really allowing the sons and daughters of the wealthy and the sons and daughters of those who struggle mightily to sit shoulder to shoulder and learn fractions together and learn to read together and learn to get along and see each other's perspectives differently. So for me it is about building a system that's inclusive. That's what we've always done. We've made great progress on that, both as a nation, a state and actually even through the pandemic, which is very exciting. And so how do you keep closing those gaps? How do you innovate through tough times and complicated times and there's always financial distress how do you close those gaps with innovation? And that's what I focus on each day. That's what I'll keep focusing on.

Eric Price: 4:35

Superintendent Reykdal, if somebody was going to say, hey, could you tell me what's the purpose of education, K-12 education? How would you nutshell that?

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 4:44

I'd say it's one of the most fundamental democratic institutions in America. Its entire purpose is to try to look past race and gender and income inequality and to sit people down from age five, really all the way to age 18. Now we've got some early learning. We do some post-secondary transition and give them all an equal opportunity to learn, and it's an opportunity right. We try to learn and it's an opportunity right. We try to invest disproportionately in those who need more, but it's a relationship of us as a democratic body in this republic that invests in the system. Everyone gets that opportunity and then the responsibility is shared with parents and guardians and the student learner themselves. So the purpose is opportunity, the mission is equity and the responsibility is that we all have our hands in it together.

Erich Bolz: 5:30

One of the things that I was struck by when we talked with candidate Saris was he really seems to have a handle on this huge, pervasive issue that I think schools face around mental health and mental health concerns with children. How can we address that over the next four or five years, given schools really weren't fundamentally resourced for that, teachers weren't trained to do that kind of work and this isn't a state of Washington issue. This is a huge national, I would say endemic yeah there's no question.

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 5:56

I met with a delegation from South Korea, incidentally, maybe two months ago, and they spent the entire half hour, through translators, talking about the student behavior and discipline challenges and mental health challenges of students in South Korea and how their parents are responding to that and the pressure on educators there Wow, so it really is a global issue. Our approach has been to really focus on regional mental health networks. We've invested ESSER money where I had a little discretion. Thankfully, the legislature is starting to backfill that as the federal money goes away, and our whole concept here is that it doesn't matter whether you live in a school district of 100 kids or a school district of 45,000 students. We should be able to have multi-tiered supports for you Everyone getting some social emotional learning support, really building those building blocks of not just mental health but respecting each other and taking responsibility for ourselves, and then, as students find themselves, some of them in greater need, that the supports ratchet up. So these regional mental health networks are really, really powerful because it allows districts that are really small to still access something in their region. Maybe they send personnel to the district or maybe it's a referral system, maybe it's a referral system.

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 7:06

So it's been a huge, huge thing for us and we just finished a healthy youth survey where over 200,000 students filled it out and it's the best numbers we've seen in five years. So their sense of anxiety and isolation is coming down. Their sense of hope is going up. More of them report that they have an adult that they trust and they can connect with at the school for support. Suicide ideation is on its way down and thankfully in our state, through a lot of hard work, our actual suicide rate of school-aged children, which is essentially age 10 to 20, so they've got a kind of a broad metric on that that's below pre-pandemic levels. It was averaging a little over 70 students a year. It's 56 students, I believe, each of the last two years. So one is too many, but the interventions really matter. We've got a good game plan for these mental health networks and skill building for kids along the way.

Eric Price: 7:54

We just got to make sure we keep investing in that work and we talked a little bit about that at the beginning of the show. But some of our changing demographics and dual language has been one of those things that you have been a big promoter for why devote so much energy to dual language? What's your thinking there?

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 8:11

Because it's more than language. One of the things we know from the research, of course, is A you're globally more empowered when you have multiple languages. So just the success of young people coming out of Washington seeing the world as their opportunity and employment and business startup and creation is amazing. But it maps the brain differently when young, young people obviously preferably at birth are learning two languages In our case we try to start a bunch of them at five years old or earlier when they're learning two languages, it literally maps their brain differently, they process information differently and I think the research around the world says you know those students obviously get a big language advantage, but by late elementary, early middle school, they're also excelling in the world in mathematics and science and other content areas.

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 8:55

So it's about respecting culture, empowering our kids and really giving them all the tools to think critically. And the more language command you have, the better. I'm super proud of this. We're in 150 schools now. We're in 50 school districts. 50,000 children are now learning two languages from the start, from kindergarten on. So this is where we've been an innovator in the country and in the world and I'm excited to keep going.

Eric Price: 9:17

And I'm just curious I don't know the statistics around the states how are we in comparison to language and that dual acquisition?

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 9:27

We appear to be near the top. We've learned a lot from New Mexico, who's had this for a very long time. I think the contrast people should draw is lots of states invest money in sort of EL programs English language learning so they see students as deficit speakers, mostly Spanish speakers who come to the United States and then they're catching them up in English. We're talking about something very different here. We have some of that we're talking about, you know, 10 English speakers, 10 Spanish speakers sharing a classroom the 20 of them together in, say, a kindergarten classroom and they're learning each other's languages through content. So Monday and Wednesday might be Spanish day, and it's math and science, and Tuesday, thursday, might be English day, and that's social studies and health, and so it's a really different idea that sees language as strength instead of deficit.

Eric Price: 10:14

Yeah, I think that's awesome. Have you seen some pushback on that at all?

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 10:17

Very, very little. In fact, the distribution of this is really pretty amazing across the state. What we hear more is how fast can we happen? Can we go quicker?

Erich Bolz: 10:27

on this here. When you look at the profile of a dual language graduate, what's the ultimate goal for these children?

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 10:34

Well, I think it's the same goal for everyone, which is do we give them the best opportunity to pursue their passion, so do they have those core skills if they want to go to a four-year university, a two-year college, a technical program, apprenticeship, military service? I think the advantage of dual language is that's probably a student who has seen learning differently through multiple lenses because they're managing language differently, and they're probably more likely a student that's ready to sort of consider the world as their future opportunity instead of just the United States. It really opens up their mind. So I think there's some big advantages. We have the seal of biliteracy, as you know. We're graduating more and more students every year in that and I do think that's very powerful for them.

Erich Bolz: 11:17

Switching gears and really sort of drawing from your impressive breadth of experience teacher, administrator, board member, legislator, now OSPI superintendent for some time. There's this real feeling amongst our educators that education's under attack. Many of them feel like they're under personal attack doing that work on the day. What's your best advice, for you know how do we chart the course through these difficult political times.

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 11:41

You know it is tough and I want to acknowledge that. Being a former history teacher, I try to put this in a historical context. And we've had times in our history where public systems not just K-12, but public systems were really attacked as the problem, as opposed to turning to them as the solution or part of the solution to complex problems. Think about the immigration waves after World War I. Lots of public institutions were attacked. Recent immigrants were attacked. We're seeing a very similar thing today. So my counsel to them is remember our purpose is learning.

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 12:14

Our Constitution is unique. It does not say that we only serve the citizens of the state. It says anyone who resides here. So we stay out of the politics of who got here and immigration status and all of that. We avoid the politics as best we can of people claiming that the curriculum isn't consistent with American values and all of that. We focus on science and science class and we focus on comprehensive history and history and we serve everyone who walks through that door. So I say to everyone stay on the mission, because the mission is constant through time. The political ebb and flow. It changes over time. This thing will max out, maybe it already has. It will swing back, there will be a new thing that comes a year or two or five years from now. We'll respond to.

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 13:04

No, we're not going to do that. Yeah, stay focused on student learning, community and parents and, generally speaking, we navigate these things pretty well systemically as an institution over time. It's tough out there right now, but we'll push through this moment too.

Eric Price: 13:11

Today we're talking with Washington State Superintendent of Public Schools, Chris Reykdal. We've got lots more to cover, so stay put and we'll be right back right here on Outliers in Education.

Ad VO: 13:22

School districts across the country are turning their focus to social emotional learning like never before. But who has the time? Now you do, Thanks to the whole Educator Series an online SEL training that you take at your own pace. Six modules packed with proven strategies that will make a difference right away. The training was awesome. The content was amazing.

Erich Bolz: 13:43

This workshop is going to make you a better educator.

Ad VO: 13:45

Taught by SEL expert Dr Greg Benner. The whole educator series delivers strategies to ease the stress on you while bringing out the best in your students. These strategies they work. You'll be amazed at the results, not only with the youth you serve, but also in your own life.

Erich Bolz: 14:02

He's telling us strategies that we can implement tomorrow.

Ad VO: 14:06

Absolutely a home run Professional development at the speed of life. Check out the whole educator series online SEL training available now from CEE at effectivenessorg slash workshops. That's effectivenessorg slash workshops. That's effectivenessorg slash workshops.

Eric Price: 14:25

Welcome back everyone. Today, on Outliers in Education, we've been peering off into the future with Washington State Superintendent of Public Schools, Chris Reykdal. So, Chris, if you went to sleep and you woke up and it was just a beautiful K-12 system, what would that education utopia look like in your mind?

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 14:43

Well, it would certainly start before they come to our traditional system as five-year-olds. Right, it would really start with strong foundations for kids, which means moms who are having children and roughly 30 to 40 percent of children born in the state right now are to unmarried single individuals and so comprehensive support from birth, which means safety and security and health access. And when you stabilize families and really give them that confidence, you are much more likely to get that reading done every single night and get those enrichment experiences. So you can never separate that idyllic public education system from just genuinely supporting families in all the forms that they come in. So then, all of a sudden, this student comes to us with their giant backpack as a four or five-year-old, they walk into a classroom and when we give them that kindergarten readiness assessment, they've met benchmark on all six, they are ready for kindergarten and we are ready to teach them. And then it's a lot of foundation building I don't think that's going to change in time and it ought not from, say, k-5. Students are really building foundational skills and numeracy and literacy, and then social, emotional skills, and they're building content knowledge along the way. And then I think in an ideal system, those who need more, get more along the way. So it's investment where maybe they do have distress meals right. We've expanded meals to 300,000 more kids who need a breakfast or a lunch. These are positive things when we think about learning.

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 16:07

That ideal system involves a really consistent body of learning where students take responsibility for themselves and their peers so that the behavior issues are to an absolute minimum Developmentally. Kids are going to be knuckleheads sometimes and they're going to step in it once in a while. That's developmentally. Kids are going to be knuckleheads sometimes and they're going to step in it once in a while. That's developmentally appropriate. What we want to avoid is persistent behavior that impacts learning for the individual or the group. So now they're moving into middle school and by then I want them really exploring a little bit more of the bigger picture of life when do you want to go? What's your perception of what's possible?

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 16:39

And really wrapping around that first phase of a high school and beyond plan where they're career exploring and they're thinking about classes and they're really trying to understand what they want to do to contribute to the world. And then two more years in high school that focuses on the last of their core instruction. And then I want the junior senior year totally transformed. We've been doing it. I want it further transformed.

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 17:00

You and I grew up in very different times, but kids today are growing up a little faster. They have a pretty good sense. Their access to technology and innovation and exploration is greater. So we have to open up those doors sooner. You can imagine a junior senior year where if they're going to college, we load them up on their college credits as fast as we can to save them a lot of money and time. Later they're going into the military service. Let's get them some of that basic stuff done. They are certain that they want to fabricate or invent or create or weld or be a plumber. Let's get them into those technical programs and make sure they get the math and the science and everything else but really applied. So it's all about building a system so each learner sees themselves and they navigate their path successfully.

Eric Price: 17:40

That's idyllic to me, yeah and throw in a little bit of realism in. I talked to one of your predecessors and we were working on the a long time ago WASL and she was saying the hardest system to change is that 9-12 system. How difficult would it be to change that junior senior year to your edutopia perspective, do you think?

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 18:00

It is a little bit tough, we're doing it. The cool part is we've got core plus programs now We've got 5,000 kids spending half their junior senior year working right Applied skills on the job. We've got just thousands of kids at skill centers halftime. So we really are transforming that system.

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 18:15

I think what's hard is everyone still expects everything they do to be translated into a traditional Carnegie unit, because higher ed's sitting on the other side of this saying, well, you can be really innovative, but if it doesn't fit our box, we may not take that stuff Exactly.

Erich Bolz: 18:28

Yeah, EP and I are big fans of Carnegie units here, like big, big units, yeah. So you know, as a parent of two Washington State high school graduates myself, I saw firsthand the incredible experiences that my own children had in Washington's public schools. Yet in this time we're seeing the proliferation of other school options outside of public schools. We're seeing folks walk away In many districts. We don't see attendance numbers where they were at pre-COVID. What's your vision for how we get people back on board and participating in what really is, I think, our state's best value, which is its public education system?

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 19:05

Well, it's that balance right, and making sure that people understand all the great opportunities we have and letting locally elected school boards continue to shape it so that it meets the local community, and that's that delicate balance. It's so critical, though, that we have consistent learning standards and people know that, whether fourth graders in Seattle or Walla Walla, that they can understand and expect high quality instruction. And Walla Walla is going to pick different instructional decisions than Seattle, and they're going to pick different materials potentially, and they're going to have different bell schedules. So it's that real careful balance. The other thing I'd say is the world is changing, so it isn't just about getting students to come back to a system we had. Let's have the system be different.

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 19:47

Our average daily attendance right now is 94% pre-pandemic levels. The challenge is we've got some kids missing a lot of school, and any student who is missing 15 or 16 days a year pre-pandemic we said no problem, they didn't even show up in the data. But if they miss just two or three more days now, now they're considered chronically absent because they triggered over this 18 days, and so a lot of people are talking about that data point, but I really want to point out to you all that we dove into that. Over 95% of all the additional absences are excused absences. These aren't students skipping school.

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 20:21

It turns out that post-pandemic maybe this will fade, but post-pandemic when people are even a little bit sick, they stay home, which is what we've been telling them to do for decades, like don't just, you know, suck it up and take a cough drop and get to school. We say like, stay home. So they're actually doing that. And then I will also observe that we have an enormous percentage of America's labor force still working from home, part-time or full-time. Our children watch this. They see their parents productive. I don't make judgment one way or the other People have opinions but they do see their parents working, earning a salary, contributing, building home offices. We have a lot more young people saying does it have to be that I go every single day for seven hours on the same schedule or other different ways? And I don't think core instruction for our K-5s, even our K-8s, should change. I think our high school students are going to demand a lot more of that innovation and we better figure it out with them instead of presupposing that something's wrong because they take flexible options.

Eric Price: 21:16

So how is life like for you? Running a campaign and then doing all of the 90 million balls that you got to juggle?

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 21:23

Well, I've learned a couple of things. Number one the want of adults is going to be as rapidly transformative as our social media feeds right. So there's this constant churn of everything people think school should do, and then, when you really focus on child development, you realize that we do really good things every day because 25, you know, 25-year-olds walk into a classroom with an amazing teacher and they shut the door and they just get focused. So balancing this just beauty that is the teaching and learning process and trying to insulate those folks from all of the global and the national and the statewide you know, political action that's what you learn in this is to really protect the classroom and the educators and the students.

Superintendent Chris Reykdal: 22:06

You know the juggling is just always challenging. This is a state it's only one of 12 that elects this role and so you do the day job first and foremost. You know there's no better sales than telling folks what you do, how you do it and working hard, and then they get to judge. No one's entitled to these seats, and so it is absolutely the will of the people and they make those judgments. But you know, I keep saying it's a 40 to 50 hour a week job at a minimum and then during this time of year you pile on 15 to 20 hours a week in a campaign and then at some point you sleep for a week straight.

Eric Price: 22:38

Well, that is a perfect wrap, and this is the time that we move to our wrap up. Specialist Bolzie, what do you have as a wrap from all of the wisdom that's been shared here?

Erich Bolz: 22:49

So really starting from the top, I think the thing that really strikes me is the incredible breadth of experience. You got teacher, administrator, board member, legislator and now multiple turns in the seat. Those are really really rare commodities, and experience builds context. It was interesting to learn that child mental health concerns really are global concerns at this point and I think many educators would agree that making sure that we have healthy, well-regulated kids has almost become job number one. Didn't learn today because I saw the presser on the healthy youth survey numbers that they're improving. We're also seeing that in our CEEES student data. We're seeing in 23-24 this year and we have about 80-some clients across the state of Washington. In our data we're seeing an uptick compared to 22-23. I think what was interesting to me in looking at those data sets was and I think many of us thought we'd see the bounce in 22-23. It's, I think what was interesting to me in looking at those data sets was I thought we and I think many of us thought we'd see the bounce in 22, 23. It's, I think, taken kids a while to regulate post-pandemic, but the evidence really does seem to be there and be emerging.

Erich Bolz: 23:53

Dual language maps the brain differently. It really caused me to harken back to our episode with Andrea Bittner, who I think is the most practical multilingual learner guru out there, and what she has to say about multilingual learners is a great podcast episode, and I loved what Superintendent Reichdahl said, which I believe wholeheartedly is as opposed to a deficit-based approach, del builds on the unique strengths of folks who happen to be native speakers of language other than English. We stay out of the politics in public ed in Washington because our constitution requires us to work with each child who resides in our state and that was really, as I reflected on that statement, that's some serious foresight from our forebears. So you know good for whoever those folks were in the 1880s. Early learning we're passionate about early learning.

Erich Bolz: 24:36

Early learning, I would say, was the guidepost that really guided my 21-year career in public education. So kindred spirits in terms of that need and I just love the statement in that context, not necessarily related specifically to early learning, but totally agree that those who need more get more. That was a direct quote from Superintendent Reichdahl and absolutely resonated with me. Finally, I think we're all about this at CE as well let's work to change the system. Let's not ask our families and our kids and our staff members for that matter. To come back to our old system, the world is changing rapidly. And then I would conclude. Schools do really good things every day, and that starts with leadership at the top. So we salute you, your leadership, we thank you for coming on the podcast and thank you for those takeaways and likely many more.

Eric Price: 25:23

Superintendent Reykdal, thank you for being on the show. We know that that chair that you're in doesn't get paid enough and you got a lot of headaches that come to you every day. So thank you for dealing with all of those problems and in a positive way and serving our K-12 kiddos. Yeah, I'm grateful to you all. Thank you so much.

Erich Bolz: 25:40

And thanks to you all for listening today. You can find this episode and more anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts or visit us online at effectivenessorg. Until next time, this has been Outliers in Education.

Ad VO: 25:58

If you'd like to find out how to gather the data you need to help drive positive change in your school or district, take a moment to visit CEE, the Center for Educational Effectiveness, at effectivenessorg. Better data, better decisions, better schools effectiveness. org.