Dinowitz asks affinity leaders if DOE leverages their expertise enough

Thank you so much.

I don't want to thank you.

I mean, I think all of you in your different ways have supported the work.

I've done the work of this council, whether it's panels with your students, particularly the international schools, I think have done a lot for obviously our immigrant students.

But all of you in various ways have supported the students and this council and our work.

You were mentioned in the DOE's testimony, the work the DOE does with you, getting an understanding, getting expertise on what the portrait could be.

In your opinion, has the DOE leaned on you hard enough for that support?

Have they utilized the skill set that you bring to the table enough?

I think there's a lot more work to be done in terms of coordination with the DEA.

Each of our schools has a superintendent that works with our schools directly, but that superintendent accountability is not organized around scaling or innovation.

It's organized around the same kind of accountability structures that other superintendents are organized around.

For us to be able to take the practices that we have developed and ensure that all students have access to them,

the superintendent structure that goes up to the DEWE needs to see themselves as innovators and problem solvers to the questions of things like Portrait of the Graduate rather than just operational executors around what the DEWE's objective is.

Right.

I think sort of related to what AJ says, and kind of what I talk about all the time, it's like, what are you measuring?

If you're measuring those region scores, credit accrual, and attendance, that's how you're going to measure success.

But if you have a measure of success for innovation, then I think we would probably start seeing a lot more of that.

Do you want to add something?

I was going to add that.

There is, I mean, this is very complex.

All afternoon we've been talking about, like, all the layers, these touches, right?

And so there's a piece around, you know, assessment, away with the regions, performance-based assessments as one piece.

There's another piece around work-based learning, work-based readiness, and we're doing a lot of collaboration.

With the Office of Pathways around Future Ready and how the portal can assist monitoring the progress with all those metrics.

I think that work has been flourishing, not explicitly in the context of portrait, but I think it can inform it.

And it's one area in which we're collaborating in terms of like our work innovations and how the portal has served as a place for schools, districts, and the central office to kind of take a look at where the schools stand, where the individual students stand,