Implement. Change in Education

My 9-year-old ran his first cross-country race of the season in 90-degree heat. After the finish, he had three things to report: - "I couldn't breathe; I was running so fast." - "I placed 9th." - "I made new friends." Then came the line I haven't stopped thinking about: "When I'm in the flow running, it feels so good; I can feel nature." Nobody could fix the weather that day. But the course was bu...

This summer, I led a learning lab, "How to Implement (Just About) Anything," for about 250 Alabama CTE directors and career coaches at their CTE Summer PD Conference in Mobile. Their state superintendent opened the morning with three words I keep coming back to: strategy, focus, and resources. And when I asked that room to turn and talk, the whole place came alive. Their implementation health quiz...

In August, every strategic plan still looks possible. The plan is on the wall. The team is in the room. Every person in it means it. Then it’s October. The plan hasn’t failed; it just hasn’t come up in a while. Nobody decided to remove it. It quietly stopped showing up. Plans rarely die from being wrong. They die from having nowhere to live. So here’s the test: look at your recurring agendas, stan...

"A principal looked at who wasn't showing up, found out why, and fixed that." That is the sentence I keep coming back to from my conversation with Dr. Cheryl Dyson and Dr. Sarah Sirgo of Frederick County Public Schools. Frederick cut chronic absenteeism from about 26% to 16.7% in three years. In its community schools, chronic absenteeism dropped 18 percentage points. But the episode is not really...

A basketball coach once spent two hours explaining a decision that took him four seconds. A timeout. A play drawn up. The star waved off. The ball placed in a teammate’s hands. On tape, it looked like instinct. In reality, the decision had been made weeks earlier in hallway conversations, locker-room moments, and small exchanges that built enough trust for the hard call to feel clear when the pres...

In 2022, Anne Arundel County Public Schools had one National Merit semifinalist. They have nine now. A record 15 schools earned five-star ratings, and 95% of schools earned three stars or better. Graduation rate up two straight years to 80.9%. Grades 3 to 8 ELA and math both above the state average and climbing four years running.   In this episode of 𝑰𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆 𝒊𝒏 𝑬𝒅𝒖𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏, Superintendent...

It's 7:12 on a Tuesday morning, and I'm not saying a word. My son works down the list taped to the fridge: teeth, bed, lunch, folder, shoes, then turns to his brother: "Owen, you didn't check off your folder." Two boys, one laminated card, and I've been written out of the scene I used to run.   Here's the counterintuitive part: a checklist looks like a constraint and acts like a release.   It's th...

“DCPS 23, no more.” Dorchester County Public Schools (MD), a rural district of ~4,500 students, posted Maryland’s biggest 3rd-grade ELA jump: +22 points (27% → 49%) and climbed to 19th statewide in ELA in a single year. In this episode of Implement Change in Education, Superintendent Dr. Jymil Thompson and Assistant Superintendent Dr. Jodi Colman share what actually changed inside the system. Key...

A pathologist’s autopsy report can tell you exactly how a patient died. But it tells you absolutely nothing about how to live a long, vibrant life. For twenty years, K-12 education has been running an autopsy model. We call it "school turnaround." Between 2010 and 2016, the federal School Improvement Grants program poured roughly $7 billion into turning around struggling schools. The result? Null...

What does it really look like to lead a school district when your own children are learning inside that same system? In this episode of "𝑰𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆 𝒊𝒏 𝑬𝒅𝒖𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏", I’m joined by two extraordinary Maryland leaders: Dr. Maria Navarro, Superintendent of Charles County Public Schools, and Dr. Sonja Brookins-Santelises, CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools. Together, we explore a side of education...

Maryland's $3.8B education bet had no scorecard — so we built one. 24 districts. 43 indicators. 685+ documents. The bright spots might surprise you. Maryland's first official Blueprint evaluation publishes in December 2026. The earliest quantitative data comes a year later. But the Governor and legislature need to make major policy and funding decisions in the 2027 session — before the evidence is...

One of the biggest challenges I see across systems is the gap between a strong plan and real results. In this episode of Implement Change in Education, I share an excerpt from a talk I gave at the Delaware Department of Labor’s Leadership Academy, a month-long development opportunity for promising managers of people and projects. Through two powerful stories - one from healthcare and one from chil...

With tighter budgets, what do you actually protect? Across the country, school and district leaders are facing tough choices for SY26–27 - shrinking funds, rising costs, and real pressure to cut. But the biggest risk isn’t the budget itself; it’s losing what’s already working. In our latest blog post and podcast episode, we explore a simple but critical question: How do you protect hard-won studen...

One of the clearest takeaways from my conversation with William Barnes, Superintendent of Howard County Public Schools: “We’re not going to claim greatness until we’re great for all of our students.” Superintendent Barnes leads one of Maryland’s most well-regarded districts, but what stood out most was his honesty about the students the system has not yet served well and his urgency around changin...

Organizations Change Differently Than Leaders Imagine The superintendent exhaled. "We rolled this out eight months ago. Trained everyone. Built the dashboard. And half the schools are doing something completely different." I've heard some version of that in almost every system I've worked in. The plan was clear, the training solid, and yet what happened on the ground looked nothing like what anyon...

How do you turn an emergency declaration into a sustainable literacy system? Delaware is showing us.   With only 39% of third graders proficient in reading, Governor Meyer declared a state of emergency. But what followed wasn’t just policy; it was an implementation strategy.   In this episode, Kathy Kelly and Sam Lougheed unpack the hard work of turning Science of Reading principles and high-quali...

Today I'm launching MarylandBlueprint.com — and opening it to just 25 education leaders. The Blueprint for Maryland's Future is buried in 5,000+ pages of AIB reports, district plans, and accountability decisions. MarylandBlueprint.com uses AI to turn that into something useful: district profiles, cross-district comparisons, pillar analyses, and an AI query tool where you can ask questions in plain...

In this episode, I’m joined by two Baltimore leaders advancing career readiness at scale, Brady Wheeler, Senior Program Manager for the Baltimore City Career Coach Initiative at the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development, and Eric Roberts, Director of Post-Secondary Success at Baltimore City Public Schools. Together, we dive into Maryland Blueprint Pillar 3 (college & career readiness) and w...

Government for Good: Why Implementation Matters Now More Than Ever I once sat in Baltimore City Hall watching Mayor O'Malley review data dashboards tracking everything from potholes to crime stats. "Show me your data," he'd demand of department heads. This wasn't political theater—it was government using evidence to serve people effectively. As we face critical challenges in governance today, the...

Kicking off the new year with highlights in our end-of-year podcast compilation featuring incredible education leaders and practitioners. 🎉 Throughout the second half of the year, we had the pleasure of recording conversations with leaders who are doing the hard, real work of implementing change across education systems—and this episode brings together some of the moments that resonated most with...

In this episode, I’m joined by two of Delaware’s workforce and CTE leaders — Joanna Staib, Statewide Coordinator of Delaware’s new Office of Workforce Development, and Dr. Jon Wickert, Director of Career & Technical Education at the Delaware Department of Education. Together, they co-chair Delaware Pathways, a statewide strategy designed to ensure every learner has a clear, supported route to...

In this special episode, I celebrate the two-year anniversary of my book How to Implement (Just About) Anything, now available as an audiobook on Audible! I share reflections on what has changed and what still holds true about implementation since the book’s release, and introduce a short excerpt from one of the book’s most practical insights for leaders driving change in real-world systems. Links...

Go See the Work: What Delaware's Early Literacy Site Visits Revealed Delaware is tackling early literacy with purpose and precision. In this episode, we explore what happened when Secretary of Education Cindy Marten and her team visited the work in action across five schools. The visits revealed powerful insights: • When schools commit to core practices and use data effectively, students thrive •...

NEW EPISODE: Where High-Quality & Diverse Teachers Drive Student Success My conversation with Dr. Maria Navarro, Superintendent of Charles County Public Schools, reveals a powerful blueprint for educational transformation in action. Dr. Navarro's district has increased teacher diversity from 37.8% to 43.2% while dramatically expanding National Board Certification candidates from 8 to 117 teach...

For Father's Day, I was given a family-friendly cooking class from my wife and boys (3rd and 6th grade). The experience reminded me of how cooking and education have quite a bit in common. Including cuts and burns! Chefs know that success in the kitchen doesn’t happen by accident—it’s built through *mise-en-place* (“everything in its place”). Leaders face the same challenge: prepare well, or get l...