Bill Nicely on Real World Learning

On this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast, Rebecca Midles sits down with Dr. Bill Nicely, Educator in Residence at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, to explore how cross-state, cross-sector collaboration in Kansas City is transforming education. They discuss the Real World Learning Initiative, the importance of market value assets for students, and how partnerships between urban, suburban, and rural districts are creating equitable opportunities. Tune in to learn how this innovative approach is preparing students for the future of work and fostering systemic change in education.

Outline

• (00:00) Introduction to the Podcast
• (03:39) Collaboration During the Pandemic
• (07:12) Challenges and Successes in Cross-State Collaboration
• (11:38) The Role of Business Partnerships
• (18:54) Measuring Success and Quality
• (25:44) Future Trends in Education

Introduction to the Podcast

Rebecca Midles: You are listening to the Getting Smart Podcast. I’m Rebecca Midles. Today, we’re heading to Kansas City to talk about cross-state, cross-sector collaboration with our guest, Bill Nicely. Bill is an Educator in Residence at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, where he focuses on the Real World Learning initiative.

We will also include some links to that in our notes. For over three decades, Dr. Nicely has been a leader in public education, serving in various administrative roles, most recently as a superintendent of schools at Kearney. Bill, welcome back.

Bill Nicely: Thank you. Good to be here.

Rebecca Midles: We first got to know each other during one of our regional Real World Learning visits to Dallas. I think we were at a dinner, like up in a loft area or something like that. We were at a dinner and we dove into some deep conversations about implementation and possibilities. Not much has changed.

I think whenever we have a moment, we still do that. So, so great to have you join the conversation.

You were a superintendent when the work started in the area, and then you moved into a role at the foundation. Since that time, you’ve participated in lots of different roles within the foundation. What was the initial spark or perhaps key moment that led to this work for you? Or what was the core problem you were trying to solve? What was your inspiration?

Bill Nicely: Wow. So I would go back a little ways before Real World Learning and when I was superintendent in the, as we say, the Northland, which is north of the Missouri River. There was a group of school districts that were collaborating together. So that was the beginning of the collaboration—six school districts.

Our goal was to start a CAPS program. It would’ve been the third CAPS program in the United States. It still exists today—Northland CAPS. We were actually touring an advanced manufacturing plant. The CEO said to me as we went on the tour, “These are the people that work in here. These are the salespeople, these are the marketing people, these are the engineers, these are, etc., etc.” And we get to the floor and there’s a guy in overalls working hard. He is a welder. He’s got tattoos—you get the stereotype. And he said, “This is the smartest guy in my plant. He thinks outside of the box, he can fix anything, he can take a design idea that one of my customers might have. He is absolutely the smartest guy in my plant.”

And I had shivers because I thought that was so cool. And then the CEO, Mike Strater, looked directly at me and said, “When he was in high school, you told him he was stupid.” And he was right. I thought to myself—I had a different kind of shivers up my spine on that one as well, but it was a different kind—and a recognition that we had continued to do a disservice to some students, right? And this work should be about all students. That really was the turning point for me.

What is it that we can do for every student, regardless of who they are, what they look like, or where they come from? And I’ve been endeavoring to do that ever since.

Rebecca Midles: Yeah, several roles, right?

Bill Nicely: Correct.

Rebecca Midles: Some of this we’ll talk about.

Collaboration During the Pandemic

Rebecca Midles: I’m sure it’ll come up, but a lot of the acceleration in the work did happen, even with the collaboration of superintendents across the region during the pandemic. I mean, you’d already committed to this work, but a little—I mean, I think that having that time together, I remember it quite fondly. Could you speak to a little bit about that too, and how that may have helped?

Bill Nicely: There’s no superintendent who thinks of it too fondly, except for you’re correct. I mean, there’s this recognition that we had just gotten started around the idea of creating professional experiences that we call market value assets. And the idea was somehow incorporating them in all of our school systems collectively in Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas, north and south of the river, and figuring out a way to do that.

When the pandemic hit, immediately the lead of this work here at the foundation at the time, Donna McDaniel, who also started the CAPS program, said, “Let’s pause and let’s just bring these leaders together and help them figure out the answers that they’re looking for around making it through this pandemic and their communities.”

And so we did that, and it actually was one of the most brilliant things we did because it was a tremendous opportunity for school leaders to bond together to solve problems collectively. And that bond persists to this day.

Rebecca Midles: I agree. I feel honored to have seen that happen. I mean, there was already a commitment. I mean, Kauffman plays a critical role in the Kansas City area for this work around Real World Learning. But there was already a commitment to be, I think, intentionally strategic across two states, across a region that has rural, urban, suburban—lots of different ways to define those schools and those learning systems.

You already had that commitment in place, and who knew that we were going to have such a challenge to really kind of test that along the way before, during, and since then. Why has it been so important, I think, for the foundation to play that important role of a convener and a supporter with this multi-state regional approach? I mean, that others could learn from, that are listening today.

Bill Nicely: I would say most definitely. That stems back to the legacy of Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. This idea of creating opportunities for economic mobility for all people in and around the Kansas City area. We think in terms of our most historically marginalized population, and in Kansas City, as it is in many cities, that’s the urban core.

But it’s more than that, right? Because it’s a large metropolitan area. And so for the foundation, currently this strategic refresh that we’ve just gone through—the priorities of that strategic refresh align really well, ridiculously well, with the work that we’re doing at the foundation: creating opportunities for college access, workforce development in individuals, and furthering Mr. Kauffman’s love of entrepreneurialism.

And so all of those with that purpose in mind of creating opportunities for economic mobility for everybody. The work of Real World Learning, the work of students—all students graduating with professional experiences that we call market value assets—aligns with that really well.

Rebecca Midles: Yeah, it does.

Challenges and Successes in Cross-State Collaboration

Rebecca Midles: You know, we’ve talked about—I know that we often talk about that area being across two states, but what I think people need to understand is that’s two different policy landscapes. That’s two different departments of education. There are some challenges, I’m sure, with that. What were some of the biggest ones and perhaps the most surprising successes in this work across that region and that vast change across the systems?

Bill Nicely: So, I think probably while each of the individual school districts navigated their respective state agencies, we have to remember that this began as a local collaborative. It didn’t start at the top. It started locally with a group of educators who realized that amazing opportunities were happening for some students and that we needed to figure out a way for them to happen for all students.

And then the key point is that this work can’t happen in the suburbs only because then there’s a whole group of students left behind. And so, let’s collaborate together—urban, suburban, and even suburban-rural districts that make up the sort of growing loop of school districts around the Kansas City metro area.

As we’ve seen the city grow and as it incurred the dynamics of redlining and white flight, all of those things happened in Kansas City. Subsequent school district—you know, there are 38 school districts that belong to the collaborative officially. There are more like 45. It’s 80-plus high schools. It’s almost 100,000 high school students who could potentially be impacted by this work. And some of them are large enough that they have their own pockets of poverty and densities of non-English-speaking students and some of the other categories of students that we know of. Some of them don’t, but all of them are working together, and that’s really what makes this work most impactful.

And the cool thing about it is that the strategy that works for one district may be completely different for another district. But as long as we have a central framework that we’re adhering to, as long as the experiences are set up to be similar, then the outcomes are also set up to be similar, and that’s the most important thing.

And so, we’re seeing this phenomenon where an urban core district may adopt a strategy of a similar-sized suburban district because of the size of the schools, the strategy works the best. And so, then you see this cross-cultural collaboration as well. And when students get together from districts that differ in size and scope or cultural makeup, amazing things happen, and it really multiplies the level of learning that students feel.

Rebecca Midles: I hear that. I think that’s also echoing the importance of kind of that shared agreement, shared understanding, shared language. Some people will call it shared vision, but having that concept of what you’re all working towards also gives that professional flexibility to get there in different ways. And I—you’ve touched on this in other podcasts, but I think it’s important for listeners to note that it wasn’t that all of those districts came on at the same time in the same way.

There was real intentional work around cohorting and having different stages of systems in that. And consequently, those systems that came first gave back and were involved in partnering and cycling back and all of that. So, just really that strong importance, I think, not only of how you intentionally did the cohorts but also how you thought about the partnerships. Because some of the things that people may not be aware of is in that market value assets, when you’ve got one of those commitments as internships, you need those kinds of business partnerships put into place so that not only one district, for example, is getting to take advantage of maybe a resource that’s in their region and in their zone.

And I know that this is a challenge for listeners that have talked about Real World Learning before. It’s like, how do you develop those understandings around those partners to keep them invested in coming in and also not being overly taxed by one district or too many districts?

The Role of Business Partnerships

Rebecca Midles: Like, how do you navigate that and that importance of relationships within partnerships in this work that you could share?

Bill Nicely: Sometimes, I’m not sure, Rebecca. Okay, so here’s the thing. You try things and they don’t work, and so you try something else and you learn along the way. And it’s a lesson that we’ve said from the very beginning, and we try to model it within our support for this initiative. This really, it truly is a collaborative.

And so, we are here at the Kauffman Foundation, the Real World Learning program. We are constantly monitoring to the best of our ability what’s happening out in the ecosystem, trying to say, “Okay, what’s the next thing? What’s the next lever we can flip to help create systemic change within the collaborative for the benefit of individual school districts?”

And so, we get that feedback from the districts. We get it from business partners. And we started out thinking that we were going to organize all of these business partners and help our school districts. And it worked for a little bit, but at that time, school districts weren’t ready. They weren’t geared up to take the numbers of business partners. And so, our business partners realized, like, “Well, you don’t really have any students for us.”

And so, what we learned is that it’s best if that stays local. And let’s elevate student readiness and business partner readiness a little bit at a time so they both rise relatively evenly together. And here’s the other thing: while we have large business partners like Garmin and JE Dunn and others—hospitals, right? You name the large organizations any community has—most of those connections, and when we say business partners or we say professional partners, what we’re really talking about are business, industry, civic, municipality, government agencies, philanthropic organizations, even faith-based organizations. Wherever there are professionals, there are opportunities for students for adult mentoring, which is a key component of this because, in the end, it all has to result in student agency.

Those relationships are best managed locally. They’re best managed by the classroom teacher or, as we have here often funded by the foundation, as Real World Learning coordinators in the high schools. They go by various names, but in general, they’re business-to-classroom liaisons. Occasionally, do we get complaints from the larger companies that multiple school districts are contacting them? Yes, we do. However, those are almost best managed by the business partner as well.

Bill Nicely: However, what we’ve seen over the course of the last couple of years is the rise of somebody’s position being adapted to include being that business contact for the Real World Learning folks. And it really works out well.

Rebecca Midles: That’s really insightful. You and I have talked before about how you have a lot of other partners even within the region to help navigate some of that, and we can come back to that. But I think it’s really helpful for people to hear about those lessons learned—how to really be thoughtful about incremental implementation and readiness, particularly because you’re pulling businesspeople in, and they get excited. Having that capacity there and having it in place is so important.

If you’re not familiar with market value assets, there’s also things like the entrepreneurship side of that. What does that look like in terms of once they’ve had that opportunity or a client-connected project to make that introduction? So, really tying all of those pieces together is very much interrelated with the partnerships that you’re highlighting. That’s really helpful to highlight. Are there other people that you navigate or support as far as resources in that area that others could learn from?

I mean, not everybody’s going to have a foundation like you have in your back pocket, but they might have an ISD, they might have an ESD, they may have a large business that has a sector or nonprofit that serves or something like that where they can relate to this. How would you share how you work with some of those intermediaries right there in your region?

Bill Nicely: Okay, so here’s the thing. The funding helps.

Rebecca Midles: Yes, I’m sure.

Bill Nicely: But it is not the primary motivator. For teachers, the primary motivator is to see their students really undergo a transformation that typically wasn’t happening in just regular core content curriculum. These experiences are integrated into core content classrooms as well as others. Students and teachers can have conversations around how the standards that I’m required to teach—ensuring that you have mastery of—can be incorporated into the project. And so, they have that conversation. There’s a bit of student agency associated with that.

When that happens, those students are gaining mastery of those standards as they’re supposed to, but they’re also getting these other valuable pieces of the experience—the professional skills, the durable skills. We call them outgrowths. That’s what we measure—outgrowths—because we say that students grow into them, and as a result, they’re different than they once were.

Our intermediary partners help us do that. They help us navigate. And what I said earlier about creating opportunities for systemic change and flipping levers—oftentimes, we engage our intermediary partners. Prep KC is a big one that works with urban core schools and provides them with extra support. Uncharted Learning, History Co:Lab, Startland—they’re providing our entrepreneurial experiences. The CAPS Network—many of our school districts belong to the CAPS Network. DeBruce Foundation, Success-Ready Student Network—which is a Missouri-wide collaborative focusing on personalized competency-based learning.

Rebecca Midles: They were there at the beginning, right?

Bill Nicely: And they were there at the beginning, as was Getting Smart. The Assistant Superintendent Fellowship—how do we help assistant superintendents, who are largely responsible for the day-to-day of this work, think about strategically growing these opportunities in their districts? That’s an important component. And so, we just look for the best opportunities.

Those opportunities change all the time as well. As the Real World Learning collaborative evolves over time, we are at 67% of all high school graduates in the Kansas City metro area earning at least one market value asset upon graduation. That’s over 14,000 high school students. When we were at 15%, our conversations were a lot different.

Rebecca Midles: As were your needs, I think, is what you’re saying.

Bill Nicely: As were our needs. And so, our needs continue to evolve based upon where we are in the process.

Rebecca Midles: That makes sense. Well, that’s a lot of moving parts.

Shorts Content

Measuring Success and Quality

Rebecca Midles: You talked about some academic indicators. What are ways that a foundation in this role measures the success of a very complex and layered initiative like this, beyond the numbers that we just got to celebrate?

Bill Nicely: Right, because in reality, those are just numbers.

Rebecca Midles: Right. Right.

Bill Nicely: We’re counting market value assets, and there’s actually some danger in just counting. Potentially, you want to not lose focus on the quality in favor of just the counting. And so, we talk about that a lot. We also talk about how we can create opportunities to remove barriers and create access for all students.

So, as districts scale Real World Learning in their respective high schools, the question becomes, who are you not providing opportunities for? And how can you, and who can you learn from, who’s already navigated students without IEPs or free and reduced lunch students or whatever the answer is?

Then there is the—we certainly rely on our educators to tell us. We rely on our parents to inform us of the quality. We like to call that the “What have you done with my child?” effect, right? Because we literally hear stories of parents who have never seen their child so engaged around the work that they’re doing, about the learning, about the process.

But then we also engage with assessing, and we’re in the process of building out a long-term assessment tool. I say long-term—I mean into the future, where we can track students post-graduation. But I mentioned earlier the learning outgrowths or the market value asset outgrowths. It is a series of 10 standards that are our look-fors around quality. We say market value assets are the “what,” and the “why” behind the work are these outgrowths.

We’ve contracted with the University of Missouri at Kansas City and the Urban Education Research Center to evaluate those 10 outgrowths in student quality and some of the teacher training programs that we have stood up. And the results are super favorable. In that same research work, we are also asking teachers about their experiences, about their willingness to do this kind of work again, to provide market value asset opportunities integrated in their core content areas in the upcoming years, about their degree of comfortability, about their efficacy in the work that they do. And their responses are also really favorable.

So, we feel like we’re really hitting our stride and trying to maintain quality. And because we’re a collaborative—we’re not a government, we don’t operate off of some tax code—it is a “let’s work together to learn how to make these experiences more and more valuable for students.”

Rebecca Midles: Powerful. I hear some similarities in what you just shared in the way that this work was really kicked off. You did a shoutout to Donna earlier, which was lovely. One of the things I’ve always appreciated about this work is that multiple-prong approach. I hear you even doing that with the data that you’re collecting for learners. And we all know we should triangulate, but I like the way you’re doing that at a systems level.

But I want to give the listeners an example too of how you did that even to start the work as a foundation. It was meeting systems where they are—like we believe to do with businesses and with learners—but it was meeting systems where they are and recognizing where they’re already succeeding around those market value assets. Where can you do more if that’s already a success? And where are the ways that you need to clear obstacles to make new opportunities? And where do you need to create completely different opportunities?

The reason why I mention that is I’m also hearing you highlight things that we believe with the Getting Smart Innovation Framework. I’m hearing those whys and those whats and those hows that a lot of people will talk about with personalized learning. But what I really think stands out with the work in the Kansas City area is that “for whom” and “where.” And that you really were on the early end of kind of the off-campus work, along with other systems that we highlight across the country, but really intentionally as a regional approach.

What does this look like with internships? What does this look like when we’re based here? What does this look like when we have businesses come in and do some client-connected projects that lead to students leaving? And how do we validate that learning? That really hits at that “where,” and you can do things like that, I think, when you have a shared understanding and shared agreements, like you’ve highlighted. Very powerful to see.

Bill Nicely: Thank you. Yes, I agree with everything you said. And it is—it’s not necessarily about scale from the beginning. It’s about focusing on quality. And when quality happens, then good things happen to the people that are engaged in that work, and that’s what spreads. And so, that conscious planning around growth is really critically important.

We’ve seen a couple of phenomena. One of them is we’ve seen districts that have had to step back and say, “Whoa, we really got too far out, and this isn’t the right direction. And we tried to go too fast, and we tripped, and we have to start over.” We’ve seen that. It’s okay.

We’ve also seen districts where school superintendents have changed—many of them now that we’ve been in this a while—and school boards of education who have actually hired their replacements recognizing a priority towards Real World Learning. And when that happens, districts don’t miss a beat.

Rebecca Midles: Yeah, and you and your team have been very explicit about those shared agreements. So, I also think part of what I hear you saying is when people know what you’re working towards, it’s easier for more of a collective action. It’s easier for people to see where they fit and where they can support that work. And it’s been an incredibly transparent experience, and I think that also keeps the conversations at a way that’s really authentic. Like, here’s where we’re doing well, and here’s where we need help. And everyone’s okay to say that because there’s not a “gotcha” or an expectation that everyone has it figured out. We’re constantly growing it and making it better, which I think every time you talk to your group, you learn something new about what you are all doing. And I think it’s been wonderful for the field.

But I want to shift you to this last question I had for you.

Future Trends in Education

Rebecca Midles: What’s a trend or a new idea that you are seeing—because you are in a lot of conversations with, like I just highlighted—that you think will be central to the next wave of innovation? And you can do that for your regionally level, or you can think about that for the country and education. What is a trend or new idea that you’re seeing?

Bill Nicely: I’ve seen across the country movement towards these profession-based experiences being integrated into school. I can’t believe that you can go wrong doing that. But you and I have talked about that there’s a fine line—like there’s a sweet spot for this work to happen in a really high-quality way.

And if you’re too far to one side, it’s just traditional school. But if you’re too far to the other, you know, students are running wild. And that’s not really agency—that’s just students running wild. So, there is this sweet spot. And when that happens, we do talk about things like personalized competency-based learning.

But here’s what I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. How many times in public education can we say the term AI, right? But artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the way the world works. And I’m trying to keep a pulse on it to the extent that I can—or anybody else can—but the growth is occurring in a way that is creating a dynamic.

We started out in the 19th century in the Industrial Revolution when skills mattered. And then we moved into this knowledge phase. I don’t think the folks that are saying skills matter again are off at all. I think that’s—I think that’s increasingly going to be ridiculously important. And I see the connection between this work and success navigating this new world as very much skills-based.

It’s the how we transcend from one to the other that’s going to be important. And if school districts aren’t thinking about that now, they’re already a decade behind. We are going to have to change and transform what’s happening in public education like nobody’s ever experienced before. And we don’t like to do that.

And it’s no fun having to do that when there’s this scary sense of urgency. It’s better when we can think about it in a really deep way with colleagues and others from other industry sectors—cross-sector—about how to do this and collaborate in a way that we’ve never done before to make these transformations.

And so, my hope is that we have, at scale, the best of the best in all of the various sectors really thinking about that on behalf of students.

Rebecca Midles: Hmm. That’s a great way to end it. Thank you so much for sharing about the work that you are doing. I know that you’re always open to engage in those future trends conversations, and you’re always willing to talk about the work of not just—I mean, it’s regional, but it’s cross-state, it’s cross-sector. It’s wonderful to highlight that work for others to listen and to learn from. But I know that you’re also really receptive to hearing from others, and I look forward to those conversations continuing.

Bill Nicely: Likewise. Thanks so much.

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Guest Bio

Bill Nicely

Bill Nicely is an educator-in-residence for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, where he will work on activities related primarily to the high school design portfolio within the Real World Learning initiative.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Nicely’s career in public education spanned 32 years, including a variety of school administrative roles in districts of varying size and diversity. He taught physical science in his first teaching position at Louisburg High School in Kansas. More recently he served as superintendent of schools for the Kearney R-I School District and Superintendent of Schools with the Leeton R-X School District.

Nicely earned his Associate of Science degree from Donnelly College, Bachelor of Science Education from Pittsburg State University, Master of Science degree in educational policy and leadership from the University of Kansas, and Doctor of Education in educational policy and leadership from NOVA Southeastern University.

Links

• Watch the full video here
• LinkedIn
• Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation