Dr. Jim: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining us today. This is your friendly neighborhood talent strategy nerd, Dr. Jim. We need to rethink how we define student success. For the longest time in the K 12 space we've obsessed over test scores and that's ended up leaving a lot of kids behind. At the same time, we've seen growing grumbling from the world of work that graduates of all stripes aren't prepared with the skills needed to be successful.
We've spent way too much time on one measure of success when we should be focused on total success. How we do that is what we're going to be tackling in today's conversation. So who's going to be joining us today? The person guiding us through this conversation is Dr. Christopher Timmons and he is the superintendent of Dexter community schools. He served in that role since 2013.
And then prior to moving to Dexter, Dr. Timmons served as the superintendent of Adrian public schools for five years. Throughout his career, Dr. Timmons has served Michigan students in a variety of positions as superintendent in two different districts, high school. Principal, curriculum director, middle [00:01:00] school and high school teacher, a coach.
And as a paraprofessional, he's the founding member and currently serves as the president of the future of learning council, a nonprofit organization created to lead innovation throughout Michigan schools. Dr. Timmons was a member of the, of transcends learner centered leadership lab at the fourth cohort and is a Google GSV fellow.
also served on the American Association of School Administrators Governing Board and chairs the Huron Valley Ambulance Board. Throughout his career, Dr. Tim has helped Consortium, multiple local college access networks, and community foundations and funds.
Chris, welcome to the show.
Dr. Chris Timmis: Thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to talk shop.
Dr. Jim: Yeah, it's a, it's going to be a good conversation. And especially with the theme of this season's conversations being focused on the future of K 12. I think this fits in really well, and I'm looking forward to the conversation. I think the first order of business before we dive into the discussion is to get a little bit more detail about [00:02:00] your background and story, and particularly I'm interested in some of those.
Dr. Chris Timmis: Key moments that shaped you as a leader. So floor is yours.
I'm in my 17th year as a local school district superintendent in my second district. I was first hired, I was 34 and I was in a fairly high poverty district. It was during the great recession. Michigan got hit significantly harder than most of the country because of our ties to the auto industry.
Dr. Chris Timmis: And we had already been probably five to seven years into a recession when the whole nation felt it. I took over during the race of the top era and when they started ranking schools and I was 34, I step in and find out early on our high school was ranked in the 3. 9th percentile in the state. Three years later, we were the 91st percentile in the state.
It was a great opportunity to learn how to put together teams and how to. Move an organization in the middle of kind of a chaotic time. I was then recruited to my current [00:03:00] district as a sole candidate, which I wouldn't wish upon anybody. And it's district's fairly affluent wanting to move from good to great, which is a whole different opportunity as a leader than when you go into, you're running an organization where the platform's on fire and you have to fix it.
And when you're going into a district that was good and trying to make that move when you don't have a clear, compelling case on why you need to change other than we can do a better job for our kids. And I've been here for 12 years now. I've seen the relationships with both communities has been one of the leverage points.
It's been really a fascinating evolution of my career and evolution as a leader to be able to. Be in those different settings, but use a similar strategies. It's been just fascinating.
Dr. Jim: Really interesting story. And I like how you talked about two different sets of experiences, one going from survival mode to thriving and then going from thriving to excelling. So one of the things that I'm curious about [00:04:00] when you were in that district that was performing at the, 3 percent level, one of the bottom tier organizations, what were the key levers that you pulled to get to that point?
Get them to the 91st percentile, because that's a massive turnaround.
Dr. Chris Timmis: One of the first things we looked at is that in order to transform an organization, you need to have a compelling vision and a sense of urgency. So we painted a compelling version, compelling vision. We had a sense of urgency that was given to us. What we are able to do in the, some of the leadership moves was first building the relationships and building a high performing team.
So it was a team that we used to joke that if you're going to be on this team, it's like a bacon and eggs breakfast. That in a bacon and eggs breakfast, the chicken makes a contribution. The pig makes a full commitment. We only want members of the team that are the pigs. We're just a bunch of pigs doing the dirty work.
So we would paint a really compelling vision of what we wanted for kids. And it really wasn't focused on [00:05:00] academics. We said we wanted them to be engaged. We wanted them to be happy and we wanted them to be. healthy while they were in school and to have a long, healthy life when they left us. And we focused on what it would take to do that work.
And that's how we moved it.
Dr. Jim: It's interesting that you described it the way that you described it. And initially when you said we've really focused on mission and vision. My immediate reaction was. How is that going to work in an environment where you're in survival mode? And, you could quite literally be in survival mode.
So tell me a little bit more about that was the vision that aligned the staff. But how did that show up in the day to day of the students of the district? Because it's the students that actually students and teachers that are driving the performance. So what were the mechanisms you put into place to drive that turnaround?
Dr. Chris Timmis: From an adult perspective, we focused on the adults having significant training and support. We gave clear expectations, but we gave the opportunities for support. And we made it, we systematized the work. For the [00:06:00] kids, we were 100 percent focused on engagement. So what did we need to do to engage the kids and make them like school again?
And we went as far as, you did all the gimmicky things like prizes and whatnot, but really it was focused on the relationships with the adults. And how we were going to make sure that we put all of the supports in place. For example, we created it was early on. We created these graduation coach positions based on the communities and schools of Atlanta model from the early 2000s.
And this was early 2000. So we were one of the first ones to have them. And we figured out that we didn't need. Another teacher or an administrator, et cetera. In those jobs we found we needed, we had one graduation coach who was a former military police. He was he re he was bilingual. We could have him work with the migrant camps, et cetera.
We had another. Graduation coach who was a social worker. We had another one who happened to do university admissions for years. So we picked people that were [00:07:00] just good with kids, but had a variety of skill sets so that we could have a voice for kids that didn't have a voice. And we just worked on relationships from day one.
Dr. Jim: It's real solid stuff. Now, switching gears to when you landed in a completely opposite district, were there any common threads that worked well that helped you move this top tier district to the next level?
Dr. Chris Timmis: Yeah, same thing. Relationships and building a team that was committed to our greater purpose. One thing I found when I moved to my current district where kids were doing really well academically, is that our parents were worried about their kids burning out. They were chasing some kind of idea that when they graduate from graduate school, they'll be happy.
Had to work through that process of, we wanted to be happy now. And so we worked on relationships and then we found kids who needed a voice. And we put the graduation coaching model here. We put the same model in place, but use different personnel so that we can [00:08:00] give kids a voice. And we were able to customize what we did for our hardest to serve kids that needed us even more.
And some of those strategies actually worked for our kids that everyone thought was doing, were doing fine. But they were really deep down struggling. And we just focused on relationships and making sure our kids were happy and they were engaged.
Dr. Jim: So we'll get into the the details of that, but there was something that you mentioned that caught my attention and that was your comment about, we had a culture within our district where people people in the community were saying our kids will be happy after this arbitrary point in time in the future.
Or you referenced guard graduate school. And what's interesting about that is that high achievers. Within any context, usually get put on that hamster wheel. Once we get this milestone, we'll be happy. Once we get this milestone, we'll be happy. And it's the pursuit of the next milestone. And you always end up feeling like flat once you achieve it.
And that's a cultural [00:09:00] thing in high performing. People and maybe even organizations. So one of the things that I'm curious about is how did you shift the mindset from being always on that hamster wheel, chasing the next milestone and getting away from that into a different way of thinking.
Dr. Chris Timmis: Yeah, it took a. multitude of initiatives that weren't all designed at the same time to make that shift. We had engaged our community in community book studies, which one of the early ones we did was called At What Cost? It was about adolescent mental health. And we brought in the author, we gave out free books to anybody in the community.
I think we ordered four or five hundred books. And we engaged the entire community parents in these conversations. And then we followed up with a positive psychology with the happiness advantage. And we really, it was fascinating. So even if we couldn't get community members to join in actively in the book study, we would have them read and then we would bring them in for a.
For active conversations about where we're going as a district. [00:10:00] Meanwhile, we started in the younger grades, especially at really hammering away at creating engaging activities. For example, we partnered with Eastern Michigan university and set up what we call the EMU explorers. where we took our sixth graders over to EM, to Eastern Michigan during their spring break and had their faculty and some students work with our kids on two and three day long deep dive projects and access the things they wouldn't normally do.
And some of the kids signed up for just dance. They just wanted to do something unique. We started focusing on place based work around the district. And then at the high school, we eventually made a shift. to a block schedule that allowed us to increase our PE options. And it's made a huge difference.
Our kids are in strength. We have 350 of our 1, 000 kids in strength and conditioning every day, so about 700 between the two days. We're running yoga every hour. It's it's fascinating to watch how many kids will take these courses when they get a chance to have the space, but we [00:11:00] also capped how many AP or IB courses a kid could take.
So we put a limit and, it's really worked out well. We've eliminated class rank and our kids are still with them. They're doing great.
Dr. Jim: So you just opened up a whole can of worms when I'm thinking about the district. So you have a high performing district and you just talked about taking, doing away with class ranks and putting a cap on how many AP courses that you can take, all that sort of stuff.
What I'm curious about when you're talking about all of these different things that seem radical, No class rank cap on AP courses. You probably have some high performing parents that are like, this is not what we signed up for.
It's not going to work. Why are you doing this? How did you deal with that pushback?
Dr. Chris Timmis: We actually started, we didn't get a lot of pushback. We started the process back early on. We added weighted grades. We run an. Pretty comprehensive advanced placement program, but we also have an international baccalaureate diploma program. And we had, when I first started, we had this like war. It was an [00:12:00] APIB war, which was fascinating because it's your highest performing kids wanting to take harder classes.
Meanwhile, we created an early middle college, but we focused on kids who the most, they were first generation college kids, etc. In a community that had most of our parents Already graduated from college. And we did a bunch of things at the same time. So there was so much going on and we really committed to personalizing education for kids.
And what we found is we would have families who had a high performing kid academically. And then they had another child that really didn't want to take AP and IB courses, but they were worried about their kid that all of their kids. And we really focused on what does your kid need to develop? Into whoever they're going to be.
We're a community school district. So we preach all the time that. A student doesn't learn everything they're going to learn in the 180 days and six or seven hours a day of school. They're on our campus all the time. We run the we run the recreation program, we run the, all the after school programming, [00:13:00] we run Little League and all the youth programming plays on our campus.
We own a fitness center. We run the senior, we own the senior center. So we just embrace that we're a community school district and we set up options for kids both during the day and outside. And then one of the biggest things that happened we got involved in a national pilot back in 2016 that allowed us for our kids and our parents to choose how they want to learn starting in fifth grade.
And it gave ownership of the education. And we found that once parents and kids had a choice about how they wanted to learn, they never asked for gifted programming again. We didn't hear about it at the high school. They were not pushing them hard enough. It was a fascinating evolution. It was rough for a few years, but as the kids moved up and got older, it all went away.
And everybody just embraced that we have all these options for kids.
Dr. Jim: You just mentioned that you started this program at the fifth grade level. Why was it important to start at that early stage? I would have thought that it would make more sense at The junior higher high [00:14:00] school level.
Dr. Chris Timmis: Yeah our configuration lends to it. So we're, the district's 84 square miles. We have about 3, 500 kids. We run a preschool that starts at 6 weeks old, runs up through the time the kids start kindergarten. Then we have a K 2 building, and we're all on the same campus. Next to us is a 3 4 building.
Across the street is a 5 6, a 7 8, etc. So our natural breakpoints, we were doing a lot of work at 3rd and 4th grade, with place based work. And then in 5th grade, because it's a 5th 6th building, evolution and development of kids, you see some of the kids that we have. Adolescents start earlier and with, especially with the era of cell phones and social media, kids doing things at that age that they used to do in middle school.
So we just embraced that. Let's, we're at a natural transition. This is a good time to. Change the conversation about, instead of which team are you going to be on of teachers, how do you want to learn? And here's a couple options.
Dr. Jim: As I think through what we're talking about you're making a transition from a district that's [00:15:00] high performing, getting them to the next level. That high performing district probably has a focus on performance on test scores. What was the conversation like when you're talking about the gaps that just a singular focus on test scores creates and you.
Tell us that story. How did you paint the full picture to shift the culture from where it was to where it is now?
Dr. Chris Timmis: That's a complicated one. So our, this has been fascinating and I struggled with it when I first got here. Our third grade reading scores have never been great given our demographic. They've been okay. But by the time our kids get to sixth, seventh and eighth grade, we have some of the highest reading and math scores in the state.
And we did nothing special to get there other than give kids choice and keep them engaged as deep as possible. And you can raise high school test scores by having strong middle school scores. So when you look at what I found in the, my first district, when we were deconstructing what it took to raise, and at the time we were on the ACT in the state.
To [00:16:00] raise the ACT scores, we raised the average ACT score about three full points in two years. And what we found is that a kid only needed to master middle school content in order to get to the average point on that ACT. So what we know is if we double down and do a great job of engaging kids in 5th through 8th grade, It makes the high school's job so much easier, and then the kids start getting more autonomy because they're older, and they have choices, and they can drive, and they get to choose for different, they start to get different goals.
But you find your high school test scores are fine because you did such a good job in middle school.
Dr. Jim: Yeah, it's interesting that you you talked about shoring up resources at the middle school level. And I. And I draw it to draw back to some of the coaching principles when I was a when I was an athlete you know the saying goes basics win matches and you need to be Solid on your foundation before you can work on like executing more Complex skills and it sounds like it's pretty much the same thing when you [00:17:00] describe it starting at the fifth and sixth grade level shoring up resources there So that's laying the foundation.
We taught, we referenced this earlier. You said that there were a lot of choice and engagement focus paths that were established within the district. Tell us a little bit more about what that looked like.
Dr. Chris Timmis: Yeah, so when a kid would get into fifth grade. For 5th and 6th, they'd have a choice between what we called Summit and what we called Pinnacle. It was their way of that they would learn. And then in 7th and 8th, they'd have a choice between Summit, Pinnacle, and then we called it Apex. It was a hybrid of the two.
In 9th grade, we did Teams for a while, and then we moved away, but then we came back to a 9th grade team and experience. Then we have a course we call Integrated Studies that kind of catches kids and is able to move the four courses and weave between the four core courses. We then when they get into high school, we give kids choices between, they can go the route of AP and they can do a full IB diploma.
They can do AP and IB courses. They can take [00:18:00] career and tech courses. They can take an early middle college option. They can, that's through a community college that we run. They can go to our alternative ed program. They can go take classes at. Eastern Michigan University in a full early college where they can go on a full four year school campus, we have all these options and we allow kids to weave between them, which there's so many choices.
We have to spend some significant time helping our parents understand all of the options our kids have on top of dual enrollment and online classes, et cetera. But it really, we give them choice and. That's helped because kids and parents get to pick what they want instead of trying to chase what they think everybody else wants them to do.
Dr. Jim: When you describe all of these different pathways, there's a risk of decision peril paralysis because you have so many different choices in front of you. So what was the infrastructure systems and processes that you put in place to help people get over that hump?
Because it sounds as somebody that's just in the passenger seat, sounds pretty overwhelming.
Dr. Chris Timmis: It is, but [00:19:00] our general model, since our kids, we're like a giant one room schoolhouse with 3, 500 kids, because they've always gone to school together. So they become used to the fact that their friend from down the street or their teammate takes different courses than them and everybody just picks something they want and in the end, high school kids are, they pick something because friends are taking it or that they saw something online, et cetera, but what it does, it picks up the masses and then we start to personalize for the rest of the kids that are in that paralysis point of not knowing what to do.
We have them go dabble in something or they take our general curriculum and It's perfectly fine. About two thirds of our kids take at least one or one or more AP or IB classes as a junior or senior. We have 250 of our thousand kids take a dual enrollment. We have hundreds of kids that do an online class here and there.
So it's just part of the culture at this point.
Dr. Jim: The other thing that I'm wondering is, like most of us grew up in a school process that is not anything like what you're [00:20:00] describing and when you look at implementing this and actually executing this, what's been the impact in terms of serving student needs and serving family needs?
How has that played a role? Because this seems like it would be more labor intensive to pull off from a family perspective and maybe even a student perspective.
Dr. Chris Timmis: Yeah. One of the things that we pride ourselves on is in K 12 education with the market now. There is only one thing that a K 12 district can provide that you can't get it anywhere else, and that's a diploma. We have a 99 percent four year graduation rate, and 97 percent of our kids with an IEP graduate on time in that four years.
And we are full inclusion. So we have, we send nobody. We have three kids that go to they go to categorical type program at a shared program. But only one is long term. The other two will be back there. They go short term and then they come back. So we really pride ourselves on, we will teach every kid.
And it's that [00:21:00] culture where everyone's in it and we pride ourselves on our job is to graduate them. And Michigan has some of the highest graduation standards in the country. And we still get them done in four years because that's our job. And we put in whatever supports they need. To be able to get kids done in that four years, and that's the measure of our success.
In the end, the test scores are great. We'd probably be higher than some districts when they'll lose five or ten percent of their kids not graduating on time, and that actually will drive your scores up. We don't fight the scores. We want a kid to graduate. We'll do everything we can to get that kid to graduate.
We start identifying and putting supports in early. And what you'll find is you'll have a kid in a family where two of the siblings go on to highly selective schools, but this other child is just lost in the mix and we're able to still get them done. So it gives us credibility with our families because we help every kid.
We do whatever we have to do.
Dr. Jim: That's that's really interesting that you describe that. The the other thing that I'm wondering is when you talk about this model, which bakes in a lot of [00:22:00] choice and flexibility and different pathways to meet students where they are, and it has family support in there as well. I would be curious how you would pull this off at a district that maybe doesn't have the resources.
So when you think about shifting to a version of this model, how would, let's say a rural district or an urban district, some a district that doesn't have the resource base, how would they pull off something like this?
Dr. Chris Timmis: What you'll find is if you do the right thing for kids and you have a compelling vision, that resources start to come to you. So in my first district, We had a fund balance of 138, 000 on a 40 million a year operation. And that was just because we sold a building for half a million. We were still able to get resources to put most of these models in place.
I wasn't there long enough to finish it all, but that's where we're heading. Here, we don't have more resources than our neighbors. We actually get very little federal funding. We still have kids that need significant supports. [00:23:00] And what we do is we just get creative. We've started multiple foundations to raise money for some of the innovation work.
We've we chase grants every chance we can. And then what we actually do is we know that if we can maximize our systems and get support for the kids, you keep the kids longer. You keep them in school all the way through graduation. So you don't lose funding for kids that would have disappeared and you're not double teaching the kids.
You're doing it right the first time.
Dr. Jim: Really interesting conversation so far we got a little taste of What you did to turn around the first district that you're in and the goal in this district was a little bit different It was already performing at a high level and you wanted to get it to the next level So when you look at The shift in programming.
What's been the impact in terms of student outcomes and performance? Now that you've had this in place.
Dr. Chris Timmis: Yeah. We're finding is we're doing a better job of helping our kids figure out who they are and have success when they graduate. We're also doing a better job [00:24:00] of making sure our kids are happy. And that they're engaged. So as we've studied our students engagement, particularly at the middle and high school, we find every time we bring in and have an external group do a validation that the engagement keeps going up.
It's not exactly where we want it yet, but we keep moving up. And we're finding staffing is so much easier when you create an environment that your teachers have autonomy, but you have systems of support in place for kids. And that you have a spirit of innovation. Like our teachers are allowed to try anything.
We tell them, go ahead and try. If you fail, just fail forward. We'll fix it and we'll move on and we'll try again. So that's been really positive. We we're one of the few districts around that truly is fully staffed, which has been fascinating.
Dr. Jim: Yeah, the staffing outcomes is really interesting. That could be a whole nother conversation because most districts are not only struggling to find talent to come in the door, they're struggling to keep the talent that they have. So that's a whole different conversation. And I'm waving my finger at you for sure.
Opening [00:25:00] that can of worms. Cause you're tempting me with it, with making this a 60 minute episode. So I want to wind this back to the big picture. And what I'd like you to do is talk to that other superintendent that's listening to this conversation, neither wants to do a turnaround where it's an underperforming district or get their performing district to the next level, based on what you did in your district, what are the key elements that they should be thinking about.
that will position them for success in their turnaround efforts.
Dr. Chris Timmis: The first thing is you have to have. a common purpose and goal, and it can't be to raise a test score. It has to be focused on kids. And what I've, what we've found is we surround ourselves with people that are relentless about helping students. And I have an interview question I ask in the final interviews of any teacher or administrator when we hire.
And I ask them, do you love to win or do you hate to lose? And there is a right and a wrong answer. I only hire people that truly hate to [00:26:00] lose. And it's not about the glory of winning. It's about, we don't want to lose the chance for every kid to be successful in our buildings. And that may mean we have to be creative.
We have to come up with flexibility and ways to be able to support kids in a unique setting, but you have to surround yourself with the right team of people that are just committed to not losing. And a kid not being successful is a loss. And then you have to start somewhere could be small, like one of the we went and it's amazing how fast it rolls.
And if you ever read like Malcolm Gladwell's tipping point or revenge of the tipping point when you get to that magic quarter or third, it's amazing how fast change happens. So You surround yourself with people that are willing to try things and you can follow all the research and says, you should do this, you should do this, you should do this, but we're in a different setting all the time.
And we need to be able to try what's going to work within our context. So if you understand your community and you understand internal and external community. You just get [00:27:00] moving, and the conditions will allow you to move as fast as you're going to be able to. So when you understand how fast a district will move, as long as you're moving, and then when the district's more ready to move faster, it'll allow you to move faster.
So you just engage small teams of teachers. Find your, like we've, I send out this thing every once in a while. Now I'm going to have to figure out how I do it different after I share this. I send out a, survey to our staff every few years and I say, every one of us has someone who energizes us, that we work with, that after we talk to them, we are just excited to go and do greater things.
Who are the people that energize you? So I end up with a list with, through the district of who our people are in the district that actually have a positive impact on their peers. And then I engage those. individual teachers and administrators into further work on piloting and trying things. And once they pilot and try, it seems to grow really quickly because they have the natural networks and that [00:28:00] impact on their peers.
So you start by engaging adults, start somewhere, and a relentless focus on kids need to be successful. How do we make that happen?
Dr. Jim: I think the part that I really like about your framework is that one of the key elements of it is identifying your evangelists who get what you're trying to do within the organization and then working through them to as a force multiplier. So that's really good stuff. If people want to continue the conversation, Chris, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Dr. Chris Timmis: Yeah, my email's on the website at dexterschools. org. Also the president of the Future Learning Council in Michigan, which is a fascinating group. Futurelearningcouncil. org. And LinkedIn, I'm LinkedIn. Happy to help talk to anybody.
Dr. Jim: I appreciate you hanging out with us and sharing your story. And we got a two for one. How do you turn around a struggling school district? And how do you go from good to great? It's a really good stuff there. When I think about this conversation and put it in the context of how a lot of school districts [00:29:00] function, one of the big metrics that you pay attention to is attendance.
And what I took away from this conversation is if you're trying to solve for attendance, really, your focus needs to be on engagement and student choice. How can we keep our students engaged over a longer period of time and embed learning into the learning paths that they want to take that best serve them where they are.
And those two elements of what you did. Really solve for that attendance issue which can solve a lot of resourcing issues that happens at the school Now when we look at the broader topic of A singular focus on test scores leaving a lot of kids behind I think that engagement focus and embedding that within the student life cycle makes a lot of sense In getting students equipped with a broader set of skills and a more diverse set of skills That better prepares them for the future of work.
So really great stuff and I and we're just scratching the surface on this So I appreciate you hanging out and sharing that with us For those of you who've [00:30:00] been listening to this conversation, if you liked the discussion, make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. If you haven't already done so, make sure you join our K 12 leadership community and then tune in next time where we'll have another great leader hanging out with us and sharing with us the game changing insights that help them build a high performing team.