2024 Cradle to Career Network Convening Award Winners: Interview with Cleveland Academy of Leadership

Welcome to Together for Together for Change, the podcast where we explore the transformative power of systems change and civic infrastructure. 

In this episode, we interview Cradle to Career Network members who won the Cheryl Broadnax Award for Innovation and Results at our 2024 Cradle to Career Network Convening and learn more about the work that won them this award. 

Learn more at StriveTogether.org.

Transcript

00:19 Dr. Paris Woods, chief program officer at StriveTogether: 

Hello, I'm Dr. Paris Woods, chief program officer at StriveTogether and your host for today's episode of Together for Change. In this mini season, we're celebrating the transformative work of leaders and community partnerships that are driving meaningful change across the country. Over three episodes, we're speaking with the winners of the 2024 Annual Cradle to Career Network Convening awards. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Marquice Clark, principal of the Cleveland Academy of Leadership in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Dr. Clark and his team have been honored with the Cheryl Broadnax Award for Innovation and Results. This recognition highlights their impactful partnership with the Spartanburg Academic Movement, a local Cradle to Career Network member. Together, they've leveraged continuous improvement principles to drive academic success and foster a supportive community for students, staff and families. Dr. Clark's leadership, combined with the dedication and collaboration of the entire Cleveland Academy staff, has helped the school achieve transformative progress, culminating in its first ever “excellent” rating in 2023. This milestone reflects the team's commitment to unlocking the potential of every student through innovative practices, increased proficiency in reading and math and a supportive, inclusive school culture. Dr. Clark, thank you for joining us today. 

01:58 Dr. Marquice Clark, principal of the Cleveland Academy of Leadership  

Well, thank you for having me, and I appreciate that so well-put introduction. I'm gonna have to use that at the staff meeting tomorrow.

02:06 Dr. Paris Woods

Awesome. Well, to start, could you share a bit about your role at the Cleveland Academy of Leadership and what receiving this award means to you, personally and professionally?

02:18 Dr. Marquice Clark
 
Sure, so I serve as the principal here at the Cleveland Academy of Leadership. I like to call myself, I guess, the servant principal, because I really see my role as one that serves everyone else in the building to create an academic environment that's conducive for learning and teaching at a very high level. And so I've been in this role now six years. I've been here at Cleveland 13 years, and I've been in administration here in this building for nine years. So I've had the opportunity to serve at this school on every level — teacher, assistant principal and now principal. 

Receiving the Cheryl Broadnax award for continuous improvement was very special. You know, it's not often that when individuals or organizations receive awards that they actually know the person that the award is named for, and so I knew Cheryl, and Cheryl was a dear friend, but also a warrior of equity and advocacy around what she believed was possible for children in public education from her work in Cincinnati. Cheryl would come down monthly for meetings, and I always saw her — just a ball of fun, but also someone who was an encourager, a cheerleader for me. She would constantly tell me: “Marquice, it can be done. It can be done. You're on the right track.” 

Because a lot of what we were trying to do in those early years, roughly six years ago, just hadn't been done in the building yet, and so I was getting a lot of resistance early on in my leadership. But Cheryl was a constant reminder that it could be done, and just hang in there and kind of follow her lead as we sought to implement continuous improvement. 

04:08 Dr. Paris Woods

Well, Cleveland Academy has achieved significant improvements in reading and math proficiency with students’ performance increasing by 20 to 40 percentage points in just a few years. Dr Clark, what was the initial turning point that set this transformation in motion?

04:27 Dr. Marquice Clark 

I would say the initial turning point would have to be when folks realized that I was going to be a man of my word, that I was going to follow through on what it is that I promised them. And so early on in our key driver diagram, there were some things we put out there, not just around our goals, but also in terms of our improvement efforts. 
 
And one of the things that I called out was a toxic data culture and how we were going to fix that. And I know that in education, oftentimes we've used data as a hammer as opposed to a flashlight, and so I made a promise to our teachers that I would never call them in when there was bad data, right? If the test scores are not coming favorably through our benchmarking or our mid-year assessments, I would never call them in for that. Instead, it will be about the problem of practice. So, what is that I see when I come into the classroom, and if and when I see X, Y and Z in the classroom that's not congruent to what it is that we know is best practice for our children, then that's where we would have a conversation. 

That was a crucial turning point for us, because it allowed them to understand my perspective, in that I understand what it's like serving in the building here, but also I'm not going to treat you unfairly where support and accountability would not coexist. And so they were able to see that I was serious about support and accountability going hand in hand, and that one would never really, I guess, out-sustain the other, or be more prevalent in the building than the other. Whatever I'm asking them to do, I'm going to support them to do it. So that was a crucial turning point for us, absolutely,

06:20 Dr. Paris Woods
 
And a great testament to your leadership to sort of engender that level of trust with your staff. I'm curious, how did you rally your staff and community around this really ambitious vision? 

06:34 Dr. Marquice Clark
 

There were a couple of things we did. One, I became extremely vulnerable with my faculty and staff. I allow them to see the authentic version of myself in understanding what it is that I had hoped for these children and how much I was willing to give to make it happen. And I had asked that they buy in and contribute the same way, and to do no less than what they see me do, but also feel free to not do any more than they see me do. And to really embody that idea that I'm going to be your mark, and if you just keep me in eyesight, we're going to be okay. But don't fall too far behind. That was one. 
 
The other is I completely reduced the fear of failure in the building, and so I made sure that they understood that there was nothing to fear under my leadership. I also made it very clear that I'm not in the business of firing people. I want you to be here, and I'm going to support you every step of the way. And the only way you're not going to be successful here at Cleveland is if you give up. Because, as I've said many times before, CI — continuous improvement — is more than just a culture tool. It more than tells us the methodology to improve a system. It also lends itself to a climate in that it tells us this is the way we feel around this place, and that I'm going to support you every step of the way, as long as you don't quit.  

And so it's really about determining where those variabilities are and reducing variabilities between classrooms, up the hall, down the hall and across the hall, but the only way that can really be done in a very authentic way is when people feel safe to share, and they are safe to say, “Hey, I failed today. This didn't go well. How can you help me?” And so knowing that they had a principal in the building who was not out to get them, but who was out to support them every step of the way, really made a difference, and they saw that I was serious about my efforts. 
 
But that can all be lip service. It's really what people see in the building. And so when veteran teachers see me coaching the obvious weakest teacher in the building and see that I didn't fire the weakest teacher in the building, they knew that I was serious. Like, “Wow, other principals would have gotten rid of this person a year ago or two years ago.” But we're still coaching those folks because I'm very serious about them growing and developing. But also, I don't want to be a hypocrite — if I'm going to demand that teachers support children, be sympathetic and empathetic to try to find solutions that work for every child in their classroom, it has to start with me. 
 
Roland Barth, an educational writer, says that, contrary to popular belief, the most important relationship in the building is not the relationship between teacher and student. Roland Barth says that the most important relationship is between principal and teacher, and all the other relationships in the building mimic that relationship, and so I use them as my students, as my model to display. And to teach what it is that I expect from them as it relates to how they pour into students and how to support families. 

10:07 Dr. Paris Woods

Thank you for sharing that. It's clear that change starts at the top, so having a strong leader in place is the key to sort of seeing the change that you want to see at the student level. 
 
 So Dr Clark, your team's commitment to continuous improvement has been instrumental in your school success. You've introduced tools and methods that complement instructional strategies, creating a culture of reflection, adaptation and growth among staff and students alike. For our listeners who are considering implementing continuous improvement tools in their school districts, I would love to hear more about how you first got buy-in, in using these principles with both staff and students, and how you've been able to maintain momentum.

10:53 Dr. Marquice Clark
 
Great question. So early on, and I guess it's fair, but then maybe not fair, but early on, we had a CI coach, a continuous improvement coach, and what I noticed was we were attempting to shift paradigm in the building. But then also I noticed that the CI coach owned the work, and the work was owned and curated and supported and defended by one person. And I didn't feel that was the best way for this work to really penetrate, really kind of resonate throughout the entire building. But it was good early on, because it allowed us to get our feet sort of wet to see what this work was and what it looked like to learn the terminology, to learn the methodology early on, to really kind of have vocabulary lessons and expectation lessons around CI. 

But at the end of my first year, going into my second year, I learned that we were not going to really get the best out of CI as long as one person owned the work. And so what I then did was redesign my entire coaching staff to not only be content area experts, but also experts and drivers of continuous improvement. And so my reading coach, my math coach and my technology coach all went through training for continuous improvement, and all of our instructional units were driven by continuous improvement. All of our PDSA cycles that were integrated into our instructional units — all of that was intentional. Our mid-year assessment points, our pre- and post-assessments that we do throughout the course of the year. All of that was integrated and driven by CI and so instead of it becoming something that one person owned and cherished in an office in the building now you couldn't escape CI because it was built into every single thing that we did in the building. 

So that was really one of the things we did to make sure we got buy in, but also to create momentum. One of the other things we did early on, Dr. Woods, was I operated, and it started with the coalition of the willing, you know, not wanting to create friction in an organization where oftentimes I've seen leaders use these sort of interventions for the weaker teacher. And then what ends up happening when you do it that way is folks begin to feel insecure, and folks talking to organization. And then now, instead of creating an environment where we have sort of these data-neutral conversations in that you don't feel intimidated by the numbers that we see showing up on a piece of paper as a result of student mastery or non-mastery, that still doesn't do anything if the educator feels incompetent or is viewed as incompetent. 
 
And so instead of working with those folks who needed it the most with coaching cycles rooted in CI, we did correlation of the wheel. And so we got folks who were already high flyers, who were looking for areas to improve. So we did that our first year or two, but now what we do is it's not voluntary. Everyone goes through a CI coaching cycle. You don't get a choice. We tell you when you start your cycle, and you can determine what it is you want your CI coaching cycle to be around. It can be an instructional practice. It can be classroom management. It can be something personal, like, hey, you know, I really want to get to work on time, or I really want to be able to leave work at the end of the school day. I don't want to stay here ‘til six o'clock anymore. Can we do a PDSA cycle around getting off work in a timely manner so that I can give my family more of me? And so we do those sort of things so that folks understand what the objective is, and so that acclimation isn't so difficult when it's time to have a conversation about the problem of practice, because we've done this and it's deeply rooted in our climate and culture.

15:19 Dr. Paris Woods

And you've used the term “PDSA cycle.” For our listeners who may not be familiar. Could you just give us a snippet on sort of what you all do or how you implement that?

15:28 Dr. Marquice Clark 

Sure. So PDSA is Plan, Do, Study, Act. P is for plan, D is for do. S is for study. A is for Act, and that act has several opportunities to adopt, adapt or abandon. And so early on in our CI journey, just after coming back from STLP — the StriveTogether leadership program — and we were bringing CI to Spartanburg, I remember us having this very elaborate, high-level conversation about, well, how are we going to do it? Is it going to be PDSA? Is it going to be Lean Six Sigma? Six Sigma? Like, how are we going to do this? 

And I was then having a conversation. It was myself; the former executive director of Spartanburg Academic Movement, John Stockwell; and Colin, who works at StriveTogether. And so Colin says, “Well, Marquice, which one feels the most natural to teachers?” You know, and Colin, he — his very savvy way, he already knew the answer. He just wanted a practitioner from the field to say it. “Well, Colin, really Plan, Do, Study, Act is a natural, cyclical process that teachers go through every day, every year, every minute, every hour in a classroom.” 
 
So it's the most natural thing for an educator to engage in, and so that was the seed that was planted to bring PDSA into the building, because it was an easier and a natural flow to what teachers already do. We already plan our lessons. We already teach the lessons. We always assess the level of student mastery based on the instruction that we facilitated and the act well, we know we always, sometimes have to re-teach or we move on. So that's what PDSA is and how we have used it in the building.

17:13 Dr. Paris Woods

Thank you. So cultural responsiveness has been a key element of Cleveland Academy's approach to education, by embedding students, languages, experiences and identities into the curriculum, you've inspired greater engagement and achievement among students who have historically been underserved. How has this approach impacted student engagement and learning outcomes?

17:39 Dr. Marquice Clark

So I'll tell you that we know our students come to us with an abundant amount of experiences, right? I often tell teachers here that, because of the poverty and the trauma that our students have experienced, while on paper, you may be looking at a seven- or eight-year-old, but because of their life experiences and the things that they've seen and endured, you could very well be looking at a 22- or 23-year-old. And so, while their bodies aren't there, the things that they've been exposed to in a trauma certainly puts them in a place where they're far more mature than they present.  

And so, knowing that, one of the things I’ll tell you, Dr. Woods, was I made sure early on that we defined our own best practices. So, I use COVID as an opportunity. I never forget one of our community quarterbacks — a gentleman who strongly advocates for and supports the school — came to me, it was the summer of 2020, the school was closed, and he says: “Marquice, how are you going to take advantage of the pandemic?” I was puzzled. I'm like: “What do you mean?” He says: “More millionaires are created in a time of disaster and dysfunction than any other time in economic history.” He said: “So, thinking that the same could be true for education, how can you leverage this pandemic to best position your school?” And it really blew my mind. 

But one of the things we did was we just wiped it all clean, Dr. Woods. If it didn't make sense, and if it didn't align itself to what was culturally appropriate for our children, we had the perfect excuse to do away with it. So while everyone was doing nothing, we were planning and plotting. And so we did away with everything. And I do mean everything, everything that was not aligned to outcomes for our students. So we were able to use the excuse of COVID, but the entire time, we were really plotting and planning on identifying what was best practices for our students. 

So we hear this all the time, and you hear educators and practitioners and researchers say: “Well, you know, it's about what's best practice.” Well, with a school that has a transiency index of 70%, an absenteeism index of 84% and a poverty index of 92%, there's not a whole lot of best practice that have been called out in research for schools like ours. And so we got very serious and focused around finding out what was best practice for our students. And so what we discovered was that when language and curriculum are congruent with their own experiences, they were able to engage at a deeper level and were more committed and bought into mastery. 

Let me give you an example. So one of the things I realized early on coming off of STLP, at the SAM office, there was data chart. So SAM had data in the entire office, and I saw something, Dr. Woods, that really caught my attention. I saw that Hispanic students were outperforming Black students in the third grade. I'm thinking, that’s interesting. Well, that same year, Hispanic students had the same graduation rate as white students. That's very interesting. And so I got curious, and it became the subject matter for my dissertation. And what I learned was that Hispanic students, white students and Black students all enter into South Carolina public school systems at different levels. Okay to not get into my defense again, what I'll say is I learned that there was no significant statistical difference between white students and Black students when they began their academic career at 4K. Hispanic students were typically three levels behind at the point of the initial screener. So how is it that Hispanic students can surpass Black students in just a matter of four to five years, to outperform Black students on a reading assessment when it is not their language of origin in that it's not their original language that they speak at home. 

But however, Black students were behind, and they began at the same level as white students in the state of South Carolina, but ended up coming in third or fourth places, sometimes in terms of reading proficiency. But what I learned was that it had a great deal to do with the level of support that children were receiving once they enter into South Carolina public school systems. Hispanic students, of course, were getting ML support through ML intervention as well as advocacy and extracurricular opportunities through mentorship or either through additional tutoring. Meanwhile, Black students, as we all know, were, especially in the South, they were practitioners of African American Vernacular English, and so they were not hearing nor seeing their language of origin anywhere in the academic setting. And so one of the things we put in place was an Orton-Gillingham instructional program that allowed our teachers to explicitly teach the rules of phonics for mainstream English that were not prevalent in African American Vernacular English, and that really allows students to sort of bridge the gap between the language or the English that they spoke at home and the English that is expected and the English that they would encounter in their academic setting. 

That's one example. The other we did through our curriculum, in that we made sure to use text that students were able to identify with. So anyone in education will tell you that comprehension is deeply rooted in exposure. And so oftentimes our children struggle with comprehension because they've not been exposed to some of those things. But to use their prior knowledge, the things that they've been exposed to, to provide an opportunity to root the conceptual knowledge in their own experience, and from there, be able to expand on the conceptual knowledge around either standards or experiences has really played a crucial role. So we did that through text so making sure that our curriculum that is designed for our literary units had text that offered an opportunity for students to see themselves and their experiences in the books and the passages that they read, but also in our library selection. We completely overhauled the kinds of texts that were available for our students in the media center, and so we made sure that brown students and Black students were main characters of some of the books that were offered in the library, and that really made a difference for our students.

25:09 Dr. Paris Woods

I am appreciating your ability to turn research into practice. Have you considered publishing some of your findings?

25:17 Dr. Marquice Clark

I was asked to do that, but I had, I have no interest in it, really,

25:25 Dr. Paris Woods

Hopefully folks are taking copious notes as they listen in to us, so that they can implement some of these best practices in their own context. So, Dr. Clark, many schools across the country face challenges similar to those Cleveland Academy encountered, barriers like limited resources and systemic inequities. Yet your work demonstrates that transformation is possible through vision, persistence and strategic action. What lessons have been most important in your journey, and what advice would you give to other school leaders who want to drive transformational change for their students?

26:03 Dr. Marquice Clark

So that's the heavy question. It's going to take a little bit of time. So it looks like we have a few more minutes than I expected. So I'll I'll try to give you all the lessons that I've learned succinctly, but to the listeners, what I'll say is, it really begins with an expectation. And I feel so passionately about that piece. So, Dr. Woods, we absolutely live in one of the most robust economic powerhouses, in terms of the United States of America. Our military might, all that we've accomplished, the United States of America is a mighty, mighty country. Our resources, in so many ways, are still unknown and untapped. I often tell folks that, what, 60, 70, years ago, maybe, we discovered how to split the atom. I've never seen an atom. 20 years after that, we figured out how to fuse the atom. We've measured the whole world, far and wide. We know the deepest point of the sea. You can't get lost on this globe. We measured the entire globe over. We know the distance from Spartanburg to the moon. Honest to goodness, we do. We know how long it'll take to get to Jupiter. But you mean to tell me we can't teach poor Black and brown children how to read? You honestly mean to tell me we can't teach rural white children how to read, those who grew up in the mill villages of American south or America's Midwest? Are you honestly telling me we can't do that in America? Yes, we can, but it's really a matter of what we want to do, and it's really a matter of expectations. 

And Dr. Woods, I've spent some time in thinking through the ideal of a problem. And a problem is really when expectations and reality are not congruent. And I would tell all other leaders who are in this work to have an expectation of excellence, but then to also have a problem with the problem. The real problem in America's education system is that we have no problem at all. Let me explain it to you. Today is Monday. My time is 12:39. When we get off of this podcast, I'm going to take my lunch break. I'm going to Chick-fil-A and I'm going to order me a Deluxe with Colby Jack cheese, a Sprite, no ice, with Polynesian sauce. Now I expect Chick-fil-A to have my Deluxe and my Sprite within a reasonable time, because Chick-fil-A and I have developed this expectation that if you come to my restaurant on Monday, whatever that menu item is, we will have it ready for you in a reasonable time. Now, if I go to Chick-fil-A on Sunday at one o'clock and expect a Deluxe, we ought not have a problem because Chick-fil-A has established an expectation that we don't serve chicken on Sundays. We're closed. 

The problem with America's public education system is that we expect poor children to do poorly in school. We expect brown children to do poorly in school. We expect Black children to do poorly in school. That's why it is the way that it is. I cannot be convinced that in this country we can't solve this very solvable problem. We can, we just don't want to, and even in our best attempt, “Right, folks?” — No, they push back against it like, “No.” It really is a matter of expectation. When you think about an educator, we all take Ed 101 — we take Education 101 — where we come in and we learn the nuts and bolts of what education is and what it means to be a teacher. And then shortly after that, we take data and statistics in education, and it's there where we are introduced to the bell curve. And we then learn, well, who's at the back end of that bell curve, and who's at the front of the bell curve, and then who represents that 68% in the hump of the bell curve. And while these preservice teachers walk into education with the hope of being that catalyst for change, somewhere along their matriculation, they are indoctrinated with this idea that some children can't do it. 

And so when they walk into a school like Cleveland with a high poverty index, a high transiency index and high minority index, they don't have a problem, because now they see congruency in the expectation and the reality. But I would challenge all educators, community members, to take time to have their paradigm shifted, to be exposed to the idea of what could really happen when we shift our expectations. Now it's not all teachers. There are children as well who have a different expectation of their life. And so when they walk into a third grade classroom and they can't compute mathematically or read on grade level, well they don't really have a problem with it, because someone has managed their expectations and their reality has been: “Well, people like me don't do it anyway.” And then Mama doesn't have a problem with it, because that was Mama's experience, and grandma doesn't have a problem with it because that was grandma's experience. 
 
And so when we call and we have these conferences, and we sent home the reports, and we show that Johnny is not on grade level… It's really not a problem, because in so many ways, it's what's expected. And so we have to shift our expectations. That's the number one lesson I think I have learned in this work of supporting this effort to turn around the school. 

The other is, I think we have to be careful in how we tell stories. Oftentimes we tell stories to make ourselves out to be the hero, and then what ends up happening is, you know, other communities and other schools that say, well, we don't have that, and they feel limited. But it all begins with a belief system in that you don't have to have a Marquice Clark. Trust me, wherever you are, wherever you are listening from, there is a Marquice Clark in your community. And if anything I've said resonates with you, your Marquice Clark is looking at you in the mirror. You just have to start and have a different set of expectation for what's possible for our children. No one is coming to save us. No one's coming to save our students, except for us. And so we have to do this work. 

The other I would say, is innovation. Oftentimes it's just hard. I won't say never — because we certainly have been innovative out of fear — but innovation can really thrive when people feel safe, to take risks, to feel like they can learn through trial and error, and not feel like they're going to be fired or dismissed or outcast for trying something new. One of the things that always irritated me, Dr. Woods, was this idea that folks would come up to me, and I know this is going to sound arrogant, but I would have practitioners come to me and tell me what was needed at Cleveland. And I would scratch my head, because I would think, when you were here 10 years before me, 15 years before me, you've been in the district 30 years, so if you knew it, why didn't you do it? So the other lesson I learned is that it's far easier to talk it than it is to walk it. And you have to have the heart, you have to have the bravery to stand on what it is you believe is possible, and then be courageous enough to follow through on those initiatives. 

Nothing we've done here at Cleveland existed prior to myself, my admin team getting here, we built every bit of it. I was talked about, laughed at several times over, but we stuck it out. And I thank goodness for Strive[Together]. I say it all the time. StriveTogether and our backbone organization — the Spartanburg Academic Movement — and the Northside Development Group. Anytime you are looking to bring forth a new order of things, as I said in my acceptance speech at our Convening, men don't readily believe in a new order of things until they’re past assessing them, and it's partly due to the incredulity of men. That’s Machiavelli, The Prince. And so practically, though, you need someone to provide cover for you as you introduce a new order of things, I always use the military analogy when you try to advance the front. Someone has to provide air support and you need a sniper. Someone has to be on a higher level to say, hey, enemy on your left, you might want to take a different path. And SAM, Strive and the Northside Development Group have been that cover for me, as we have done what many have considered to be impossible here at Cleveland,

I'm not the hero of this story. I would consider myself the host. I've opened the doors to my office and to this building. Anyone who has a heart for children and has wanted to come in to offer their expertise or resources, I've sat them down, and we've collaborated strategically in a way that allows better outcomes for children. So I would say, be careful of making yourself the hero, because folks feel like the work can't go on without you. Instead, position yourself to be the host of excellence and not the hero of it.

36:42 Dr. Paris Woods

Amen, wise words spoken. Dr Marquis Clark, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing the story of the Cleveland Academy of Leadership's transformation. Your work exemplifies the values of innovation, results and continuous improvement that the Cheryl Broadnax Award celebrates. 

For our listeners, stay connected with us by visiting StriveTogether.org for updates on our work and upcoming podcast episodes. You can also learn more about the Spartanburg Academic Movement and the Cleveland Academy of Leadership by visiting LearnWithSAM.org. Until next time, this has been Together for Change.