Dr. Katie Drucker, Associate Vice President of Research, Evaluation & Impact, and Dr. Liliana Polo-McKenna, Vice President of School Leadership Support recently presented at the annual Carnegie Foundation Summit to a standing-room only crowd of educators and others in the field of education on Measuring What We Value: Internal Improvement Processes for External Impact.
The audience learned about NYCLA’s internal process for connecting the measurement of our impact on educational leadership support and preparation with our vision to “improve academic outcomes nationwide, particularly among the most vulnerable students through high-quality school leadership.”
Katie and Liliana shared NYCLA’s recently developed Results Framework which operationalizes the organization’s vision for impact into key result areas with specific indicators of success outlined within each area. All data collected by the organization map back to these result areas and indicators of success, ensuring that our measurement efforts align with organizational goals and priorities. The creation and implementation of the Results Framework is deepening NYCLA’s internal evaluation strategy and process to be more rigorous, systemic and relevant.
Katie and Liliana also described the organization’s shift from serving a single client, the New York City Department of Education, to leading hundreds of engagements across the country and how this transition has strengthened our commitment to prioritizing context and co-constructing with our clients what success will look like. This shift has greatly contributed to our impact measurement strategies to date and will continue to inform our internal evaluation work as it evolves.
It is our hope that NYCLA’s work in measuring and defining impact will benefit other organizations or districts that are looking to build similar evaluation structures and processes to better define their impact. This work will also facilitate NYCLA’s ability to communicate about our engagements and results.