A client/partner spotlight from McREL
by Michelle Askeland
Two years into the job as chief student success officer within Jeffco Public Schools’ Division of Student Success (DSS), Matt Palaoro’s curiosity grew louder and louder. “I really wanted to understand where our division has been, where we’re at today, and where we want to go,” he said.
He began to consider a division-wide program evaluation to ensure that their work was student centered and having its intended impact. Knowing that his team needed to believe in the value of a review for it to be successful, he tapped into their curiosity to help refine the evaluation’s purpose. “We wanted to take a comprehensive and objective look at our division to not only identify strengths and opportunities for growth, but also to tell our story—so we all have a collective, shared understanding to ground ourselves and propel us forward.”
DSS serves Jeffco students and families who require educational, physical, and emotional support services beyond standard programming and includes the departments of health services, student services, special education, and gifted and talented. For a large division to craft a clear roadmap for its future, it needs to deeply understand the current landscape. “We wanted to turn over every rock in every department, while also looking at our organizational effectiveness and reviewing our practices to ensure we’re aligned with our mission of inspiring success for every student, every journey, every day,” Palaoro said.
A Collaborative, Customized Evaluation Approach
While the unknown inspired the review, Palaoro also knew exactly what he didn’t want the work to result in: a 500-page boilerplate report collecting dust on his shelf—including little actionable data, big theories that are difficult to implement, and people resenting their time being wasted. Knowing this, Jeffco hired McREL International to do an external evaluation of the programs and services offered through DSS and conduct a resource allocation study and an organizational effectiveness study.
“McREL was instrumental from the get-go”
“McREL was instrumental from the get-go,” said Palaoro. “They took the time to sit down with me, one on one, to understand my vision for this project and how they could help. They also took the time to build relationships with the folks in my division and across our departments that created the psychological safety that’s needed to be vulnerable in this process.”
When reviewing a division, there’s an opportunity for district staff and evaluators to look at whether work is siloed and how resources are distributed. For those conversations to be fruitful, evaluators and staff must create a level of trust and respect that allows everyone involved to have honest conversations about how departments, programs, and workgroups interact with one another (and with students, teachers, and families), where pain points and misconceptions may exist, and where competition or stress might be felt, explained Dr. Lisa Jones, McREL’s director of research and evaluation and the project lead. An evaluation can identify and validate people’s perceptions, and provide context for why a variety of perceptions might exist. “A big piece of what made the Jeffco DSS evaluation project successful was we were able to engage with so many staff members and constituents, gather and synthesize their wide variety of input, and help the division see what its services really look like across the district,” said Jones.
It was a huge project conducted over a tight eight-month timeline, with McREL facilitating focus groups, interviews, and classroom observations in 17 schools during the spring of 2024, analyzing all the data collected during the summer, and producing a final report for the district in the fall of 2024. Palaoro thought one particularly powerful and unique piece of the project was the inclusivity of voices informing the reporting. McREL included perspectives from students, parents, educators, community members, and leadership.
“McREL…was able to get some really great feedback for us to process and reflect on.”
“McREL’s evaluation team had no bias, and when they met with parents and educators they provided a sense of safety and vulnerability for people to share honest, critical feedback that could be hard to establish if we, district staff, were the ones doing it,” said Palaoro. “McREL took that variable away and was able to get some really great feedback for us to process and reflect on.”
With the data collected, McREL supported Jeffco’s desire to have the reports be easily readable and actionable. The evaluation team created individual reports for each of the departments within DSS, in addition to an overall division summary. The reports provided a snapshot in time of what they saw across the division and included key takeaways and recommendations. The reports took what emerged from the stakeholder conversations and presented the information in a way that helped DSS chart a path forward with realistic recommendations, Jones stated. In the end, the district was satisfied with the report. “That’s what I’m most proud of, because the district staff want to make a difference for kids, and we provided them with some tools and ideas to refine and improve their work that didn’t require them to reorganize their division or go out and find additional financial resources,” Jones said.
Taking the partnership-style, customized evaluation approach one step further, McREL’s team presented their findings at a DSS team retreat. They set up six tables, one for each report, and the DSS staff spent time cycling through each table reviewing and discussing the results; then everyone came together at the end for a larger discussion. “There was nothing in the findings that surprised anybody, but being able to see it all together helped people talk to each other about their bright spots, where there might be gaps and opportunities to improve, and where they can support each other,” said Jones. “It was really compelling.”
The thoughtful intentionality of the presentation made an impact. “The McREL team took the time to share their key insights and facilitated a process that allowed us to easily digest the report,” said Palaoro. The conversations about what the evaluation team learned and enjoyed—coupled with their availability to answer questions about the key insights, takeaways, and recommendations—made them a standout thought partner, he said. “I think that’s unique, and because of the relationships that McREL established, my leadership team felt completely comfortable engaging in that work with them, which was a really cool thing to see.”
Reflections and Recommendations to Drive Meaningful Change
At the end of the project, DSS’ achieved its intended goals, as well as some bonus outcomes, such as an improved climate and culture across the division. “My team is in a place where they’re deeply reflective and ready to grow,” said Palaoro. “When I think about the process, we set it up in a way that helped my team understand that it wasn’t just about identifying our challenges, but it was really about celebrating what we do well and using that as a foundation to drive meaningful change.”
The evaluation reports also gave the team outside validation that they’re doing the right work, Palaoro said. The reports highlighted both DSS’ successes and areas for growth, as well as provided clarity in the alignment of DSS’ work across teams and identified practical strategies to improve student outcomes. The wide representation of voices also presented opportunities for further reflection. “We came to understand that our student achievement and growth data tells one story, but perception shapes our narrative,” he said. “And our narrative, from the reports, was both something to celebrate and something to challenge ourselves with as we push toward growth and the next best version of ourselves. I think those diverse perspectives are really changing a lot about how we go about our work now.”
Acting as a thought partner, McREL was asked by Palaoro to make recommendations about things they should continue to do, things they might stop doing, and things they might start doing, all in consideration of the available resources and current constraints. Palaoro and DSS took McREL’s recommendations to heart. Some of the “lower hanging fruit” recommendations are already underway, such as modernizing the post-secondary workforce readiness platform and updating parts of their websites to provide greater clarity for teachers and student families. On the organizational effectiveness side, some longer-term work has begun on realignments and structural shifts to better support student outcomes and team goals.
Continuing the momentum, the DSS leadership team is now co-leading a division-wide, multiyear, multi-phased strategic plan for student success, which the Jeffco superintendent has embraced as part of the district’s larger strategic plan, according to Palaoro. The data and the perceptions gathered have been invaluable in helping to develop the plan. The long-term benefits to students and the shared team understanding of where they are and the passion to get to where they want to go were worth every penny, he said.
“My team has never been this empowered before”
“My team has never been this empowered before,” said Palaoro. “And I think the key driver was taking the time to embrace what we learned through the program evaluation process and now use that process to drive everything that we do moving forward.”
