Eva Mejia:
The ideas of systemic racism and systems thinking are not inherently different.

Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton. In this episode, Stacey Caillier, head of the center for research on equity and innovation at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education is interviewing Eva Mejia. Eva is Chief Program & Strategy Officer at Big Picture Learning, which is an international network of over 65 schools committed to putting students at the center of their own learning. Those are just really, really cool schools. Now, Stacey and Eva first met when Eva was director of networked improvement science for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which pioneered the use of continuous improvement and improvement science in education.
Before we get to the interview, I want to give you a brief glossary of terms you’ll hear in this episode that might be new to you. First, an aim statement is a brief statement that a team writes explaining what their improvement is trying to accomplish. Next, a driver diagram is a visual representation of the factors that the team believes will drive improvement. In other words, the aim statement shows the destination and the driver diagram shows what the team believes needs to change in order to get there. And there’s one person I need to tell you about, Eva was going to mention Deming, and she’s talking about W. Edwards Deming. He was a 20th century management theorist, whose ideas about improvement transformed Toyota, the Japanese car company after they adopted them. And today, he’s probably the single most influential writer on what we now call improvement science. Okay. Let’s get into it.

Stacey Caillier:
So you are the chief program and strategy officer at Big Picture Learning, but I first met you when you were a director of Network Improvement Science for the Carnegie Foundation. And I wanted to reach out to you because I was in a recent meeting with you when you introduced yourself as someone super passionate about integrating improvement science and equity, which is something I’m also super passionate about. So I’m really looking forward to this conversation.

Eva Mejia:
Great. Well, thank you for having me. In my mind, that’s the only type of improvement science I’m interested in doing. So I’m glad to be here and to get to dig in some of these questions.

Stacey Caillier:
Awesome. Just to help us get grounded in who you are, can you share with us your identity markers and how they inform how you show up in the world and in your work?

Eva Mejia:
I’m happy to name them and also name that they’re much more than the identity markers and that’s part of the tension, I think. But as far as some of the ones that describe me is I am Mexican. So I grew up in Tijuana, very proud of being from Tijuana. And of course, then that makes me an immigrant to the U.S., also makes me Latina. I am cisgender and able bodied. And I think those are some of the big ones. And how it impacts? I mean, in some ways I have no choice, that’s what I am, I don’t have something to compare it to.

But one of the things that I think has really shaped my worldview is this growing up on both sides of the border. And the border, sort of the front better thinking in, and frankly, growing up with seeing it as division and not so positive. Mostly from the San Diego side, not so positive towards Mexico or Tijuana. And so for me, I’m very proud of where I come from. And it’s been actually a huge source of innovation and insight because as I’ve grown up, what I’ve realized is that borders are actually super, super interesting places of innovation because it’s these merging of cultures.

So I’ve found that that worldview really stays with me and it’s been actually a source of strength. So a lot of times when I see sort of divided worlds I know how to bridge and navigate and actually see that as a source of innovation. I also I know what it’s like to be bothered and to come from a place that you love and that you see a lot of beauty, but that other people don’t don’t see that. And so I hold that dear to my heart and it’s important.

Stacey Caillier:
Thank you so much for sharing that, Eva. So can you tell us a little bit about how did you come to Improvement Science?

Eva Mejia:
Yeah. I should start by saying I came to Carnegie mostly because the network side, less than improvement science and more than networks. How I got into sort of coaching for data is actually kind of that was the gateway drug, that was the beginning. And what it was is at the beginning of my career, I was a social worker. And I did work around student services and working with community members, volunteers, kind of like the whole support circle around schools and students. And I didn’t go into teaching because I just didn’t feel there was anything in the K-12 space that I could be excited about. And, of course, this is I didn’t know there was places like Big Picture or High Tech. And so I did support services and I started a master’s degree to become a school counselor.

And I was like I’m done figuring out what I want to do when I grow up, this is what I will do. I’m sort of giving up on systems. I will support who I can in this circle, right? That I work with. And while I was there, I met a professor who was the first time that I had a professor that lived in Chula Vista that was Latino that knew the border, knew the issues that I cared about and was doing really awesome work. And so he mentored me and we were doing work, which now I would name human-centered design. So we were using focus groups to inform student success initiatives in community colleges.

And the first time I saw us present focus group data to community college deans and department heads. And when they started to say, “Oh, that’s what’s going on? Yeah, we can fix that.” And really start to solve things based on what students needed, I was like, “Wait, what is that thing?” Because when I was a social worker I could be sort of brushed off as being like, “Oh, well you’re the bleeding heart.” Or, “You’re just thinking this way or that way.” And now I was like, “Wait, so you put it into PowerPoints and somehow like people listen.” I was like, “What is that thing, right?”

So that’s kind of how I got into it. It wasn’t because I was any kind of stats nerd or anything like that, it was frankly because I saw the power of it. And it was this language that could bridge students and the humans that I cared about and the folks that were running the systems. And so that’s how I got into it. And then I was mentored by that professor and another professor who did hardcore stats. And so he was like, “Well, you can come into my classes for free.” And so that’s how I started doing statistics by auditing classes and checking them out.

Stacey Caillier:
I hear a lot of talk where it’s almost people see themselves in two different camps where there’s we’re the improvement camp, we’re the equity camp, and there’s kind of this idea that they’re two separate things. And I’d love just to hear your perspective on how do you make sense of those camps? What’s the intersection of the two? And if they’re even are camps, what do they need to learn from each other?

Eva Mejia:
Whenever I hear that, that breaks my heart, because like I said, I wouldn’t do any other kind of improvement science work if it wasn’t for a variety of reasons. Like I said, I’m not naturally drawn to hardcore statistics or any of those data analysis kind of stuff. So fundamentally, I think there’s more of a historical, social political reason why we ended up with these camps. And if people are seeing it that way, I don’t think it has to be because of the topics, the improvement science is not inherently white centered, I don’t think. And so it’s more about who’s using it? Who’s drawn to it? Where it goes? That it has that.
But to make more clear why I see that intersection is because all the aims and all those tools the purpose is to make things better for folks of color, for people in marginalized communities, for low-income students. And I think that the tools are super helpful. The tools tell you can eliminate things that sometimes we are uncomfortable, right? So a great way that people like to start equity conversations as sort of a tried and true is to make data visible, right? You disaggregate. And all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh, we felt really good about our things.” But when we look at the variation, it turns out we have issues that every other place has, right?

The ideas of systemic racism and systems thinking are not inherently different. And so I think in some ways, I mean the half-empty, half-full is maybe people that would not be drawn to the equity conversations or starting from a race conversation is a little too much. Maybe they would feel more comfortable through coming in from the data side, maybe it allows for different entry points.

Stacey Caillier:
It’s interesting, I feel we’ve come to this place in our own networks where we’re no, no, no, we can’t do the systems work unless you’re willing to do the self work and the interpersonal work?

Eva Mejia:
Well, I mean you can approach it from you have to do the self work or you can also like straight up approach it from the science. You just don’t have the expertise at the table for the thing you’re trying to do. And we should talk a lot about the types of knowledge that are required, and we would push back on that. But it’s not just about research knowledge and content knowledge. So we need the teachers in the room that know what it’s like to teach young people how to read and who’ve done it for a long time? We need the school folks to tell us about what it looks like in the environment of a school? Well, we also need the expertise of what it’s like to be a middle school boy or to walk around as a Black man in America? I don’t know what that’s like? I don’t experience it on an everyday basis. And so that is expertise, crucial expertise that you need in the room.

So it doesn’t even have to be a conversation of you have to do the personal work, it’s just you can also take it from a very technical, you just don’t have the knowledge. The other thing that people did as sometimes they want to work on an issue that has to do with Black and Brown students, but their driver diagram and their tools do not mention race at all. And I’ve always felt that’s not right, that doesn’t make sense. I think that sometimes it’s a philosophical answer. People say, “Well, what does that the tide that rises all boats? So good pedagogy or good support will improve for everybody, so let’s do that.”
And sometimes there’s philosophical beliefs, sometimes it’s also political. You can’t say that you’re putting resources specifically to support some students and more than others. But I actually in the conversation we were in last, I straight up asked Don Berwick and provost, and I asked him, I was like, “Do you think that you can have an aim that is about race or that it’s about a particular population and have a driver diagram that doesn’t aim that?’ And they were like, “No, absolutely not.” Which is funny. Because in education I feel it’s more debated and it was interesting to get these two informant gurus to be like, “No, absolutely not. You can’t.”

Stacey Caillier:
Right. That’s a perfect segue to our next question, which was when I think about improvement for equity and what drew me to improvement as a framework for learning and collective action it’s this idea that’s when it’s done really well, it actually requires a fundamental shift in who has power? And who is seen as having valuable expertise and perspective to offer to your point? It’s about engaging people across the system, including the students and families that we’re most trying to serve. So I’d love just to hear your thoughts on how do you see power showing up in positive and not so positive ways in how improvement is rolling out in education?

Eva Mejia:
I mean, you hit right on it. The power is always an issue and it’s always in the room, right? And there are ways that improvement science work can be done without disrupting power structures that then are not going to lead to fundamental change. So the example of having an improvement team that has no expertise or has limited expertise around the folks you’re trying to serve that you didn’t change power, you didn’t change what expertise is in the room, you didn’t change who’s there. In fact, you can have young people in the room and still not change the power and have it not be questioned. So power absolutely has to be addressed.

And in fact, some of the writings from that Deming worry about that. A lot of his management was about connecting decision-making closer to the person that has the expertise. And so the whole having a string on pole to stop the assembly line or to have teams of nurses make decisions and not have to go to doctors or wait for somebody from above that is actually more separate to make decisions, so that’s embedded in there. And so similarly, I think to do good equity-centered improvement work you’re shifting power and that makes us uncomfortable.

Because a lot of times, those of us that are in roles where we get paid to do this, that’s power. And we have degrees, right? It’s kind of a problem where everybody is trying to improve education was able to figure out how to get a college degree. And so whether we liked it or not, whether splitting scar does or not, we figured out how to do it, and that is its own limitation. So that’s kind of about the who and the roles and the power and decision making.

The other big one is choosing problems, and the framing of problems doesn’t go questioned. So one that a lot of people know about this sort of the framing around the achievement gap, right? That is a type of framing that somebody decided. And there’s visualizations. Tony Bryk used to tell me that when you create your visualization, you’re basically deciding what you want people to be thinking and how you want them to be thinking about that.

So when you have a graph that is done in a certain way and it compares everybody else to White students, the gap is about closing the gap, therefore, making it more where White students are. You’ve centered White students. If you center the problem around getting closer to whiteness, whether you wanted to or not, whether it was intentional or not, you’ve done that. So there’s a lot of choice in how things are framed and where efforts are put. And are you blaming the students, right?

There’s a lot of benevolent improvement science where we’re like, “Oh, we really want to help students navigate and be resilient and let’s work on their sense of belonging.” And sometimes I’m like, “Well, we don’t belong.” I can tell you, I didn’t belong in any of the places where I went to school. I didn’t have a sense of belonging because it didn’t exist, I had to find the pockets. And to be honest, I don’t know that I want to belong to White supremacy culture, I don’t. So I don’t want support in helping me belong to that. I probably need to code, I’ve had to code switch and figure out how to make it through systems, but that’s very different.

So the framing of the problem, the framing of the solution, those are big sources of power that often go unquestioned. If all the solutions are about the people we’re trying to help making changes then that one really hurts. Because it’s like you’re inherently saying that whether you want to or not, that one that needs to change in the problem lies with the young person and that one it’s just hard, it’s hard to see. It’s also hard for me when people don’t see that it’s a problem.

Stacey Caillier:
I love your term of benevolent improvement science because I think it’s so perfectly captures this idea of we’re going to do for rather than with. And I’m curious, have you seen examples in networks or even just small little moments where you feel this is improvement science that truly engages students and families as partners in the work? Can you describe any moments like that and what that actually looked like?

Eva Mejia:
I appreciate that you downgraded to moments because I think it is kind of balanced, it’s moments and places where we get it more right. And not necessarily this is the gold standard, this place does it and figures it out all the time. Because since we’re swimming in this racist society, the racism gets in all the time and you kind of shoe it back out. So one of the moments that I remember when I was doing focus groups was the students told us that, this is in community colleges, they told us that they get their financial aid check the second week because their registration has to be finalized or something. And so if I get my financial aid check the second week of school then the earliest I can buy my books is about the second or third week of school.

So every semester structurally, I’m starting two weeks behind in the reading. And it’s sort of what no brainer. And that was one of the moments that I remember presenting that data and having folks in the financial aid office say, “Oh, wait, what?” Because often systems like financial aid doesn’t really think about curriculum or it doesn’t talk necessarily in that way. And second week isn’t that bad, it’s you’re getting your money. But you ask the professor are you okay with people not having the books until the second week? That’s absolutely wrong. And so the fact that they were, “Oh, we need to talk about that and shift that.” That’s kind of one example. And that wasn’t even that’s focus group, right? The students weren’t at the table.

The other one is one of my favorite design workshops that I went to they had us work on a project for a nonprofit and they brought folks that were involved with their nonprofit as clients users and staff. And they did a really good job of both including them as a panel and experts. But then they dispersed them throughout all the tables and they were resources and they were to design with us. And so quite frankly, it was a really good lesson for folks to be uncomfortable and have to see them as peers and actually experts because they just shared with us their expertise.

So including people, and of course, that’s sort of a tried and true move from Big Picture. We always bring students and to include them and to really push yourself to how far. Because we all have beliefs about what people can and can’t do. It’s like, “Well, yeah, my parents aren’t going to know how to read these graphs.” And so if we’re going to look at data then maybe we shouldn’t have them for that part. Well, why do we have to do it based on the graphs, right? Let’s question the task as well and sort of not have the methods. And that’s the one part that I worry that it is exclusionary, not by design, but by default.
We used to talk about it’s if people have to know some pretty hardcore statistics to get into the room then you’re already limiting things. So I think that it’s a balance between there’s a science to improvement science and there’s a lot of expertise around networks so it’s not common sense. Sometimes people will say, “Oh, yeah, this is common sense.” And it’s not, there’s definitely a boost of knowledge there. And also we can get so in love with the tools that they become exclusionary. So that’s the hard part.

Stacey Caillier:
Thanks for that. I want to dig into a little bit systems thinking and just kind of the origins of improvement science because they’re really rooted in systems thinking like the work of Deming and a lot of other mostly White men. And initially applied in industry then healthcare now education and a lot of the authors and leaders of improvement as you’ve noted are White. And so on our team we’ve been thinking a lot about what are the shifts that need to happen to actually move toward a more inclusive version of improvement science that addresses equity in a real way? And I think you’ve been touching on this already, but is there anything you would add to that?

Eva Mejia:
Absolutely. I mean, I would start by questioning the premise that the knowledge comes from White men. I think that they wrote about it and they systematized it and taught it. But I think a lot of these knowledge did not originate with them. And so I think that’s a good one to question, if you’re going to question start there. For example, Peter Senge, a huge expert in sort of the father systems thinking they’re modern. I went to a workshop with him a couple of years ago and he was talking a lot about meditation and mindfulness and being centered and energy and groups and circles. In fact, somebody quoted him that he did a circle practice. And then I heard later, “Oh, yeah, Peter Senge’s thing.” And I was so upset because I was that’s not him. And when I went to the workshop, he didn’t credit it to himself, he explained where he learned it from, which was from being in a native community.

And so he’s open about his sources, but he’s an MIT professor, he’s a guru. We know that, we know that systematically we attribute things to White men more than we do people of color. In fact, a lot of the things that I was drawing on for networks and building trust for that collaboration were really from organizing and community building. And quite frankly, I also draw a lot on my history. I think about the storytelling in my culture, in my family. And when I think about, for me, I’m always merging sort of the concepts that I read in school with also experiences that I have when I think about sense of belonging or group cohesion or how a community become to exist and all those things.

I’m also making sense of it in terms of how do I know that I am part of my family and how do I feel connected to people that I never met? Well, that’s because of the storytellers in my family, the stories come with lessons and humans have been gathering and doing things together forever. That knowledge is there and there’s a lot of places to get it, it’s just not called improvement science or networks.

Stacey Caillier:
I so appreciate that distinction and push, Eva. I mean, when I stepped back, wait, it’s not White guys had an ownership over the five whys or asking why to understand root causes or get at. I mean, there are lots of cultures in places that are really great at surfacing multiple explanations and narratives for understanding a problem. So I really appreciate that distinction of separating kind of the knowledge from how the knowledge gets packaged and by who?

Eva Mejia:
I mean sometimes as a coach of improvement I used to do that. It’s because you walked into the room, don’t forget the things you already knew, right? Sometimes it happens also with teachers. It’s when we’re talking about coaching other adults do utilize what you already know about coaching and teaching and pedagogy, you kind of have both excludes. You have people that are this is already what we knew and they take what they already had and they put an improvement science label on it and they miss out on the richness of learning new tools and the body of knowledge. And then you also have the other extreme where people sort of, okay, well this is new and they sort of think that they should start blank slate.

And I always used to be you know how to create group cohesion? Let’s not call it group cohesion. You know how to set up a party? You know how to set up a potluck? And that was kind of something that I think I’m known for. It’s I always make a lot of analogies, I talk a lot about communities of practice and networks. And it’s when is it a potluck? When is it a shared cooking experience or something? Just because it is common sense, it can’t stay this sort of ivory tower where only certain people that by its definition is exclusionary.

Stacey Caillier:
What do you think needs to happen to bring it out of the ivory tower a little more?

Eva Mejia:
Giving power to a larger group of more diverse group of people to do the work. And also to make it make sense. Again, you don’t have to have a degree in statistics, which I don’t think you do, but then we get better at teaching it and teaching the core, but really teaching it. Because I think sometimes we want to do that inclusion, but we fall on that. It’s already things you already know now it’s not, I joke that my second doctorate was being at Carnegie because I learned a whole lot at Harvard and then at Carnegie it was that’s cute, we got a whole other thing we’re building, so like catch up. And so there’s real knowledge and expertise there. And frankly, as a creative problem solver it gave me a whole different way of thinking about things that stays with me, whether I’m using the tools or not.

It really fundamentally changed my habits, my ways of thinking, my ways of approaching things in a way that has access to power. It really is access to power, not in the societal power way that we’ve been talking, but access to my own internal power, my own sense of efficacy. So it’s not water down so other people can use it, it’s get better at teaching it so that more people can use it. One of the practices that I do often about most things is I try to explain it to my parents and I explain to my parents in Spanish.

And part of that is because I’m literally not speaking the same language so I can’t rely on the buzzwords or some of the things that become commonplace and I’m talking to a real human about them. So I think that anybody that I think is listening to this podcast and your work is remember to keep it making sense and not take the humanity out of it, both in the tools and the type of work. And the practice that you’re doing to young people is these tools should help us be more human rather than take the humanity out.

Alec Patton:
High Tech High Unboxed and edited by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by Brother Hershel. A huge thank you to Stacey Caillier and Eva Mejia for this week’s episode. Check out the show notes for further reading about Eva’s work and about some of the people she mentioned in the interview. Thanks for listening.