Abandoning the Plan: Making Assessment Actionable with Starr Sackstein

Redefining Future-Focused Schools: Integrating Executive Functioning Habits for Lifelong Student Independence with Shira Woolf Cohen and Nicole Franchi

What does it truly mean to prepare students for a rapidly changing world? In this episode of the Growth Over Grades podcast, host Jordan Lewis connects with educators and authors Shira Woolf Cohen and Nicole Franchi to redefine future readiness in today's educational landscape. Rather than limiting career readiness to an annual career day, Shira and Nicole discuss how to build a whole-school ecosystem that embeds future-ready habits into daily culture. Together, they break down the critical combination of system-level leadership and classroom-level routines necessary to build a strong sense of self and lifelong student independence. What We Cover in This Episode: * The Core Mindset Shift: Shifting the foundational school question from what content students need to know to what capabilities they actually need to thrive today and in the future. * Tier 1 Executive Functioning: Why explicit instruction in organization, task initiation, and time management must start as early as kindergarten to create a wave of momentum all the way through 12th grade. * Navigating AI & Screen Time: The practical realities of the modern classroom, including how to teach students to use AI as an added-value learning tool and how to manage the surge of physical papers as schools decrease screen time. * Distributed Leadership: Why school leaders shouldn't carry this work alone, and how fostering a team of school-wide teacher leaders creates shared cultural buy-in. * Partnering with Families: Simple, actionable home routines—like using a five-minute shower timer to combat time blindness and designating a permanent spot for a backpack near a plug—that build shared responsibility and student ownership.

Learning Over Grading: Reframing Systems Transformation with Antonia Rudenstine

In this episode, host Jordan Lewis sits down with Antonia Rudenstine, the founder and executive director of reDesign, to tackle the monumental mountain of educational systems transformation. Antonia leverages her extensive background as a primary architect for state and district change to explain why leaders must reframe the shift toward competency-based education as a conversation about teaching and learning first, rather than rushing into new grading and tracking systems. Episode Highlights * The Bike-Riding Analogy: Why building an apparatus to measure and penalize students before intentionally helping them develop core competencies is fundamentally backward. * Three High-Leverage Teaching Practices: How traditional classroom habits shift when shifting focus entirely to specific competency skills through explicit strategy instruction, conferring with students, and expanding peer talk opportunities. * Real-World Policy Feedback Loops: Insights from a five-year partnership with the South Carolina State Department of Education, where state leaders modeled an adult learner mindset directly inside classrooms. * Bridging the School-Industry Divide: How simple, free AI tools can create a shared language between educators and workforce mentors to seamlessly capture student demonstrations of competency. * Selecting the Right Framework: Key questions districts must ask regarding audience, purpose, and learning science, featuring an overview of reDesign’s open-source, customizable "Future Nine" framework.

Implementing Gradeless Classrooms, the BC Proficiency Scale, Sustainable Portfolio Documentation, and AI-Resistant Learning Targets with Tim Cavey

What happens when you eliminate numbers and percentages from the grade book entirely? In this episode of the Growth Over Grades podcast, host Jordan Lewis sits down with educator, author, and podcast host Tim Cavey. Tim is currently an elementary vice principal in Vancouver, British Columbia, and highlights his experience running a completely gradeless classroom for eight years. In this conversation, Tim shares how the British Columbia Proficiency Scale is transforming the way teachers, students, and parents view academic progress by moving away from arbitrary percentages toward clear, evidence-based learning targets. Together, they unpack the profound paradigm shift from a "wages mindset"—where students do work simply to get paid in marks—to a true language of learning. In this episode, we discuss: * The Wages Mindset vs. The Language of Learning: Moving away from student questions focused entirely on earning marks to organically using proficiency terms focused on growth.  * Visible and Sustainable Documentation: Practical methods for using video and digital portfolios to capture in-progress, messy learning without causing teacher burnout.  * Equitable Assessment and Learning Targets: The power of keeping evaluations strictly anchored to neutral learning targets and success criteria to accurately identify where a student stands and provide proper growth support. * Safeguarding Rigorous Academics in the Age of AI: How educators can protect authentic learning experiences by requiring students to localize, personalize, and vocalize their work. * Weaving in BC's Core Competencies: Best practices for integrating thinking, communication, and personal/social development organically into instruction and student reflections.

Abandoning the Plan: Making Assessment Actionable with Starr Sackstein

How do we move teachers from being "expert data collectors" to active facilitators of real-time growth? In this episode of Growth Over Grades, host Jordan Lewis sits down with Starr Sackstein, a veteran educator and world-renowned assessment expert with over 24 years of experience. Starr currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer and part-owner of Mastery Portfolio, an organization dedicated to mastery-based progress tracking. She is also a Distinguished Educator Fellow with PDK International and the Educators Rising State Coordinator for Massachusetts. Drawing from her latest book, Actionable Assessment: Making Teaching and Learning Better for All, Starr challenges the traditional classroom power dynamics. She explains why teachers must have the vulnerability and confidence to abandon a rigid lesson plan the moment they notice students are struggling. We dive deep into the mic drop moment of removing grades to foster genuine inquiry and explore practical strategies like backward feeding—a math-context scaffolding technique that reduces cognitive load by having students solve the final piece of a problem first. In this episode, we discuss: * The Data Barrier: Why collecting data is useless if teachers wait too long to use it or feel restricted by pacing guides. * Vulnerability in Leadership: Why admitting you don’t have all the answers creates a more collaborative and effective learning environment. * Assessment as Learning: Transforming reflection from an afterthought into an integral skill that students use to advocate for their own needs. * Consistent Culture: How district leaders can establish a shared assessment language across different subjects to prevent student confusion.

Beyond the Baseline: Local Accountability and AI as a Coach with Dr. Brandy Howard

Standardized tests provide a baseline, but they rarely capture a community’s hopes and dreams. In this episode, Dr. Brandy Howard, Chief Academic Officer of Bullitt County Public Schools, shares how her district is bridging the gap between state measures and human-centered skills. From 5th graders defining creativity metrics to using AI as a cognitive coach, Brandy breaks down how to align an entire school system around what truly matters for the future of students. In this episode, we discuss: • Community-Led Metrics: How Bullitt County uses six local pillars to measure success beyond the test score. • AI as a Thinking Partner: Why chatbots like "Allie" are designed to ask questions and provoke deeper thinking for teachers. • Symmetry in Systems: The "walk-the-talk" approach to ensuring adult professional learning mirrors the student experience. • The Lean Startup: Why elementary students are mastering entrepreneurial processes to build durable skills. • Learning Walks: Shifting from compliance to growth-oriented coaching through shared language and "look-fors."