The Growth Over Grades Podcast

Host Jordan Lewis sits down with Dr. James Lane, CEO of Unlimited Instruction and author of Leading with Laser Focus. Drawing on his career across classroom teaching, district leadership, state administration as Virginia’s 25th Superintendent of Public Instruction, and federal policy with the U.S. Department of Education, Dr. Lane shares actionable strategies to overcome initiative fatigue.

Together, they discuss the importance of decluttering existing programs with a "start, stop, continue" exercise, reframing technology as an efficiency tool that buys back time for human connection in the classroom, and cultivating academic optimism—the core belief that every student can grow regardless of outside factors. Dr. Lane also highlights why leaders must build a "culture of yes" to truly empower educators.

How do we move students from passive compliance to true ownership? 

In this episode, educational leader Dr. Doug Fisher reveals how to make visible learning actionable in every classroom. Discover concrete strategies for implementing the Gradual Release of Responsibility, delivering feedback that prompts immediate student action, and building genuine self-efficacy. Whether you're refining daily formative assessments or building collective teacher credibility across your district, Doug shares exact steps to shift focus from chasing grades to driving authentic mastery. 

Tune in to sharpen how your students learn, self-assess, and succeed!

In this episode of Growth Over Grades, host Jordan Lewis sits down with Jane Shore—a lifelong educator, learning scientist, visualizer, and the founder of School of Thought—to explore how we can intentionally design learning environments around human connection. Jane breaks down her concept of people-based learning—an approach that goes beyond basic relationship-building to treat people as essential resources that make learning more inclusive, durable, and tangible.

From connecting algebra to video game coding to studying democracy through real-world ethnographic interviews, Jane shares inspiring stories of how human interactions ground abstract concepts into meaningful experiences. Together, Jordan and Jane challenge listeners to rethink traditional school structures and embrace actionable shifts toward a more human-centered education system.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Defining People-Based Learning: Why viewing people as intentional learning resources makes lessons more durable, emotional, and relevant. 
• Designing for Connection vs. Disconnection: How traditional front-facing rows alienate students, and how simple design tweaks—like flexible seating or peer-citation—build a genuine foundation of belonging. 
• Warm vs. Cold Technology: Utilizing AI and digital tools to foster collaborative "burstiness" and real-world connection rather than isolation. 
• Grading Less vs. Going Gradeless: Avoiding the trap of tying a student's whole identity to a single rigid metric, and shifting toward continuous feedback and growth. 
• Entering Education’s Human Era: Evolving past historical factory and knowledge-acquisition models to focus on what we want students to become.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

Education is currently navigating an acceleration of change that is moving faster than ever before. In this episode, host Jordan Lewis sits down with two visionary leaders from the Education Research and Development Institute (ERDI): CEO and President Jennifer Ferrari and Chief Education Officer Jeff McCoy. Together, they dive into the findings of the latest National Insights Report to discuss how districts can maintain a human dimension in an increasingly automated world.

We explore the concept of hugging AI—a framework Jeff and Jennifer call H-AI-H (Human-AI-Human) —which ensures that human judgement remains the primary refinement and editing force behind technology. The conversation also challenges the traditional college vs. career binary, suggesting a shift toward workforce readiness that prioritizes the development of durable skills like adaptability, teamwork, and communication.

Join us for a deep dive into how we can create a true bridge from school to life and why, despite the complexities of the modern landscape, the future of K-12 education remains incredibly bright.

If your district celebrates a 90% graduation rate, what happens to the other 10%? In this episode of Growth Over Grades, Jordan Lewis sits down with Nerlande Anselme, Superintendent of the Rome City School District in New York, to discuss why all means all must be a lived reality rather than just a mission statement. 

Drawing on over 20 years of leadership experience, Nerlande provides a masterclass on how to build a student-centric north star that remains grounded even under the pressures of systemic change.

Nerlande shares her unique process for crafting a strategic plan that started with student voices—inviting grades 2 through 12 to co-design the district's vision and values. We dive into the practical side of this shift, from leveraging influence over power to fostering local partnerships that create direct pathways into the workforce.

Whether you are an administrator architecting a new strategic plan or a teacher looking to center student voice, this conversation offers a grounded roadmap for creating excellence through equity.