Teach for America

Miami-Dade and Jacksonville

Context

ADAPTOVATE is proud to support Pledge 1% and Teach for America (TFA). TFA is a national non-profit organization whose mission is to find, develop, and support a network of leaders, including teachers, to end educational inequity in America. For this Pledge 1% engagement, ADAPTOVATE and TFA ran a design sprint to derive a prototype solution to address declining teacher retention rates.

TFA*Miami-Dade and Jacksonville have noticed a significant decline in teacher retention rates

This decline is larger than national and regional benchmarks, and primary drivers are unclear

As a business transformation consulting firm, ADAPTOVATE helped TFA Staff identify

root causes and use human-centered design techniques to create a prototype that

would address declining retention rates

Our Approach

ADAPTOVATE and TFA identified 19 addressable root causes that were driving lower retention rates. An additional 8 root causes were identified, however, were out of scope (i.e., COVID-19 pandemic).

Then, ADAPTOVATE facilitated a TFA-led design sprint over 4 sessions virtually. The design sprint was used to identify the problem, ideate solutions, and test quickly.

Problem: How might we tailor preservice/early in-service training to include a

manageable exposure to real-life/school expectations?

Final Prototype Selection: First-year teachers will learn from a panel of experienced

teachers, complete a Bingo card of practical experiences, and TFA staff will work with school

partners to prepare teachers for in-school experiences

Listen to ADAPTOVATEs Inaya Johnson in conversation with Teach for America's Matt Boerner on our The Backlog Podcast.

Moving Forward

As a result of this Pledge 1% engagement with ADAPTOVATE, the TFA staff is now able to review the feedback from prototype testing, improve,and deliver a pilot to be tested with select teachers.

TFA staff will also continue to monitor quantitative and qualitative insights to measure efficacy of the prototype on retention.

Additionally, TFA can consider running design sprints on other areas of opportunity and seek out partnership opportunities with their partners and stakeholders.