Local Leader: Joshua Crosson, Executive Director at EdAllies

Article by Becky Fillinger

Joshua CrossonWe often hear many complaints about education systems in Minnesota. EdAllies is an innovative, results-oriented non-profit you should know because they are making a difference. We talked to Executive Director Joshua Crosson about the history of EdAllies, how he became involved and how we can all help.

Q:  Thanks for speaking with us Joshua. What is the history of EdAllies?

A:  About a decade ago, Teach For America’s founding executive director, Daniel Sellers, was attempting to run the innovative teacher preparation program, while also passing policy in Minnesota, to allow the program to take root and thrive in the state. He discovered that it just wasn’t feasible to create a new education program when policies prevent it, even though the program had proven results in other states. From there, Daniel became executive director of MinnCAN, which later spun off to become the fully local initiative EdAllies - to lead the policy, research, and communications around education systems change so practitioners and families can focus on their work and their students.

I joined the team in 2013 as the lead on policy and advocacy. In 2016, a few of my colleagues and I decided to forge out and found a new, fully local initiative - and that’s when EdAllies came to be. We wanted a nimble, hands-on organization that would build from what we’re hearing in the community, while learning about best practices from partners across the country. Through our different stages as an organization, our mission has stayed the same: to partner with schools, families, and communities to ensure that every young Minnesotan has access to a rigorous and engaging education. We advance policies that put underserved students first, remove barriers facing successful schools and programs, and foster an inclusive conversation about what’s possible for students. We have evolved and grown over the years, and over time I moved up from leading policy initiatives to leading the organization as Executive Director, and I’m excited to lead EdAllies into its next phase of tireless advocacy for all Minnesota kids.

Q:  What drew you to a career with EdAllies?  

A:  For as long as I can remember, I’ve been dedicated to uprooting white supremacy in all corners of society. From healthcare to our tax code to voting access, every system in our country has either been built on the foundation of or infiltrated by white supremacist thinking. Our public education system is no exception. EdAllies has allowed me the opportunity to organize impacted communities and redesign an education system that works for each and every kid by naming and eliminating injustices at the root.

A great education is a human right and an opportunity to achieve one’s fullest potential. This is personal for me. When I was going into high school, I was being funneled into a school where only 17% of their freshmen graduated from the school in four years. It was clear that my community was not getting the education we deserved. My mom’s boss suggested that she seriously consider taking me out of the school district and enroll me into the private school he attended. A private education seemed out of reach for me. We were a single-parent, low-income family, and there didn’t seem to be other options for us - but my mom’s boss urged her to reconsider. So, with my mom working two jobs and selling Avon on the side and my contribution through work-study - a truly Herculean effort - I was able to escape that situation and attend a school that set me up for success in college and career. Many of my friends who went to the high school I was supposed to go to did not have the same chance as me, and while none were less intelligent, less hardworking, or less deserving than me, many of them wound up with very different trajectories, never receiving the opportunity they needed and deserved to reach their full potential. When I say education allows us to reach our full potential, I’m saying that from seeing the outcomes of a high-quality education and a broken education system firsthand.

It’s my job, now, to guarantee each and every kid has access to a life-changing education. It’s not fair to ask parents and students who are stuck to change their systems while subjugating their kids to a poor school. It’s not fair to force educators and practitioners to remove policy barriers so they can provide opportunities for kids. This is why EdAllies exists. We do the work to improve systems and remove barriers, so kids have access to a great school and educators have the ability to transform the lives of their students.

Q:  Your organization's website notes that EdAllies partners with schools, families, and communities on barriers facing students and opportunities available to them. How do you go about setting up the partnerships? How do you maintain the relationships?

A:  We take our name seriously, striving to be strong allies in the fight to ensure all Minnesota children get the education they need and deserve. Partnerships are essential to everything we do. We look to our partners - families, educators, teachers, students, and other education stakeholders - to tell us what needs to change for Minnesota students, and together, we work to make change happen.

We develop partnerships in many ways. We meet people where they are in the community through everything from classroom presentations to parent trainings, and we bring people in through our own events, fellowships, and more. Sometimes people will reach out to us for help on a specific problem like a teacher licensure issue or a student discipline issue. We help on an individual level but, more times than not, the problem is a symptom of a systemic failure, so it’s important to create deeper, longer-lasting changes by elevating individual stories and experiences. In other words, EdAllies empowers our communities to solve individual problems, and communities help EdAllies solve the systemic problems that resulted in those individual problems in the first place.

We work to ensure that we’re accessible and creating opportunities to collaborate and connect - from convening coalitions on specific initiatives to texting in the middle of the night to turn a student’s story into an article. We’re here to work with people as needs come up, whenever and wherever. And that genuine approach to meeting people where they are goes a long way to expressing and demonstrating our dedication to this work.

We also evaluate how well we partner and whether we’re filling an important role. We measure the value we generate for our partners through an annual partner survey, which we use to assess EdAllies’ value to others in the education ecosystem.

Q:  Does EdAllies operate outside of Minnesota?

A:  EdAllies is a Minnesota-focused advocacy organization. As a locally-led education advocacy organization, we work to be as responsive as possible to the specific needs of Minnesota’s students, especially those whose potential is most often overlooked. In our work, we see that students, families, and community advocates often know what needs to change but need support to navigate systems and identify levers for the change they hope to see. And it’s Minnesota student and family input and insight that drives our policy and advocacy agenda.

That said, we don’t and can’t operate in a vacuum. For example, examining national trends, practices, research, policies, and conversations - and occasionally being part of them - not only informs our work but also helps us understand what’s working and what’s not in education. For example, with the federal government’s funding and guidance around COVID relief aid, EdAllies took the opportunity to both advise our national and local policymakers on how we should include community input to invest in our education system more wisely.

Q:  Your lists of funders, staff and board members are impressive. Has the organization had major successes that led to this level of recruitment?

A:  Ultimately, I think people are drawn to us because of our approach. Our mission is clear and inspiring, and the need is great, creating an overwhelming desire from the community to help develop EdAllies. We are incredibly lucky to have a deep well of talent at all levels of our work. We believe that every student deserves a great education, and we’re not willing to let the status quo stand in the way. We are willing to partner to do whatever it takes to move the needle for kids, and we’re not afraid to upset those who stand in the way, which I think is a refreshing approach for many, and something they want to be a part of.

That approach helped us spearhead a major overhaul of Minnesota’s teacher licensure system, which was notoriously broken and hard to navigate but also deep-rooted and difficult to change. We took the issue head-on, and after a few years of effective advocacy, we rebuilt our teacher licensure system by centering it on what students need – high-quality, experienced, and diverse educators. It demonstrated that we have an approach that can get big things done.

Family foundations are also very excited about our systems-change and collaborative approach. Long-term change that improves outcomes permanently is like steering a giant ship; it’s often slow and strategic. Funders know that investing in an organization dedicated to changing a system, especially one as big and as important as education, might see results after a few years rather than a few months, but the solutions will be longer lasting.

Q:  Data disaggregation is another priority for EdAllies. Can you tell us what this is important? 

A:  To create a more equitable education system, we need to understand how schools are serving students across lines of race, ethnicity, income, zip code, disability, and more. Minnesota is currently rolling out a better system for gathering and sharing this nuanced data - but as it stands, we have an incomplete understanding of how our schools are serving students across broad racial and ethnic categories.

For example, we can look at outcomes for Asian and Black youth in Minnesota, but not Hmong or Somali students. We might know the high school graduation rates of white and Native American students, but we can’t compare the high school graduation rates of white students with disabilities and Native American students with disabilities. With the All Kids Count Act, we have begun to do much more to collect data in a way that tells a meaningful story about school performance. The Minnesota Department of Education, along with many districts across the state, have only just begun to implement this critical policy that gives us access to detailed, actionable information on student outcomes.

We are eager to see much more progress on this law so we can move to the next phase of the work and make the data actionable. For example, we had data that shows Native American students who take two or more high school courses in career and technical education are 75% more likely to graduate, which means investments in career and technical education courses will have an impact on Indigenous students and their communities. What other solutions are we missing because data are not available? Partners across Minnesota like the Coalition of Asian American Leaders and the African American Leadership Forum have been asking for this policy change for a long time. If we get this right, we can really emerge as a national leader in the use of more detailed data to help build better, more tailored programming for students.

Q:  How may our readers engage with EdAllies to assist with your efforts on behalf of Minnesota children?

A:  Donate, participate, and follow/share.

Taking action can be as simple as taking three minutes to pick an action alert on our site edalliesmn.org/take-action and use it to contact your representatives. You can also share your story with us. If any part of our mission resonates with you, allowing us to help elevate your voice helps advances our many initiatives.

Follow us on Twitter or Facebook to learn about events, ways to support students, and for up-to-the-minute opportunities to act. We’re constantly posting videos and blogs to keep you informed about what’s going on in education policy, and we do different types of events throughout the year. We’d love for you to participate.

And donations are the fuel to allow us to do this work. Help provide the critical resources we need to fight for students, help students and families tell their stories, and lead Minnesota to adopt a better education system that works for everyone. If you want to help us to continue to be the advocates our kids need and deserve, please donate and be part of the movement (edalliesmn.org/donate). Every donor is another ally that students have on their side.