Q&A with Alden Burnham, Cohort 14 SDP Fellow Alumnus
Alden is currently the Director of Educational Data Strategy for Norwalk Public Schools in Connecticut. He started his career as a teacher in the Boston Public Schools before getting his MA in Applied Developmental and Educational Psychology. From there, he worked in academia studying children's cognition and designing curricula to enhance learning of advanced science concepts. He was a Cohort 14 Strategic Data Project Fellow in Norwalk Public Schools, and did his capstone project on enhancing dashboard usage through collaborative dashboard design. After the fellowship, he has done research on collaborative data dashboard design and presented at conferences on the topic and has recently turned his interests towards using predictive analytics to enhance advanced course placement decisions.
What drew you to the SDP Fellowship? What did you do prior to the SDP Fellowship? How did you get started in the education data/policy field?
I first learned about the fellowship when I was taking night classes while working as a lab manager at Boston University. My professor was an academic advisor with the fellowship and recommended I apply. Because I was interested in working at the intersection of research and practice, I was immediately intrigued with the idea of working as a data strategist. I started my career in education but returned to school to get my MA because I was a more effective researcher than teacher, and I felt that I was better able to serve children in an academic role than a student-facing one. However, in academia I often felt isolated from practitioners on the ground. The fellowship was an ideal way to connect my skillset with the work being done by school leaders, teachers, and students.
What is the most memorable or impactful moment or experience from your time as an SDP Fellow?
At orientation, I vividly remember being seated at a table with colleagues from school districts across the country, and hearing about how they were using data to support decision-making around chronic absenteeism after the pandemic. Their thoughts on the issue were well-informed, nuanced, and highly applicable to my work. In many of my undergraduate classes as an education major, I felt that I was often approaching issues in education from a broader perspective than my fellow teachers, but at orientation I suddenly felt like I was on the same wavelength as everyone else. For the first time, it felt like a group project where we were all contributing equal effort but with various areas of expertise around highly-focused and high-impact issues.
Tell us about your current job.
In my current role I continue to manage the dashboards, but I also work on districtwide data reporting, use predictive analytics to inform decision making, manage academic MTSS data, and support schools with monitoring their equity goals. Every day truly is different- some days I am meeting with school principals, improvement teachers, and district cabinet members most of the time and other days I am spending hours writing code to transform and load data or using visualization software to create interactive reports. The most rewarding aspect of my role is when I develop some kind of data solution that supports school leaders with a problem- even if it is a small win. Teachers and administrators in this country are overburdened already, so if I can take something off their plate and develop a solution, I know that it frees up their time and energy to do the things they do best- supporting children.
What skills did you gain from your time as an SDP Fellow that you find helpful in your current role?
I was lucky enough to continue on at my placement after the fellowship, so everything I learned and accomplished during my time as a fellow was impactful enough that they kept me around! I think the most valuable skill I learned as a fellow was how to diagnose problems when meeting with school leaders. Being able to listen and understand how to approach problems efficiently can save hours of time later on. As a young data analyst, I did not fully appreciate how to sit down, listen to, and understand end-users as much as I do now. I consider this my greatest skill, and it was one I was only able to learn through the fellowship.
What advice would you give for prospective SDP Fellows? What would you say to encourage prospective applicants to apply?
The advice I would give to prospective SDP Fellows is to not be afraid to leverage the network- you are obviously competent enough to have gotten here, but chances are someone in the network has thought hard about problems you are encountering and figured out a clever solution. Everyone I’ve reached out to has been more than happy to jump on a quick call and share their expertise, and it has allowed me to be proactive and efficient in my work. My advice to prospective applicants is that if you’re considering applying because you’re interested in the intersection of applied data work with education, there simply is no better career opportunity than the fellowship. As I said before, someone in the network has probably figured out a solution to the obstacles you may be facing (or those you are curious about) and as a fellow you’d get access to those people alongside cutting-edge training that can develop you into the best data strategist you can be.
When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I still don’t! I come from a long line of wooden shipbuilders, but my grandparents were both researchers and scientists who instilled a love of measurement and problem-solving in me. I have many teachers in my family, and my wife is a school social worker who I met while studying education in college, so it makes some sense that I’m using analytic problem solving to support educators. But it’s been a winding path getting here involving a stint as a commercial shell fisherman, schooner captain, and boatbuilder!
Please feel free to share anything else relevant or any other fun facts about yourself.
In addition to some of my niche interests like boatbuilding and clam digging, I also love movies, sports, skiing, sailing, and board games! I’m also endlessly curious about other people’s hobbies- I’m sure we’d find something to chat about!