Q&A with Stephen Fedore, Cohort 5 SDP Fellow Alumnus

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? 

At some point in undergrad, I realized I wanted to work in K-12 education. My first job out of undergrad was teaching elementary school. To this day, teaching is still the most rewarding and most difficult job I have had. When I was a teacher at a time when Netflix was still sending DVDs and you could create a queue of what you wanted them to send next...they also came out with an option where you could let them send you DVDs they thought you would like based on what you had previously had sent to you. Amazon had introduced a feature that informed you "people who purchased this also purchased X" - these predictive models helped me discover new movies I would not have selected and save time when ordering random things from the web. When I logged into my school computer, I could not get access to the most basic information about my students (such as what their attendance rate was last year, what their parents' phone number was, etc). This gap in use of data in my personal life compared to teacher life spawned my interest in working in the data space in education. I enrolled in the business school at MIT Sloan and cross-registered in courses at HGSE with the goal of taking the learnings that were driving the private sector to use data in innovative ways and find applicable uses in education. I learned about SDP during this time. 

What is the most memorable or impactful moment or experience from your time as an SDP Fellow? 

Honestly, the most memorable were the many in-person (after hours) touch-points I had with other fellows in cohort 5. I think there were a few incredibly impactful moments during the fellowship...again most/all were times when I was with the other fellows from cohort 5. One that stood out was a late-night conversation with Eric Moore that helped me to rethink for myself what it means to have lasting impact in education. 

Tell us about your current job.  

Nearly 4 years ago, I started doing independent consulting. I tell people I accidentally started a consulting company along the way...as things got busier, I had individuals support as sub-contractors. I hired one individual full time, we continue to grow and needed to make another hire...and soon enough we were a small team of individuals working with 10+ districts, SEAs, and nonprofits at any given point. My typical day at work includes about 10% admin work that is necessary for a small business...but is not fun (taxes, payroll, invoices, etc). 30% is client management (making sure the individuals/orgs that we support are feeling like they are getting what they need from our team). 30% team support (meeting with members of our team who are the ones doing the work) 30% doing work (my favorite part of my job is doing data work and I try to make sure I spend each day doing at least a little bit of "real" work). Recently this real work involves a lot of identifying ways to leverage AI to support data practices. 

What skills did you gain from your time as an SDP Fellow that you find helpful in your current role? 

Stata - while very little work we do for clients is done in Stata today, it remains the tool I go to first if I need to hop into a dataset and get acquainted quickly. 

Thinking about a continuum of data capabilities for schools - this was based largely on the Strategic Use of Data Rubric that I still reference on a regular basis. 

What advice would you give for prospective SDP Fellows? What would you say to encourage prospective applicants to apply? 

If you want to take your data/research skills and apply them in a way that can make a difference almost immediately, apply. And if you have the option/flexibility, go to a school district that is mid-size and in the middle of the country. You will have the opportunity to be a "big fish" in a "small pond." Your work will be valued. You will learn a ton. And you will have a huge impact! 

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?  

I own a small arcade in the town I live in. I spend much of my free time tinkering with and fixing arcade machines from the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, and sometimes ones from this century.