Lenny Mendonca, a retired executive at McKinsey & Company, serves on the boards of a dozen nonprofit organizations. He was photographed at the James Irvine Foundation in San Francisco, where the interview took place.

Credit: John Fensterwald / EdSource Today

Lenny Mendonca, a retired executive at McKinsey & Visitor, serves on the boards of a dozen nonprofit organizations. He was photographed at the James Irvine Foundation in San Francisco, where the interview took place.

For more than 3 decades, Lenny Mendonca has analyzed big problems and recommended big fixes in government – both for pay, every bit a senior executive with the Washington, D.C., and San Francisco offices of McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, and now as an adviser and lath member of a dozen nonprofit organizations.

Public sector leaders regularly seek his advice. Ted Lempert, president of Children At present, whose board Mendonca chairs, says a number of state budget and government reforms, like legislative redistricting, have Mendonca'due south "fingerprints" on them.

Mendonca supports the big changes transforming California'south K-12 schools and offered to share his view of the Common Cadre standards and the Local Control Funding Formula. He has a native Californian's perspective, having grown up milking cows on his family's farm in the Central Valley. He graduated from Turlock High earlier heading off to Harvard Academy, where he graduated with honors. Both of his daughters attended public schools in California, and one teaches in San Bruno.

Before he retired every bit a senior partner from McKinsey, Mendonca, 54, founded the firm's U.South. country and local public sector do, and oversaw the McKinsey Global Institute and the firm's communications. He served for a decade on McKinsey's board of directors. Amid his nonprofit leadership roles, he co-chairs California Forwards, is chair emeritus of the Bay Area Council and is on the boards of New America Foundation, the Committee for Economical Development and Higher Futures Foundation.

Mendonca talked with EdSource nearly education in California.

If y'all were brought in as a consultant to the Land Lath of Pedagogy or the Legislature that'southward changing its funding organisation at the same time that it'due south implementing new academic standards and changing the way it measures schools, what advice would yous give?

I am a huge fan of what the country is trying to practice, both to its aspiration, that all kids should be career- and college-gear up, and that we want that to happen at a pace and calibration that no one's always seen before. We believe there should be very big changes in the organization around local command funding, aligning resources effectually where the needs are, and in the implementation of a new curriculum. All are happening all at the same time. It is extraordinarily ambitious.

You would not have said to the Legislature and Jerry Brown, "Go serially, and not do it all at one time."

No. Because they're related. If you're not giving people the alignment of resource, they're non going to be able to achieve what yous desire them to accomplish. And if y'all're non articulate on what you're trying to accomplish, you're but spreading the coin effectually, and (saying), "Go do what you're already doing." So I call back you need both.

What I would say is there is a large piece of this that is non there, that I'm virtually concerned well-nigh, which is professional development.

There's a bunch of concerns effectually "How do yous do the assessments right? How do you get the technology in identify? What's the real accountability system?" Those are actually, really important. I think I can encounter a path to those. I don't remember we have whatsoever sense of how you really develop hundreds of thousands of teachers and principals and school-board members and administrators. That is a massive exercise, and I don't think we are 1 percent of the way to thinking that through.

Equally somebody who lived in, grew upwards in California, and worked here for decades, likewise, did you see the sort of limitations of California'due south standards, or the graduates of California schools, that were, perhaps, limited, in terms of the noesis that they had, coming out of high schoolhouse?

I graduated from high schoolhouse right at the time Prop. thirteen was passed, and so I've been here for a long time, and I've worked hither, with the exception of being on the East Coast for half a dozen years, for my entire career. The first standards that were ready were a very skillful starting time first.

I don't think of information technology as, "The erstwhile standards were bad or too low." They are evolving. That's what happens when you set benchmarks. You take to know how you're doing, and how fast you're progressing. And then, every bit the globe moves, you redevelop them.

I don't think we have any sense of how you actually develop hundreds of thousands of teachers and principals and school-board members and administrators. That is a massive do, and I don't think we are 1 per centum of the way to thinking that through.

It was possible, when I was in loftier school, to get a living-wage job with the expectation of a practiced pension with a high-school education until yous retire. It doesn't piece of work that style now. And then we take to help people proceeds a set of skills past completing college, or at least two years of more technically oriented training. And and then we accept to help people think near their career, not as one place for your life, simply equally having tours of duty that are two or iii years in a number of places. And your job is going to change dramatically five times during the course of your life even if you're in the aforementioned job in the same company or organization. That'due south a different and harder challenge.

How would people in concern be helpful in sending the message nigh the importance of Common Core?

Fifty-fifty in California, where at that place is broad-based support for Common Core, you cannot take for granted that everything that'southward required to ensure that we deliver the Common Cadre is put in identify. And so concern needs to use their vocalization to say, "That really is of import, and nosotros're going to be part of ensuring that the standards stay."

Number 2, particularly when you combine Mutual Core with the Local Command Funding Formula, at that place'southward a lot more responsibility and expectation with money flowing to the local level. It'south of import for business leaders to become engaged where their employees live, where their kids go to school. You know, post the early on '80s, business concern largely checked out of Chiliad-12 education.

Why?

There were merely ii means to engage that made whatsoever deviation: Locally, at your own school or at some really macro-policy level, where business people got frustrated that they couldn't make any difference. Now, there's a lot more expectation at the school-district level, now that you actually accept a lot more flexibility, and a resource aligned around needs. At present you actually have to deliver that through your LCAP. Common Core and the Local Control Funding Formula encourage businesses to have an expectation that their involvement tin can make a difference. I would hope more than business people run for schoolhouse boards.

Tin can I say i more affair?

Get alee.

Business leaders in California should debate issues effectually the Common Core, which in California is then much more than productive than in well-nigh of the residual of the country.

In what sense?

Mutual Core is not a partisan or political issue in California for the most part. The discussions are more around "How do we brand this work?" In a lot of the residual of the country, the word is to throw it out or not.

Concern leaders here, especially if they're involved with national organizations like I am with the Commission for Economical Development, need to make that instance in language that business people sympathise.

The goal of the Common Core is to fix kids for college and careers. Information technology's easier to define "college-ready," based on what the California State University and the University of California crave. How would you lot ascertain career-prepare?

There are not simple metrics to explain that nonetheless, though a few things are helpful. Number one, the expectations of the CSU organization, whether you become to a four-year higher or not, are pretty good proxies for what yous're going to need to have a living-wage job in California.

Second, it turns out that, beyond some reasonable level, things that employers typically screen for, like "What school did you lot become to?" "What was your scores and grades in school?" are pretty bad indicators of "Are you lot going to be successful in the chore we're offering?" Then trying to get a richer understanding of things like resilience, communications capability, teamwork. Evidence of leadership. Ambition for accomplishing something. Those things are much amend indicators of if someone is going to be a successful, longer-term employee than what your résumé says. Employers are going to take to become better at that.

What pitfalls should the state retrieve about every bit it goes through a transition to Common Core?

I'm worried about ii things that nosotros can anticipate and do something about, and i thing that we can't expect when and how it's going to happen, merely it'due south going to happen.

We take to prepare parents for what happens the get-go fourth dimension nosotros have real results on the new assessments. They're going to be disappointed. Nosotros have to plan for, "You lot know, these are different standards, so don't compare (the results) to what they were before, or experience like that means your child is declining, the school is failing. They are loftier standards, and they're not the same."

2nd, there is a possibility that we will have teachers overwhelmed by all these changes. Right now, they're very supportive, and want to make information technology piece of work. But if we layer all this on top of them, and don't give them the time and space and resource and tools to improve, we are going to take a backlash. Front-line teachers are going to say, "Yous're asking me to exercise things that are unrealistic." And we can't have that happen.

3rd, the upkeep is not going to be slap-up forever. And then what happens the first time we accept a downturn in the state, and what does that practice to all of what we're talking nearly? I haven't thought through what to practise, but we should be thinking almost information technology.

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