Unexpected turns in Dr. Jessica Alzen’s career, made her the perfect candidate to lead accountability and evaluation in BVSD

From an early age, Dr. Jessica Alzen knew she wanted to be a teacher, but she probably never thought her career would take her in the direction it has, eventually leading her to become BVSD’s new executive director of accountability and evaluation.

For as long as Jessica can remember, her head has been buried in books. In fact, one of her favorite early memories is reading Alice in Wonderland with his father. 

Naturally, she thought she would one day become an educator, focused on literature.

“I thought I was going to teach high school English, but then my path led me to become a middle school math teacher, instead,” Alzen shared, with a laugh. “I was an English major in college, when my high school chemistry teacher, whom I’m still very close to, said ‘you're really good at math, you should add that on.’ So I did. The first job that came available to me was a middle school math position.”

She loved the Title I school, not far from where she grew up in the “Inland Empire” of Southern California, between Los Angeles and San Diego. During her six years there, she served as the department chair and eventually on her district’s assessment committee, where a new door opened.

“While I was teaching, I got to know the person who had the equivalent of this role at the district that I was at in California,” Alzen said. “She was just someone who I looked up to and was like, I want to be able to do that one day, but I knew I didn't have the skills or experience to do it.”

Following her curiosity, she went back to school, eventually earning her doctorate in Research and Evaluation Methodology from the University of Colorado. 

Instead of following many of her peers, who became psychometricians (experts in the science of psychological measurement, who typically develop standardized tests), she instead decided to follow the storyteller within. Through the CU Center for Assessment, Design, Research, and Evaluation (CADRE), she partnered with K-12 school districts, institutions of higher education and state agencies to collect data and make sense of it all, helping to inform the policy and practices of the educators she worked with.

“The thing that really makes me excited in the morning is using the skills that I have in those areas,” said Alzen. “To be able to look at a results readout and to tell a story, sharing what our data is telling us. What's the information that it's giving us? How do we think about that at the school level, at the network level, and the district level?” 

She is looking forward to doing the same with the teachers and leaders here in the Boulder Valley School District.

“Teachers are spread so thin. Making sense of data can be really time consuming,” Alzen said. “Let's figure it out together.”

Her first weeks have forced her to dive into the deep end, presenting to the Board of Education regarding the district’s academic performance and the strides we are making to meet the All Together for All Students Strategic Plan.

“It's really exciting to be a part of a district with a strategic plan that I immediately embraced,” Alzen said. “I am privileged to get to jump in and be a part of the conversation and determine what's next? While everyone here is really excited and happy, no one's satisfied, right? How can we serve these students even better than we have been?”

She knows that Data-Driven Instruction will help to guide that work. She, however, is the first to recognize that quantitative data is only one part of the picture.

“I would never want anyone to think that I believe that the numbers tell you everything you need to know. It is not just about quantitative data,” Alzen explained. “I pride myself for being a mixed-methodologist. Part of telling a rich story with data is having that quantitative and qualitative data in concert together. It is essential for us to leverage the experience and the expertise of the teacher.”

She continued, “So, okay, here's what our numbers are saying, here's what the assessment results are saying. Now you pair that with what you know about every one of those kids in your classroom and pair that with what you know from your five, ten, twenty years of experience, and then make savvy and wise instructional decisions from there.”

Moving forward, she is hoping to spend some additional time in understanding the many assessments being used in the system and some of the growing pains, currently being experienced.

“I’ve heard that in some cases, so much data is being collected that it can feel overwhelming,” Alzen said. “As a district, what do we decide are our high leverage data practices that we really want to put our focus and our efforts in? Can we cull the data so it's not so overwhelming? Here's the short list of data we really want people to be looking at and focused on, and then as your context varies and you need to look at additional data, great.” 

She believes that honing in the data and ensuring that it is easily accessible will ensure that the district is able to better direct its efforts and our resources towards the highest areas of need.

Sure, math and literature may seem like strange bedfellows – Alzen frequently thinks back to Alice in Wonderland, the classic story that she still loves. Given the way that Lewis Carroll was able to weave storytelling with math, perhaps her career path wasn't such a big leap after all.
“That connection between literature and math, that Lewis Carroll mastered, has followed me through my professional career.”

Getting to Know Jessica

Here are a few more details, so you can get to know our new Executive Director of Accountability and Evaluation.

Heavy reader (and listener)

Today Jessica remains a voracious reader, but now she relies on audio books to help her satiate her hunger.

“I think I'm up to maybe 85 books for this calendar year,” she said.

“I've definitely read plenty of non-fiction to learn and grow in a variety of areas– authors like Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Grant, as well as total escapism like My Friends, by Fredrik Backman that I'm currently reading,” Jessica said. “I always have a hard text, a Kindle and an audiobook going depending on when the opportunity to read arises.

‘Plants are magic’

Jessica says her happy place is her backyard garden in Erie. After a tough day, you can often find her working in the soil, deep in the flowers, listening to an audiobook.

“I have around 80 plants back there right now,” Jessica said, while admitting that she’ll likely need to scale things back next summer, because of the demanding nature of her new job.

“Dahlias are my favorite, but I also have marigolds, cosmos, snapdragons. I really just try to have a good variety so that we can enjoy all of the color and shapes.” 

She confesses that she was a bit intimidated by gardening, at first. Ultimately, however, she dug in, literally. After she planted her first seeds, her love for gardening blossomed.

“I know it’s science, but plants are magic,” Jessica said with a laugh. “I love that I can just put something in the ground and something will happen. That has been such a great joy of mine. It is one of the best things ever.”

Late learner

Unlike Jessica’s predecessor, Dr. Jonathan Dings, who was an avid cyclist – you might be surprised to learn that Jessica didn’t learn how to ride a bike until she was 23. 

“I didn’t learn until my mid-20s, because falling down wasn’t my favorite thing as a small child,” Jessica explained. “I didn't have any siblings, and I didn't have friends on the street to motivate me.” 

After meeting her now husband, he was determined to help her learn, so that she could ride with him and his family. The first lessons were on his family’s lawn, so that she could softly land in the grass, if needed.

“They had a big backyard, so I could just ride until I got confident enough," Jessica said.

It didn’t take too long for her to get the hang of it. Now she’ll occasionally go on bike rides with her family.