Evalve Consulting

I don't have an "our technology" page. I have a receipts page. New on the site: https://lnkd.in/gQqDgK-i It's a plain list of what I'm actually running for Evalve this quarter. The tools, the models, the hosting, with version numbers. What I'm building right now. And what I've killed, with a date and a one-sentence reason, left on the page with a line through it. The killed list is the part I'd read first. A clean stack tells you nothing. What someone dropped, and why, tells you how they think. For education leaders trying to sort real tools from hype, that's the trust I'd want before hiring anyone. Not a pitch. A public commitment I update at the end of every month. Here it is: https://lnkd.in/gQqDgK-i

Episode 4 of Evalve Out Loud is live: How to Run a 90-Day AI Pilot. Most districts respond to AI by forming a committee. Two years later there is a policy, and the problem that started the conversation is still sitting there. Meanwhile teachers are using AI anyway, with no guidance. There is a faster, safer route, and it is the same one we already trust for curriculum and interventions: pilot it. - Pick one boring, low-stakes problem. Not the flashiest thing AI can do. - Vet for privacy first. A lot of first pilots never need to touch student data at all. - Run it small with volunteers for ninety days, and pick your success number before you start. Small and measured beats big and promised. Every time. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Link in comments.

Where should a school district start with AI? Not with student-facing tools. The safest first win lives in the work adults do every day: meeting notes, form letters, schedule drafts. No student data, a simple privacy review, and time savings you can measure. Dr. Chris Sanzeri's free Invisible Work Audit finds where your team's hours are going, in 30 minutes: https://lnkd.in/gF_7ER8N The full case lands in tomorrow's issue of Evalve Out Louder: https://lnkd.in/g2gtt_nu

The final was designed for it. If your assessment breaks because AI exists, the assessment was already broken. Here's how I think about teaching in the world of AI. #AIinEducation #HigherEd #TeachingWithAI #GradSchool

Most district AI pilots fail for the same reason: they start too big. This fall a lot of schools will roll out AI. Most of those rollouts will be quietly dead by spring. Not because the tools are bad, but because nobody scoped them. Here is the 90-day version I would run instead: - Days 1 to 30: pick one painful, repeatable workflow. Not a platform. One task a real person dreads. - Days 31 to 60: build the smallest thing that does that task, and put it in front of five people who do the work. - Days 61 to 90: measure the time it saves, then decide. Keep, kill, or expand. Write the number down. The goal in 90 days is not transformation. It is one workflow people trust and one honest number. That is what earns the next yes. Useful before clever. Specific before broad. I walk through the whole thing in an upcoming episode of Evalve Out Loud.

The business world just shifted its AI benchmark from productivity to revenue. A Gartner survey found that 88% of HR leaders said their organizations had not realized significant business value from AI tools. Time saved isn't showing up on the P&L. Boards are asking why. Lauren Vriens The Rundown AI University framed it simply: Value = Revenue, not Productivity. Here's why that matters for education leaders. Schools don't track revenue. They track something more consequential: whether students learn, whether IEP goals are met, whether the most vulnerable kids get the right support at the right time. The parallel shift for education is this: Stop asking "how can we use AI to save teachers time?" Start asking "what is blocking student achievement, and where does AI break that constraint?" The new leadership question isn't tool-led. It's value-led. AI is the means, not the goal. The pain points reveal the AI worth investing in. That's how I approach every engagement. I don't sell tools. I identify the constraint in your systems and build AI implementation that moves the metric that matters. If your district is ready to move from AI experimentation to AI that produces outcomes, let's talk. AI Implementation for Education That Actually Works.

How much of your team's week disappears into work nobody planned for? Appointment reminders sent manually. Data copied between systems that don't talk to each other. Follow-up emails that fall through the cracks. Status updates typed into three different tools. It adds up. And most organizations don't realize how much until they look. The Invisible Work Audit is a free, 5-minute self-assessment that maps your actual workflows and shows you where automation and AI could give you real time back. No sign-up. No sales call. Just a clear picture of what's costing you hours every week. https://lnkd.in/gF_7ER8N

Overwhelmed by AI but know you need to start using it? I built a free AI Readiness Assessment for education leaders. Five minutes. You get a score, your level, and a PDF report you can share with your team. Grounded in CoSN, ISTE, and UNESCO frameworks. No vendor BS, no sales pitch. Just an honest read on where you are and what to look at next. Take it here: https://lnkd.in/gtZHAHCm

I'm helping schools and edtech orgs actually implement AI without the hype. If you're wrestling with this, I've got 30 minutes free this month for honest conversations: https://lnkd.in/g2yFiAck

Useful AI is not just about better prompts. It's about better memory. If AI is going to help school leaders make real decisions, it needs to hold onto context: what's already been decided, who needs support, what projects are in motion, and what no one should have to re-explain. That's the difference between AI that generates text and AI that actually helps you lead. Before you adopt AI, decide what it should remember. The right memory system helps teams reduce repetition, protect continuity, and keep implementation moving. Practical AI starts with workflow clarity and the right memory design. Take the free AI Readiness Assessment: https://lnkd.in/gf23zR87 Book a call: https://lnkd.in/g2yFiAck #AIinEducation #EdTech #SchoolLeadership #AIImplementation #K12 #EdLeadership