About
Tom Semko, Ed.D.
Twenty years in K-12, on every side of the question of what students can actually do.
Tom Semko has spent twenty years in K-12 on every side of this problem. He has been a technology teacher, a middle school assistant principal, a supervisor of instruction, a director of curriculum and STEAM, and a district director of data — the person responsible for whether the numbers a district reports actually mean anything.
He built performance-based assessments for districts across Monmouth and Ocean counties as an executive board member of the Monmouth County Curriculum Consortium, and ran rubric calibration protocols so that different teachers scoring the same work would reach the same conclusion. He holds an Ed.D in Educational Leadership and New Jersey School Administrator certification.
He is not selling an AI product, and he does not think AI tools are the answer to this. He thinks the question is older than that: what should students be able to do now, and how do we know whether they can?
I’ve run rubric calibration protocols. I know how hard it is to get two teachers to agree on what mastery looks like, and that was before AI.
Next Phase Ventures
Next Phase Ventures is the company through which Tom does his consulting and professional learning work with districts, schools, and education organizations.
Work with me
Start with a 30-minute Readiness Snapshot.
Structured questions across five dimensions, ending in the one finding that stands out most. Free, and bounded.