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HGSE/HBS Student Team Wins PELP Case Competition

Harvard Graduate School of Education students Neil Spears and Tracy Johnson, along with Harvard Business School student Scott Given, were recently named the winners of the Public Education Leadership Project (PELP) Case Competition.

Two years ago, PELP, a collaborative project between faculty at Harvard Business School and Harvard Graduate School of Education that focuses on developing effective leadership and management practices to support large-scale organizational change in urban school districts, began the Case Competition where teams of Harvard University students present recommendations for a school district to a panel of faculty judges. This year eight teams entered the competition and five were selected as finalists.

Spears, Johnson, and Given had taken courses together and, due to similar interests, decided to form a team to compete. "We were all interested in district-level reforms and thought why not form a team and see how we could do in a high pressure, interesting situation with people who know a lot about urban school districts," Spears explains.

In the PELP Case Competition, each team receives the same case study written by faculty members, which demonstrates how there are different ways of solving identical problems, says HGSE student Anne Tabet, co-organizer of the event. The teams draw from the PELP framework, which was developed by HGSE and HBS faculty, to come up with solutions to the problem.

This year the case study focused on the Aldine Independent School District located in Houston, where student achievement was declining. Teams were asked to identify the district challenges and propose solutions, and give 15-minute presentations to a panel of judges which were followed by a 10-minute question and answer session.

"It is a lot of work," says Spears. "Reading and analyzing the case took quite a long time, then coming together to hash out our ideas because it was such a complex case and we had different ideas about what was wrong and how to fix it."

Although Tabet says that all the finalist presentations were excellent, the winning team's project stood out due to their use of the PELP framework and comprehensive solution to the problem. "They did the best job approaching it from the district perspective," she says.

Winning was a surprise for the students, who were very impressed with some of the other presentations they had the opportunity to see. "I remember ... after another team presented, Scott said, 'I don't think we won,' and I said, 'I don't think we did either,'" Spears recalls.

Given says he really enjoyed the opportunity to work with his colleagues. "This competition was a vehicle to connect students from more than one part of the university," Given says. "I feel very strongly that the particular diversity on our team actually contributed to a final product."

Students who win the PELP Case Competition receive a small token of appreciation and their names will be added to a plaque in the Gutman Library.

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