ExEl Team Guides Chief State School Officers at Annual Summer Meeting

Chief state school officers are pulled in every direction, juggling competing demands from the federal government, governors, legislatures, state boards of education, teachers' unions, parents, and media.

So when the Council of Chief State School Officers held its recent annual summer meeting, it turned to help from a team from the Harvard Executive Leadership Program for Educators (ExEl). An initiative aimed at helping urban and underperforming school systems, ExEl is a collaborative effort of HGSE, Harvard Business School, and Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), in association with the Wallace Foundation.

The goal at the summer meeting? To help the states' top education officers - all either elected or appointed officials - work through their many challenges. The help is needed, said Christopher Koch, superintendent of education in Illinois. "Being a chief is sort of a lonely job," he said. "This is one of the rare opportunities we have to get everyone around the table."

Thirty-one chiefs and seven deputies, representing 34 states, met for four days in Amelia Island, Fla., while summer thunderstorms boomed over the barrier island. ExEl was represented by HGSE Lecturers Lee Teitel and Janice Jackson, Senior Lecturer James Honan, Associate Professor Heather Hill, Elizabeth City, Ed.M.'04, Ed.D.'07, and Sarah Alvord; as well as HKS Lecturer Linda Kaboolian; and ExEl coaches Angela Kenyatta, and Patricia Magruder. The team led the educators through workshops and case studies - and stuck around for some networking and socializing.

ExEl works with state and district superintendents, along with business leaders, legislators, unions, and parents, to improve struggling schools. "It's really trying to figure out how the state fits into this fragmented system, in the midst of politics and financial pressures," said Jackson, a faculty senior associate with ExEl. "How do we make sure this is about all kids, not just the easy-to-educate kids? All the answers aren't going to be found in education."

Teitel, ExEl's faculty director, urged the leaders to be open with each other, even if it meant bruising a high-ranking ego or two. "Get beyond the culture of nice," he said. "We're inviting you to kind of let your guards down."

He led a workshop in which one state chief explained his problems in getting schools up to the standards of the federal No Child Behind Act. His state has offered financial bonuses to persuade educators to tackle jobs at struggling schools, and has contracted with a private company that works with such schools. Two-thirds of the underperforming schools have improved, but the remaining third - plagued by turnover, lack of parental involvement, and entrenched, unresponsive leadership - are proving harder to fix.

The situation there remains dismal, the chief admitted to his peers. "There's a disconnect between what we're required to do and the flexibility we need to do it," he said. His fellow chiefs commiserated and offered advice, sharing stories of how they've learned to live under NCLB mandates.

Peter McWalters, commissioner of education in Rhode Island, said he and most state chiefs have learned to live with the federal act, which he now fully supports. He said it has helped state education chiefs recognize their common challenges. "I can remember when we came together and told only the good stories," he said. In the NCLB era, though, when failing schools are listed in the newspaper, problems are in the open.

On the last day of CCSSO's meeting, McWalters said he was reinvigorated by the efforts of the Harvard team. "I am willing to take the leap of faith," he said. "These people have been doing this for so long, that this is an instrument of learning for me. I trust it, and at the end of these four days I [think], 'This is good. This is good.'"