SLP Students Build Networks at Kellogg Education Innovation Case Competition

When Maria Covarrubias received an e-mail from Senior Lecturer James Honan alerting his class about the 2010 Kellogg Education Innovation Case Competition, she knew right away that it was something she wanted to do.

A former teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Covarrubias knew that the competition would be a great challenge. The annual Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management competition, which typically attracts teams of MBA students from top business schools across the country, puts students to the task of restructuring an urban school district.

Covarrubias turned to some of her fellow School Leadership Program students -- Kabe ErkenBrack, Daniel Allen, and Jessica Miller -- to fill out the four-person team. They had one week to restructure the school environment and create a proposal. While most teams, according to the students, spend about six hours working on their projects, they spent nearly 40 hours on theirs. Ultimately, the HGSE team and 11 other teams from schools like the University of California at Los Angeles, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dartmouth, and the University of Chicago, were selected from the proposals to participate in the annual competition.

Even though it isn't uncommon for education and business to collaborate these days, the HGSE team says they were surprised to discover theirs was the only education team competing. This illustrated, they say, some of the differences between how business and education view school districts.

There were many things to think about, ErkenBrack says, ranging from transportation, to school choice to the budget, as well as mission statements and school values.

"Our mission was whatever structure we determined, it had to support the classroom," Allen says.

While the other teams did pay attention to classroom support, the HGSE team proposal focused on building networks throughout the school system with emphasis on classroom support. The business schools, report the students, seemed focused much more on areas of governance and mayoral control, to which the HGSE team had given less consideration.

The business schools also seemed to have a top-down approach or managerial structure, and advocated for firing teachers who may not be performing at level. The HGSE team took a different approach by focusing on mentoring and improving teacher's performance rather than firing them.

A team of faculty judged the competition which required each team to present for 15 minutes. The winner was chosen based on how they addressed specific demographic needs and the overarching challenges that face the U.S. public school system today.

Although HGSE didn't take the top prize, the team was recognized for thinking outside of the box and having a strong presentation. But the team members agree that, despite not winning the top prize, it was a great experience.

"The true reward from this competition was the learning we got from it. I learned a lot about myself, my team members, and the work that lies ahead of us as leaders in education," Covarrubias says. "This competition gave us the opportunity to be innovative - expand our thinking and try out new ideas. I value the work we did and the ideas we came up with. I'm glad we chose to participate. If given the opportunity to do it again -- even with the added workload -- I would do it in a heartbeat."

"We went into the competition thinking we have an edge, being educators, which helped with the development," ErkenBrack says. "We learned a lot also about being in the business world."

While it remains to be seen whether the business school models were more effective than the HGSE team's model, one thing did come out of the competition: a new friendship. The team said that MIT's Sloan Business School of Management were also in attendance at the competition and agreed to collaborate with the HGSE students moving forward to talk more about education..

"I'm glad that we are branching out and working with other schools," Covarrubias says. "I believe it is time that we network and create partnerships so that together we can develop innovative ideas that will benefit education."