Project Distills Lessons of ‘Coherent’ District-Level Reforms

Boston

How can districts organize and manage themselves to achieve excellence in every school and classroom, not just a few? For the past four years, a joint project of Harvard University’s business school and its graduate school of education has been pressing that question in partnership with nine large school districts around the country.

This summer, the 4-year old initiative, known as the Public Education Leadership Project, or PELP, held its first national conference here to share a framework it’s developed based on what it’s learning.

And like most business classes at Harvard, the meeting began with a case study—in this instance, of a mythical district that’s a composite of what the researchers first encountered when they began working with...