Basic Education - Harvard UniversityThe Basic Education Think Tank was the first in the series for 2009. It was chaired by Fernando Reimers, the Ford Foundation Professor of International

An overview of ideas from the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative Think Tank

Basic Education:Filling Leadership Gaps and Repurposing Education to Develop 21st Century Competencies

Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative

2009

Basic Education:

Filling Leadership Gaps in K-12 Public Education

An Overview of Ideas from the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative Think

Tank

Faculty Co-Chairs

Fernando Reimers

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

March 12-14, 2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: The Think Tank Premise……………………………………………..1

What Is The Education Problem?.......................................................................3

Inside The Building: Supporting Teaching…………………………………………7

Spanning Buildings: Public-Private Partnerships………………………………….10

Outside The Building: Social Entrepreneurs………………………………………13

Leadership for the Future……………………………………………………….…16

Think Tank Agenda………………………………………………………………...18

2009 Advanced Leadership Fellows …...…………………………………………19

Advanced Leadership Faculty..………….…………………………………………20

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Introduction: The Think Tank Premise

The Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University (ALI) is dedicated to educating and

deploying a leadership force of experienced leaders who can address challenging national and

global problems. An important part of the process is to stimulate discussion among experts and

advocates about the gaps that can be filled by Advanced Leaders, including the Advanced

Leadership Fellows at Harvard who are preparing to transition from their primary income-earning

years to their next lives of service. Each year, ALI convenes three solution-finding workshops called

Think Tanks to delve deeply into the nature of social problems, their potential solutions, the barriers

to change, and the ways that Advanced Leaders can make a difference.

The Basic Education Think Tank was the first in the series for 2009. It was chaired by Fernando

Reimers, the Ford Foundation Professor of International Education at the Harvard Graduate School

of Education and an ALI Co-chair, with collaboration from Rosabeth Moss Kanter, the Ernest L.

Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and Chair/Director of

ALI. David Gergen, Professor of Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, Director of the

Center for Public Leadership, and an ALI Co-Chair, guided a University-wide public forum as part of

the event.

It should go without saying that the bedrock of a well-functioning democratic society is an

educated citizenry. In the 21st

century, the need for a well-educated populace is more critical than

ever. Certainly, in a perfect world, public education systems would universally imbue students with

the skills needed to become productive workers and well-informed, innovative, engaged citizens.

Indeed, this is the case in some nations, such as Finland. But in developing countries, even the most

basic education remains out of reach for too many children. Even in the U.S. – the first country to

offer universal public education, and the country which, in aggregate, has the most educated

workforce in the world – the quality of education has declined to the point where, by some

measures, the country ranks 25th

among developed countries in literacy, numeracy and science.

Reimers and Kanter emphasized that the goal for this dialogue was determine opportunities to

maximize outcomes for children, to help them gain the knowledge, skills, and character that would

enable them to lead prosperous and fulfilling lives. Although it’s commonly assumed that it’s better

for children to go to school than not, Reimers said, ‚Schools can be a very debilitating institution.

We need to think very critically about the notion that if we just get every child to go and finish

school, it's going to achieve the aspirations that we've held onto for 500 years – that we can,

through these institutions, create societies that are more civil and more peaceful.‛ He also noted

that ‚Education used to be about the development of excellence and competency in an academic

sense, but also very much a building of character.‛ But over the last 15 years, character-building

has gone by the wayside as public education has focused on mechanisms designed to ensure

subject matter coverage. Reimers invoked history: Massachusetts education reformer Horace Mann,

who saw schools as a way to build trust among diverse individuals, as immigration swelled; and

Eleanor Roosevelt, who saw that basic education should be a universal right to produce conditions

for sustainable peace in the aftermath of the devastation caused by World War II. Lack of high-

quality basic education is associated with fragmentation of societies, the increase in violence in

communities and in nations, and the undermining of the ability of states to govern.

Kanter reinforced the Think Tank’s emphasis on skills rather than schools per se. ‚A lot of schooling

in the past was about teaching people to assimilate into a culture that already existed. We live in a

world that's open-ended and changing…..How do we create the conditions so that those

outcomes are best suited for the future, rather than the past?‛ she asked. In addition, she urged

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those concerned about education to put more emphasis on the extrinsic conditions needed to

promote learning. The school is just one influence in a child’s life. What about the other influences

– the community, the family, the culture, the rest of life? ‚How do we create conditions under

which children thrive?‛ she asked. ‚How can entrepreneurs help make it possible for children to

thrive when they do go to school, regardless of what happens outside of school?‛ This emphasis

she defined as ‚Thinking Outside the Building,‛ that is, moving beyond established models and

institutions to fill leadership gaps with promising innovations.

Solutions begin with understanding the nature of the problem. The challenge for Advanced

Leadership is to find solutions when goals are complex or conflicting and the problem is subject to

multiple interpretations.

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What is the Education Problem?

_____________________________________________________________________________________

The first challenge is reaching all students. The U.S. has what David Gergen called an American

paradox: the best system of higher education in the world with a struggling K-12 system. When

measured by standardized scores, U.S. students score near the bottom of countries in the

developed world, and the racial disparity in achievement is particularly stark. Taking a comparative

perspective, Think Tank discussions explored several types of explanations:

The political implications of racial composition of urban schools

The need to upgrade the teaching profession

The need for better engagement of students’ intrinsic motivation to learn, which might

mean more flexibility

Racial composition and its consequences

Research shows that there are considerable racial and ethnic disparities in achievement in the U.S.

Ronald Ferguson, Senior Lecturer in Education and Public Policy at the Harvard Graduate School of

Education, connected this to a political climate of low investments in urban schools and a cultural

context in which there is lack of support for educational achievement in early years. ‚By the time

students get to 12th

grade, there are about four years’ difference between blacks and Hispanics,

versus whites and Asians,‛ he said. Ferguson challenged the notion that nature trumps nurture,

asserting that learning is mostly affected by life experience. Between 1971 and 1988, 62 percent of

the reading score gap between blacks and whites in the National Assessment of Educational

Progress disappeared. ‚Something [in terms of life experience during these years in the U.S.]

changed,‛ he observed. ‚The I.Q. of the entire United States population rose by 18 points in the

latter two-thirds of the last century. We often talk about I.Q. as if it's the real genetic measure of

intelligence. Well, genetics don't change that fast.‛ Observing that racial gaps begin to appear by

the age of three, ‚the evidence is accumulating that it's got a lot to do with early childhood

experience,‛ in parenting practices and environment, Ferguson noted, adding that each learning

experience correlates to physical changes in the brain. ‚And we have to start to help both parents

and children understand that, so that some kids don't think that they're just stuck [with being]

stupid and other people think they're stuck [with being] smart.‛

International comparisons underscore the U.S. dilemma. Andreas Schleicher of the Organization for

Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), concurred, observing that currently, 25% of the

15-year-olds who take the latest international standardized test called the PISA assessment don't

make it to the minimum level of competency that enables them to continue learning. ‚The impact

that social background has on learning outcomes in the United States is particularly strong, much

stronger than in other countries,‛ he noted. The exceptionally high rate of failure in the U.S.

education system has particularly to do with incentive structures. ‚The United States has favored

smaller classes over better salaries and working conditions – you pay a price for that. You can

double teacher salaries, but if you don't change the incentive structures and the work environment,

nothing will change.‛ He observed that in high-performing educational systems in countries such

as Finland, Korea or Singapore, teachers receive a high amount of training and develop curricula

collaboratively. ‚It's not this industrial mindset where you have someone who invents some

standards and then train everybody how to implement it in the classroom,‛ Schleicher said.

Kathleen McCartney, Dean of the Faculty of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of

Education, issued a strong call for closing educational disparities: ‚I believe that education is the

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civil rights issue of our time,‛ she said. ‚And what I mean by that is that it really provides a

foundation for a just society … it affords each child access to the American dream. Education was

what made this country great.‛ McCartney outlined a variety of failures in U.S. public education

systems, primarily those in poor urban districts. There are real costs associated with this failure:

every dollar invested in education saves $4 in costs to the justice system, special services and

welfare. She suggested that ‚If children spend more time on task, they're going to learn more,‛

and that more research in education is required. ‚In order to really be able to scale up successful

solutions, we need to invest in education the way we invest in science, health and

technology….We need to teach children 21st century skills … like critical thinking, collaboration,

innovation,‛ she urged.

Citing a McKinsey & Company study of 25 of the world's best school systems, McCartney added

that ‚schools that were successful were better able to attract the best teachers. And they were also

schools that really had a laser focus on instructional improvement.‛ Though some believe that

standardized testing will help teachers deliver good instruction, ‚others of us [particularly at the

Harvard Graduate School of Education] are more critical about it.‛ Focusing on early childhood

education would set the stage for later success, McCartney suggested, citing innovative programs

such as New York City’s Democracy Prep and the POSSE program in which groups of children from

poor neighborhoods are sent to college. She noted that there were opportunities aplenty for

entrepreneurial solutions such as these.

The teaching profession

Many Think Tank participants felt that supporting teachers is key to fixing the system. A cultural

bias exists in the U.S. against ‚those who teach‛ (as opposed to ‚those who do‛). Even the most

experienced and effective teachers are undervalued in a society that places a premium on much

more lucrative private-sector professions. While schools of education churn out accredited

teachers, too little academic research is devoted to public education, and too little rigorous training

provided to those who bear the heavy responsibility of educating tomorrow’s citizens.

The lack of professionalization, combined with a lack of funding for public schools, exacerbates

ineffectiveness and keeps teachers relegated to second-class status. Teachers require better training

at the university level and more professional development in their jobs.

As a university president, Ruth Simmons, President of Brown University, expressed her intent to

make sure that Brown brings talented students into the teaching profession and motivates these

teachers with a calling. ‚There's nothing more valuable to us than for the best and the brightest

students to really teach,‛ she said. Education, she said, is a gift given by families and teachers to

the students. Yet despite the fact that the U.S. was the first country to mandate universal

education, a strong anti-intellectual bias runs through the culture, she observed. As a society, ‚We

don’t prize education in our children,‛ she noted. ‚In certain [American] communities, you'll hear

individuals say, ‘Well, I certainly don't want my taxes raised to help pay for improved schools

because I don't have kids in the schools.’‛ Such societal devaluation of the teacher and the strain

of anti-intellectualism undermine not only the aspirations of the best and brightest who may want

to go into education, but education itself.

Are teachers treated as professionals under current requirements, such as standardized testing, or

are they turned into ‚technocratic robots,‛ as Harvard Business School Professor Rakesh Khurana

put it? Khurana called for raising the status of the profession, ‚so that it's not synonymous with

indoctrination and the kind of economic bribery system we create in business, so that teachers can

respond to the calling, the vocation, and the sense of making a difference.‛

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Student engagement

More uniform curricula and regimentation were not seen as an answer; indeed, many participants

viewed these as part of the problem. What is needed, as Ruth Simmons said, is ‚a truly engaged

model of learning, where the student is neither the victim, nor a passive learner, but truly involved

in their education and respected as such.‛ An engaged student later becomes the engaged citizen,

to innovate and to lead a satisfying life. Simmons praised the difference a caring and committed

teacher makes in a student’s life – and helps students feel that learning is an important thing.

Indeed, while much of the focus for education reform involves low-achieving students, it is

important to serve gifted and talented students, particularly in poor districts where no testing for

gifted students occurs. Lea Ybarra of John’s Hopkins University issued a reminder that students are

considered at risk if they can’t read or might drop out of school, but what about the bright ones

who are bored and get overlooked? Are schools offering enough to motivate talented students?

‚The problem with schools is that they are boring,‛ declared Deborah Meier, Senior Scholar and

Adjunct Professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education who has created and led

successful, innovative inner city schools. ‚Children are natural learners,‛ she said. ‚Unless we

transform schools, I think keeping them there longer, starting them there earlier, and forcing

adherence to inflexible standards is just another waste of time and energy that could go in a

different direction.‛ Increasing the school day and more time on tasks is not the answer, she

contended. ‚Children in the countries we claim are more competitive spend fewer hours in school

than we do, not more. And their teachers spend fewer hours in direct contact with the students

than ours do.‛ Nor, she suggested, is education a ‚business,‛ despite the widespread belief that

business has appropriate answers to educations problems (adding that the recent economic disaster

might cause a reexamination of the way school success is measured). She argued against paying

students and teachers bonuses for performance. Successful schools, she said, challenge and reward

children who want to learn. The goal is to help foster ‚schools where strong, powerful, interesting

adults exercise judgment in the presence of kids, examine data, bring together a community that

includes several generations, in which young people are learning how to become adults in the

company of adults they might like to become.‛

The idea of children as natural learners was underscored by the example of basic education in

conflict zones of the world such as Afghanistan, Sudan, and Iraq, where students attempt to learn

even under situations of dire conflict and extreme poverty, as recounted by Charito Kruvant, CEO

of Creative Associates International. There is also a major challenge getting children into schools, as

Charles MacCormack, President of Save the Children, pointed out; of the 70 million school-age

children who are not in school, 37 million are in conflict-affected states. Even so, students in such

countries, such as young girls in Afghanistan who have been left out of the educational system for

years, are successful learners because they are very highly motivated, Kruvant said. Once they have

the opportunity to go to school, the girls can cover three years of schooling in one year because

they are so hungry to learn, and they know that people care about them. ‚In one year, most of

them ... not only just pass the test, they get better grades than the United States.‛ But in the U.S.,

public education is taken for granted. She also argued that public education is a community

responsibility. She reflected on her experiences in the crisis-laden, corrupt public schools of the

District of Columbia, noting that the community finally took action. ‚It took months and months of

good people like you to come and say, ‘Yes, [the neglect of students in the schools is due to]

racism, but it's a lot more than racism.’‛

In short, all three factors interact to reduce outcomes for children: political and community support,

especially in early years; teacher supply and quality; and the ability to engage children’s natural

desire to learn. The search for solutions took Think Tank participants to an exploration of

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approaches ‚inside the building‛ – that is within the instructional core of schools themselves;

‚spanning the buildings‛ – that is, partnerships between schools and other significant institutions

to support school performance; and ‚outside the building‛ – that is, in community programs led by

social entrepreneurs finding new ways to integrate schooling into children’s communities and lives,

including through innovative technologies that enhance learning. And perhaps the children

themselves are part of the solution. ‚Today's kids are going to set the values and standards by

which tomorrow is governed. If you influence this generation to feel that education is an important

part of everyone’s lives, then, in fact, what you may well do is influence a generation that is more

involved in education,‛ 2009 Advanced Leadership Fellow James Kaplan said.

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Inside the Building: Supporting Teaching

‚You have to provide teachers with conditions in which they can teach,‛ Fernando Reimers

declared. ‚They need a relevant, coherent curriculum. They need instructional resources. They need

to have organizations where they can perform. And they need, of course, leadership that supports

their good work. It takes time to learn and to teach.‛

What is a systemic model for excellence in teaching? The best performing basic educational system

in the developed world, based on international standardized tests, is Finland. The country’s

students consistently score highest worldwide in the international assessments of literacy, math and

science. The public system is so valued that there are few private schools. The single biggest success

factor is the teachers, according to Timo Lankinen, Director General of the Finnish Board of

Education. He explained that the Finnish system previously operated much like that of the U.S.

Students were tracked according to their performance on tests, which yielded mediocre results.

Then the system was reformed. Of course, Finland is a small country with a relatively homogeneous

population and a high level of adult literacy, but the outlines of the Finnish system are instructive.

Teaching is a high-status job in Finnish society. In Finland today, primary-school teachers spend

several years preparing for their careers; all have university-conferred master's degrees. Working

conditions are very good. Finnish primary-school teachers collaborate closely with one another; they

have a high degree of control over the curriculum; and they may select their own textbooks, as

long as they adhere to the core national curriculum. National standards are lean: the standards in

mathematics are about 10 pages long for K-12. Homework is kept to a minimum. About 6 percent

of Finland’s GDP goes to education (as opposed to 2% in the U.S). All children ages 8 months to 7

years have access to free, full-day daycare and kindergarten. Daycare costs no more than a few

hundred dollars a month. The focus for kindergarten students is to "learn how to learn.‛ Instead of

formal instruction in reading and math, students learn about nature; the emphasis is on broad-

based, holistic and deep learning. Finnish children do not begin primary school until they are seven

years old. Finland is a welfare state with a comprehensive health system. Students and teachers

receive a free hot meal daily. Schools are safe and clean, and the environment informal and

friendly.

The Finnish model is known to educational advocates in the U.S. who argue for adopting it.

Professor Linda Darling Hammond of Stanford University called for ‚making authentic work that

engages kids around important questions‛ – work that reflects key ideas in the disciplines and

sparks students’ intellectual curiosity. She compared the Finnish teacher development model to

that of medical schools in the U.S., where the participants receive ‚deep preparation in good

practice.‛ By placing an emphasis on skills for teaching struggling students, the Finnish system

assumes that teachers can instruct everyone else as well. If Advanced Leaders want to follow the

Finnish model, she said, they must invest heavily in teachers, conceive of public education as an

integrated system, and think long-term. ‚We have to be thinking continuously about what is going

to build instructional capacity that will last over the long haul,‛ she said.

Stanley Litow, IBM Vice President and President of the IBM Foundation (and former Vice Chancellor

of the New York City public schools), put it bluntly: ‚You want quality? Change how we nurture,

develop and support talent … by and large, teachers are trained and supported exactly the way it

was done 40 years ago. You can't solve the problems in 2010 the same way you did in 1970 or

1960. To follow the script of change, make sure you're focused; make sure everybody understands

what you're trying to change, [and that] everybody understands what are you going to do to

evaluate progress at the end of a six-month period.‛

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Educational quality is not just about teacher skill; working conditions loom large. Monica Higgins,

Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, showed that leadership in

schools makes a difference in teacher as well as student performance; she provided a model for

empowering or enabling forms of leadership rather than top-down traditional command-and-

control leadership. Fernando Reimers said that ‚you have to provide teachers with conditions in

which they can teach. They need a relevant, coherent curriculum. They need instructional

resources. They need to have organizations where they can perform. And they need leadership that

supports their good work.‛ Aligning curriculum, instruction, resources and assessment in a single

grade and across grades, he noted, would make students' educational experience more ‚coherent

and synergistic.‛

What teachers teach matters, not just how they teach. Subject matter preparation was considered

very important, especially in math and science. The opportunity for improvement through a

coherent curriculum was also discussed. William Schmidt, author of Why Schools Matter, called for

‚a national curriculum that is focused, rigorous and coherent‛ – that is, one that assures that

students learn appropriate material in a deep, systematic way. ‚The U.S. philosophy,‛ he observed,

‚is to teach everything everywhere because, then, somehow, somewhere, somebody might learn

something.‛ Countries with the highest-achieving students, by contrast, provide in-depth and

rigorous topic focus, so that a subject is mastered in one year rather than in several. ‚Coherence

has to do with how you sequence a topic,‛ Schmidt said. ‚How much depth do you give a topic at

a given grade level? Which topics need, logically, to precede other topics? How does the topic

reflect the internal logical structure of the discipline from which it comes?‛ Though such national

curriculum standards would fly in the face of America’s traditional reliance on local school board

authority, Schmidt is sure that ‚with standards for all… we would have a more equitable system

and we would also perform much better in those international comparisons.‛ As a leadership

challenge, he proposed a national campaign designed to help the public understand just how

important such an approach is.

Other countries also face the problem of teacher preparation. This has been a particularly difficult

challenge in South Africa. Palesa Tyobeka, Deputy Director General for General Education Training

in South Africa’s Ministry of Education, described the transformation in public education occurring

in her country. When the post-apartheid government came to power, the public education system

was in tatters. In 1994, 85,000 out of 400,000 teachers were deemed either unqualified or

underqualified, and the school systems were ‚ungovernable‛ due to union chokeholds. To prepare

a new cadre of teachers with the skills and competences the country needed, the government took

a very incremental approach. ‚Every step of the way, we had to move together with the teachers’

unions,‛ she said. ‚We had to invest in celebrating and recognizing excellence in the teachers …

and go out of our way to actually attract people into the profession.‛

Brazil has similarly faced roadblocks to quality education in poor teacher training, poor school

management and teachers’ unions that resist change. Brazilian Senator (and former Education

Minister) Paulo Renato Souza has found other tools to improve teaching, such as parental

involvement, the leadership of good principals, and the support of the media. Although every

district receives the same level of funding for books and teacher salaries, some schools are better

than others because parents and the community are deeply involved, and because the principals

are good managers. Good principals, he said, ‚call the community to work together.‛ As Minister

of Education, he tapped the power of parents by changing a major element of school funding –

instead of filtering money through the state to the schools, funding went instead to PTAs (parent-

teacher associations). ‚Before the program was started, we had 11,000 PTAs in Brazil,‛ he noted.

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‚One year later, we have 70,000.‛ On a ‚National Day of Parents in the Schools‛ that called for

parental involvement, 60% of parents showed up – proof that a national advertising campaign

worked. Souza believes that public relations is critically important, because the media can

communicate and spread educational efforts. For example, when the state was having problems

getting textbooks distributed to schools, he enlisted the media to advertise an 800 number that

parents could call to demand the books.

Some, like Renato, expressed hope in ‚the new science of pedagogy.‛ With the help of

instruments that can assess the quality of education, and identify and measure teacher and student

abilities and competencies, he said, it’s possible to achieve a more objective measure of what

works. Others placed their bets on leaders who could inspire and mobilize teachers. ‚Leaders can

convince other people that my idea is their idea. A leader persuades teachers that change is a

matter of survival … It's not about having a job, or having a school fall down around us. Teachers

are waiting for somebody to come in and rescue them. Some leader has to step in and say, ‘Hey,

here's what we need to do’,‛ said 2009 Advanced Leadership Fellow Charles Bolden

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Spanning Buildings: Public-Private Partnerships

In the U.S. in particular, but also around the world, the business community has a great interest in

improving educational outcomes, not only in terms of employable skills (productive workers for the

21st

century economy) but as a contribution to the quality of a society (developing an effective,

responsible citizenry). Some observers see this as bringing business management practice into

schools. ‚Historically, businesses think that they have all the answers,‛ noted Stacey Childress, a

Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School. They assume that ‚if we would just run schools more

efficiently with the kinds of incentives that make businesses work, then schools would be better.‛

However, this kind of intrusion was not what Think Tank participants had in mind. They sought

more productive partnerships utilizing business capabilities to enhance school system capabilities in

a more collaborative and synergistic fashion. Stanley Litow, President of the IBM International

Foundation and Vice President for Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs, asked ‚How can

you get people to open up their minds and figure out how to collaborate? You're not going to

agree with everything, yet everybody gets a say. How do you support more, not less, innovation?

And how do you figure out how to make [innovation] more part of a systemic strategy?‛

Can businesses work with school systems to reform education? The challenge is for business

leaders to take the time to understand the difference between running a business organization and

educational institutions that operate by very different rules. ‚It is hard to run a business,‛ Childress

said. ‚It is infinitely harder to lead and manage in the public education sector.‛ Allen Grossman,

with Childress a founder of the Public Education Leadership Project (PELP) – a venture between HBS

and HGSE – indicated the challenge: to integrate the management skills and tools into the

bureaucratic operations of school systems without trying to dictate certain politically sensitive

changes. Advanced Leaders who hail from the business world are needed to build more

public/private partnerships. To do this, they must first listen closely to the needs of educators, and

then investigate existing examples of successful public/private partnerships.

One example of such a partnership is The Boston Compact. Founded in 1982, the compact was

designed to enroll individual companies in the Boston area to work with individual high schools.

Over the years and through several incarnations, it has served as an example of a strong attempt to

institute clear standards in an effort to help school lower dropout rates and improve test scores.

According to the Compact’s former executive director, Robert Schwartz of the Harvard Graduate

School of Education, ‚the single most important [issue] was to get the system to take seriously its

responsibilities [in training students for] access to jobs.‛ Businesses provided resources in the form

of equipment, personnel and funding to help improve the performance of the partner schools, and

offered student placements for summer and entry-level jobs and internships. Given political and

budget battles, the relationship between businesses and schools has not been altogether smooth.

However, it has led to a decentralization of the management system of the schools, giving the

principals more clout in staff management and setting performance goals. Despite the struggles,

the Compact’s commitment to teaching improvement, innovation, accountability and measurement

has been unique.

A different experience in scope and outcomes occurred in Montgomery County, Maryland, where a

unique style of collaboration evolved. Montgomery County looked at core competencies of the

school administration and discovered that it could bring business expertise into a critical area of

human resources. As Allen Grossman explained, ‚The [schools’] HR programs were mostly

compliance-related and they didn't focus a great deal on how to attract the best teaching and

administration candidates, how to retain them, and actually motivate them.‛ With the help of

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business professionals, school districts were better able to decide how to deploy human resources.

Additionally, 200 young executives in the county were recruited to coach 9th

graders in job

presentation skills.

IBM’s Reinventing Education initiatives, which have reached millions of students through

partnerships to produce innovative solutions in school districts encompassing about a third of the

U.S. and over a dozen other countries, represent an extensive model for partnerships between

schools and business. To make this valuable for schools, companies use their best capabilities to

find innovations that address problems schools face; to make this sustainable for companies, the

innovation involves areas that might also enrich the business. Hans-Ulrich Maerki, former Chairman

of IBM Europe, Middle East, and Africa, and a 2009 Advanced Leadership Fellow, noted that rather

than attempting to intervene directly in the educational process, businesses that help European

schools focus on contributing skills and services that can make schools more effective and efficient.

Maerki described IBM’s partnership with the German State of Brandenburg to create software and

systems that, once developed, could be sold to other school systems, earning IBM a good return on

its investment while the schools benefited from the company’s technological expertise. ‚We

learned that you can't just come in and give the people technology … and tell them what to do

with it,‛ he remarked. ‚It doesn't work.‛ Rather, what was required was business process

reengineering, which was a far more challenging undertaking. Maerki also envisioned a

transformation in the ways teachers work because of technology. ‚They will become coaches,

moderators, or whatever, but no longer transformers of knowledge because the kids coming to

school will know more than they do,‛ he said. He suggested that in the future, teachers may look

more like business managers. ‚I had to learn, as a manager, that all the people around me knew

more than I did,‛ he observed. ‚My role was not someone telling what they had to do. My role

was to moderate in a modern company … and I think a teacher will have to become a coach, like a

manager in business.‛

In general, they are two distinct levels of involvement companies can have with schools. At one end

of the continuum is to make a big investment, as IBM does, toward innovations that produce

systemic change. At the other is to work at a smaller level – say, bringing in volunteers to help set

up district-wide broadband networks. In the latter case, she suggested, ‚you want a wide range of

partners … to chip in a little bit.‛

A second form that public-private partnerships take is philanthropy – private sector foundation

support for innovations in schools. James Honan, a Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School

of Education, indicated that funders are looking for highly engaged partners who can develop

successful projects, he explained; therefore, any project that hopes to be funded must have a

strategy for ‚scaling up‛ to improve the outcomes of more students in the future than the current

grant allows in the test bed. Grant makers, he said, want to create so-called ‚big tents‛ ‚in which

individuals, institutions and communities can get to try to generate improved outcomes for young

people,‛ and there are ample opportunities for leaders to help with this. The funders need

engaged partners to make a difference in the world.

Public-private partnerships can fill significant gaps, especially in the developing world. In India,

there is a huge demand for teachers trained in math and science education to prepare young

people to take their place in the booming high-tech industries. Some business organizations have

created philanthropic arms with a specific mission to systematically change the gigantic, ineffective,

government-run Indian educational system, noted Dileep Ranjekar, CEO of the Azim Premji

Foundation (established by the Chairman of Wipro, an Indian biotech conglomerate). Currently,

there is no formal training for the 6 million teachers responsible for educating roughly 200 million

12

children in the 6 to 14 age group. About 75 percent of the children study in government schools,

and in rural areas, almost 78 percent. Of all these students, 70 percent live below the poverty line.

The teachers ‚lack a basic knowledge of pedagogy, subject matter expertise‛ and the socio-

economic backgrounds of the children, Rajenkar said. Once appointed, teachers continue to work

for the government, so there is little incentive to improve. Part of the work the Premji Foundation is

to reorient performance-oriented business people so that they can better understand the needs of

teachers and children.

Brazil, too, is attempting to develop innovations in the educational system with the help of private-

sector coalitions. The Center for Education for Community Action is a public/private partnership,

operating in 28 Brazilian cities, that works hard to professionalize the education sector, providing

training to teachers and administrators. The Center’s challenge is to improve learning for all

children, ‚and not create special conditions for just some children with good incomes,‛ said the

Center’s Beatriz Cardozo. This means assuring that parents are fully engaged in their children’s

education, and working with business partners to secure support for the Center’s efforts. Luis

Norberto Pascoal of the Brazilian Coalition All for Education agreed that business people have a lot

to learn before they try to fix education. Business can help the public sector, he observed, but

business leaders need to approach the task with humility. ‚Leaders can do a big change, but they

have to behave differently. They have to leave their egos a little bit aside. They have to be open to

new ideas … There are no solutions prêt-a-porter. You have to go deeply, into problems to

understand. You have to talk to principals, to teachers, to parents, to children. You have to listen,

listen, listen, listen. You have to understand other people's view. If you don't understand other

people's views, you can't learn; you can't help,‛ Pascoal believes.

It is clear that that the business community must do more than write checks. ‚In the developing

world, it would be helpful if every time a business hired a kid for an after-school job, they asked the

kid to bring in their report card and had a conversation about their grades,‛ Pascoal suggested.

However, the check is often what is most necessary – which is where philanthropies can help,

noted Phil Buchanan, President of the Center for Effective Philanthropy. Philanthropic funders are

interested in educational models that are not only successful, but that can be scaled. But because

there is no coherent theory of what really works in education, funders have a hard time knowing

where to put their money. Advanced leaders can help schools focus their appeals to philanthropies.

‚We try to encourage an indicators-based approach, and argue that schools need clear goals,

coherent, well implemented strategies and relevant performance indicators to achieve maximum

impact,‛ he said.

13

Outside the Building: Social Entrepreneurs

Social entrepreneurs creating social innovations are already providing new ways of transforming

outcomes for children by working in the community, augmenting schooling with out-of-school

experiences, reinventing aspects of the system such as teacher supply, or founding new kinds of

schools. Stacey Childress argued that the way out of longstanding, generational inequities for

ethnic, racial, and income groups is to tap the talents of social entrepreneurs. In the U.S., she has

been heartened by the energy and momentum of entrepreneurs developing exciting ‚new ways to

think about recruiting, preparing and training teachers, develop after-school, summer, other kinds

of programs, and come up with all kinds of ways to shore up and strengthen the public education

system.‛ These entrepreneurs are not trying to supplant but rather improve public schools. ‚Most

of the social entrepreneurs that I study in public education have dual visions for change,‛ she said.

‚One [group] is about direct service‛ to students, teachers and principals. Another set of

entrepreneurs are part of larger movements to actually transform the ways schools work.‛

It can be argued that any Advanced Leader who attempts to change the course of basic education

is a social entrepreneur. Social entrepreneurs don’t just look for opportunities to solve local

problems; in many cases, they are also part of one or more larger movements to actually transform

larger pieces of the system. City Year, begun in the U.S. in 1988 and now operating in

Johannesburg and London, is a noteworthy example of a highly effective, scalable solution created

by social entrepreneurs. The organization recruits 17- to 24-year old volunteers to work in

elementary and middle schools where economically disadvantaged children are at high risk of

dropping out due to behavior problems and poor performance in math and English. By helping the

cause of education, Rob Gordon, a City Year Senior Vice President, said, the enthusiastic and

idealistic volunteers and supporters at City Year become ‚an instrument in civic engagement.‛ Not

only do the volunteers transform their communities, but they are transformed as well. He called for

more collaboration among social entrepreneurial organizations, noting that to date they have all

tended to seek funding from the same philanthropies and government funds. ‚That stultifies

collaboration to a great degree, and we need to learn how to do that better,‛ he suggested,

adding that it might be useful for social entrepreneurs to join together in a public awareness

campaign to demonstrate how they are working for positive change.

Internationally, entrepreneurial approaches are also changing the nature of basic education. A

couple of notable British endeavors include Teach First and the Open University. In the same mold

as Teach for America, Teach First – whose programs have spread to South America, India, the Baltic

states, Europe, the Middle East, and South Africa – recruits top college graduates to spend two

years teaching in difficult schools before they set off on their careers. The idea, said Rona Kiley of

Teach First in the U.K., is ‚to supply people who would go to teach with real dedication and using

all of their intelligence … who would go off afterwards and make a difference to society.‛

Geoff Mulgan – Director of the Young Foundation and the former head of Tony Blair’s policy

office, who has advised governments around the world on policy and strategy – described his

organization’s most recent work. Education, he argued, isn’t just about literacy, numeracy, and

academic qualifications. It’s about ‚the SEED skills — social intelligence, emotional resilience,

enterprise and creativity, discipline and persistence.‛ The Young Foundation has undertaken about

50 initiatives, most of them low-cost and highly scalable, such as Britain’s Open University, an

online university that can be entered at any time of life. Another project, the ‚University of the

Third Age,‛ allows half a million older people to teach other older people at very little cost.

Another model is a so-called ‚studio school,‛ (so-called because a studio is a place where a person

both works and learns at the same time). Yet another new project is called the School of Everything

14

– a website that helps people learn ‚whatever, whenever and wherever you want. From Biology to

Beekeeping, History to Hula hooping.‛ The British government invested in these experiments in

hopes that the projects ‚will influence the mainstream education system, which has been

remarkably resistant to taking on board the evidence about what schools really are needed and

why these seed skills are so important.‛ Scaling, he insists is key, but it doesn’t happen

automatically: ‚Most really major social transformations haven't been associated with one

organization growing. It's much more likely there's been inspiration and copying and

competition.‛

Another groundbreaking enterprise, the U.S.’s Citizen Schools, is part of a movement that believes

the curriculum needs to be rethought to accommodate more hands-on, integrative, innovative

teaching and learning. Eric Schwarz, President and CEO of Citizen Schools, called for abandoning

the assumption that ‚learning should be within this box of six hours a day, 180 days a year, which

is the box that formal learning has been in since the agrarian era … why not look at the whole

year? Why not look at the whole day?‛ Partnering with middle schools in 20 school districts across

the country, Citizen Schools has expanded the learning day by about 40 percent, bringing ‚citizen

teachers‛ in the form of retired engineers, filmmakers, seamstresses and others to work on

homework and creative projects with 8th

graders in a ‚second shift‛ extending past 2:30 p.m. In

this way, says Schwartz, children take part in an ‚apprenticeship‛ that will stand them in good

stead in the future. To date, 87 percent of the participants finish high school on time; they go on to

four-year colleges at twice the rate of their peers. Assuming that Citizen Schools can scale to reach

up to 10% of 8th

graders, ‚such a scale would lead to the kind of systemic changes that were really

necessary.‛

Many social entrepreneurs and innovators believe that technology is key to solving problems in

education. Under the agenda rubric of ‚Inventing Institutions of the Future,‛ researchers from MIT

Media Lab demonstrated educational solutions that advanced leaders could help support.

One of the best known academic entrepreneurs is MIT Media Lab’s Nicholas Negroponte, head of

the One Laptop per Child campaign. The program provides poor children with a simple, toy-like,

solar-powered, Internet-connected laptop loaded with 100 books as well as reading, writing and

math learning programs. The computers not only help children in developing countries learn, but

also teach their parents and even light their homes. To date, roughly a million laptops have been

provided to students around the world. ‚The biggest success of One Laptop per Child has been, to

date, with the teachers,‛ Negroponte said. ‚The teachers say four things. One is, they've never

loved teaching so much. The other is that discipline problems have gone away. Not gone away

completely, but have plummeted. The parents were involved like they never were before. And the

truancy has literally gone to zero.‛

To MIT Media Lab’s Mitchell Resnick, who founded Computer Clubhouses as an out-of-school

opportunity for children, ‚the key to success and satisfaction in society today and tomorrow

wouldn't necessarily be based on what we know, or how much we know, but more on our ability

to think and act creatively. We're entering the creative society. The key to success, whether for an

individual, for a company, for a community, for a nation as a whole, will be based on the ability to

think and act creatively.‛ He envisions a future in which learning becomes more playful and less

regimented. To that end, the Media Lab has tried to think about how new technologies can

support the imagination [and aid students in] creating, playfully sharing, reflecting.‛ To this end,

using an experimental, Internet-based tool called Scratch, children can put together small media

projects and share them with others. To date, hundreds of thousands of children have completed

more than 350,000 projects in 50 languages.

15

Likewise, there is a growing role for NGOs and so-called ‚social benefit organizations‛ (SBOs),

noted Richard Rowe of Open Learning Exchange (OLE), an organization committed to universal

access to basic education by 2015. Based on the understanding that education is a universal right,

the Open Learning Exchange is a network of grassroots organizations and communities that

organize curricula, outreach, financing and educational toolkits. These organizations are headed by

a different kind of Advanced Leader – those Rowe calls full-time, fully dedicated and courageous

‚irrational social entrepreneurs‛ like Greg Mortenson (of Three Cups of Tea fame).

The OLE sets up centers where interested parties – from ordinary citizens to policy experts, from

educators to students, can take advantage of technology studios to learn any kind of new skills or

look up material that interests them. They can download educational content from around the

world and create new, interactive material, then localize it for use in their country or region.

Additionally, a guide that’s ‚a combination of Consumer Reports, Wikipedia and You Tube‛ shows

how experimental educational structures and systems used around the world are working.

Chris Dede, an Instructor in Design Harvard Graduate School of Education, observed that education

can be delivered in a multiplicity of ways and on a number of platforms – a laptop, a tablet-like

notebook, or even a cell phone. If leaders begin to think like designers, he noted, they must

consider the palette of tools that they have to work with. The challenge is to ‚share the different

kinds of inventions you're coming up with, build off each others' successes, avoid each others'

failures and move forward.‛ He challenged the Advanced Leaders to establish real-and virtual-

world networks that would allow them to do this. Stanley Litow suggested that transformative

technologies such as automatic language translation software and voice technology that allowed

for voice-activated search could result in real time collaboration across language barriers. He

imagined building ‚databases of best practices that teachers would be able to access … to share

and collaborate.‛

Fernando Reimers added a cautionary note, urging the audience to ask the question, ‚technology

for what?‛: ‚I don't think technology will answer the fundamental question, which is to give us the

purposes of schools,‛ he said. ‚That comes from people who can deliberate and be very mindful

about what is it we're trying to prepare people for in the first place.‛

In general, social entrepreneurs and their social innovations were viewed as providing inspirational

models and useful prototypes pointing to possibilities for change and improved outcomes. But

there were questions of whether these models are small islands of excellence in a still-troubled sea

of large public education establishments. Can enough of them be diffused and scaled up fast

enough to make a difference for the majority of children now left behind? How can social

entrepreneurs from civil society work with the public sector’s education bureaucracies? How can

innovations be the basis of public-private partnerships that include all three sectors: business,

government, and not-for-profit organizations? These questions provide both a challenge and an

opportunity for Advanced Leaders.

16

Leadership for the Future

To transform outcomes for children and their achievements in school, the role of government is

critical, though governments cannot work alone; they need private contributions and the help of

skilled leaders from outside the educational profession who can build coalitions and partnerships.

The levers for improvement include better teacher education and school management; parent

involvement; media support; and dealing with teachers unions. Mobilizing the talent within the

corporate sector demands a strategy to provide incentives and support structures for those who

want to help.

Above all, for innovative solutions to take effect and reach all children, political work must be done

to ensure a public mandate for the investment required – for both the funding and the emotional

investment in change. As Mark Moore, a faculty member at both the Harvard Kennedy School and

Graduate School of Education, said, ‚However much value there is in financing, volunteer

contributions and stuff like that, unless you do political work that was being described here ...

about the creation of a political mandate for the transformation of a system, you're not going to

actually be able to finance the growth out of the base. And then, the question is who does the

political work to [do] that? And in most democratic systems, the responsibility for political

mobilization does not lie with bureaucrats. It lies with politicians. But if it lies with politicians alone,

then maybe we don't get enough energy [behind reform].‛ Charles MacCormack contrasted

political will in the U.S. a century ago with the lack of it today: ‚100 years ago, with the land grant

colleges and universities, when we were upgrading our cultural production, we had to literally re-

educate 75 or 80 percent of the population. And there was great political will to do that because

our economic model couldn't work without mass quality education. I don't think that's the

economic model in the United States today.‛ He argued for a social movement: those who are

disadvantaged by lack of quality education would have to be mobilized to fight for it.

How might Advanced Leaders use their skills to solve the problems in education?

Advanced Leaders bring human and social capital to the challenge – that is, his or her capabilities

as an experienced leader and also the ability to tap into networks of colleagues and institutions.

Stanley Litow saw the following qualities in Advanced Leaders:

An ability to initiate and manage a complex change process

Deep understanding of specific subject matter and local geography

An ability to understand the agendas of a variety of constituents – teachers’ unions, school

district bureaucrats, the government funders, volunteers, business groups and so on – and

navigate complex relationships among people with differing views

A collaborative style that evokes the best from people

The ability to work with government leaders in introducing the reform strategy to those

who must own it

Because skills garnered in one sector don’t necessarily, or easily, translate into another, Litow

argued that Advanced Leaders should not wait until they retire from their careers to take part in

reforming education. ‚We ought to find a way to engage them much earlier on, so that [preparing

to assist in reforming education] is part of their leaving process,‛ he suggested. To provide

incentives for businesses to prepare Advanced Leaders to work in the public sector, he suggested

that the government could offer tax incentives and make pro-bono time spent working in the

public sector tax-deductible for individuals. He also urged Advanced Leaders to focus on major

17

efforts that could have significant impact: ‚If somebody has the right vision, the right idea, the

right preparation, understands the process of change and is focused enough and follow path of

how change actually happens, change could work.‛ There is a need for large-scale, systemic,

scaled-up, educational change, not small bright spots.

One role for Advanced Leaders is not to invent a new wheel but to help bring to scale innovative

programs and approaches that already exist. Charles MacCormack, President of Save the Children,

provocatively noted that ‚the Harvard School for Education is full of studies and examples, and

evaluation systems which, if implemented at scale, would definitely change the way education

takes place on the ground around the world.‛ Bringing good efforts to scale, MacCormack said,

requires ‚a completely different set of leadership skills‛ such as experience with product roll-outs.

Specifically, we need leaders who can aggregate private development assistance and then link this

with official development assistance ‚so that we can have a much more coherent, effective and

responsible roll-out [process] than we have today.‛ He urged Advanced Leaders to roll out the call

for universal basic education by persuading companies, foundations, the media, celebrities,

universities, professional associations, faith-based groups and athletes to call, in one voice, for

universal basic education. ‚In my experience,‛ he said, ‚that's the way global change takes place.‛

Advanced Leaders might start or support programs as social entrepreneurs, but an even more

important role is for them to fill the leadership gap by assembling coalitions of organizations to

gain scale through collaboration and to serve as a constituency for change. That kind of action

would link today’s bright spots into a powerful laser beam of change.

18

Think Tank Agenda

Thursday, March 12

3:00 – 3:30 p.m. Introduction to ALI and Think Tank Goals and Purpose

Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Fernando Reimers

3:30 – 4:30 p.m. The Challenge of Educational Relevance – How Can Social Entrepreneurs Help?

Kathleen McCartney; Deborah Meier; Stacey Childress

4:30 – 5:15 p.m. TT Debriefing

5:15 – 5:45 p.m. Boston Children’s Choir, Hubie Jones, choir director

6:00 – 7:30 p.m. Public Forum: Crossing the Lines, Closing the Gaps in Education

Ron Ferguson; Andreas Schleicher; Lea Ybarra; Charito Kruvant; Ruth Simmons

Moderators: Rosabeth Moss Kanter & David Gergen

Friday, March 13

8:00 – 9:30 a.m. New Leadership for Relevance/Public Private Partnerships

Speakers: Robert B. Schwartz, HGSE / Allen Grossman, HBS / James Honan /

Hansueli Maerki, Harvard, Advanced Leadership, Fellow

10:00 – 11:30 a.m. Breakout Sessions

John Gomperts; Hansueli Maerki; Luìs Norberto Pascoal; Dileep Ranjekar;

Phil Buchanan; Stacey Childress; James Honan; Stan Litow

11:30 – 12:15 p.m. Lunch

12:30 – 1:45 p.m. Public Forum: Social Entrepreneurship and Education

Beatriz Cardozo; Rob Gordon; Rona Kiley; Geoff Mulgan; Eric Schwarz

2:00 – 3:30 p.m. Leadership to Change the Instructional Core

Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University / Timo Lankinen, Ministry of Ed., Finland /

Fernando Reimers / Bill Schmidt, Michigan State University

3:45 – 5:00 p.m. Breakout Sessions

John Diamond; Monica Higgins; Katherine Merseth; Beatriz Cardozo; Linda Darling-

Hammond; Timo Lankinen; Palesa Tyobeka; Hoda Baraka; Chris Dede; Nicholas Negroponte;

Mitchel Resnick; Richard Rowe; Matthew Jukes; Jamie Kaplan; Earl Martin Phalen; Lea Ybarra

5:15 – 6:00 p.m. Debrief from Breakout Sessions

6:00 – 7:30 p.m. Panel Discussion: Leading Change in the Course of Education in Brazil

Paulo Renato Souza; Luìs Norberto Pascoal; Beatriz Cardozo

Saturday, March 14

7:30 – 8:00 a.m. Continental Breakfast

8:00 – 10:00 a.m. Panel: Who Will Lead? Is Education an Opportunity for Advanced Leaders?

Hoda Baraka; Stan Litow; Charles MacCormack; Paulo Renato Souza

10:30 – 12:00 p.m. Participatory Moderated Town Hall Conversation

Moderators: Rosabeth Moss Kanter & Fernando Reimers

19

2009 Advanced Leadership Fellows

Dr. Donald Arthur

Surgeon General, U. S. Navy

General Charles F. Bolden, Jr.

Brigadier General, US Marine Corps

Mr. Kenneth Colburn

Co-Founder, Highfields Capital Management LP,

Dr. Charles Denham

Founder and Chairman, Texas Medical Institute of Technology

Ms. Vivian Lowery Derryck

Assistant Administrator for Africa, U.S.A.I.D.

Mr. James Kaplan

Co-Founder and Executive Director, The Cromwell Center for Disabilities Awareness

Ms. Susan Leal

City Treasurer, City of San Francisco and San Francisco County

Ms. Shelly London

Vice President and Chief Communications Officer, Trane

Mr. Hans-Ulrich Maerki

Chairman and General Manager, IBM Europe/Middle East/Africa

Mr. John McCambridge

Co-Founder, Grippo and Elden, LLC

Dr. Pablo Pulido

Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Venezuela

Mr. Samir Toubassy

President, Olayan Development Corporation Limited

Mr. Robert Whelan

President, Whelan and Company, LLC

Ms. Hope Woodhouse

Chief Operating Officer, Bridgewater Associates

20

Advanced Leadership Initiative Faculty

CHAIR/DIRECTOR

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration

Harvard Business School

Chair and Director, Interfaculty Initiative on Advanced

Leadership

CO-CHAIRS

Barry Bloom

Distinguished University Service Professor Jack and Joan

Jacobson Professor of Public Health

Harvard School of Public Health

Co-Chair, Interfaculty Initiative on Advanced Leadership

David Gergen

Director of the Center for Public Leadership

Public Service Professor

John F. Kennedy School of Government

Harvard University


Rakesh Khurana

Professor of Business Administration



Howard Koh

Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public

Health

Director, Center for Public Health Preparedness



(2006-2009)

Charles J. Ogletree, Jr.

Jesse Climenko Professor of Law

Harvard Law School

Executive Director, Houston Institute for Race & Justice


Fernando M. Reimers

Ford Foundation Professor of International Education

Director of Global Education and International

Education Policy

Harvard Graduate School of Education


Peter Brown Zimmerman

Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Program

Development

John F. Kennedy School of Government

Harvard University


EXECUTIVE BOARD

Donald Berwick

Professor, Department of Health Policy and

Management

Harvard Medical School

President and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare

Improvement

David Bloom

Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and

Demography


William W. George

Professor of Management Practice


Allen S. Grossman

Professor of Management Practice


James P. Honan

Senior Lecturer

Co-Chair, Institute for Educational Management


Robert H. Mnookin

Samuel Williston Professor of Law

Director, Harvard Negotiation Research Project

Chair, Steering Committee Program on Negotiation

Harvard Law School

Nitin Nohria

Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business

Administration


Forest Reinhardt

John D. Black Professor of Business Administration

Faculty Chair, European Research Initiative


Harvard University, Office of the President and Provost



Harvard Kennedy School

Harvard Law School


Advanced Leadership Sponsors

Cisco Systems

George Family Foundation

IBM

James Harman

Jennifer and Sean Reilly Family Fund

John Hancock Foundation

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Monitor Group

Paul and Phyllis Fireman Foundation

Procter & Gamble

Xerox

Rapporteurs: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Bronwyn Fryer

Recording and transcription services donated by Chuck Denham and TMIT

Advanced Leadership Initiative14 Story Street, Suite 205, Cambridge, MA 02138

[email protected]

www.advancedleadership.harvard.edu

Documents

Basic Education - Harvard UniversityThe Basic Education Think Tank was the first in the series for 2009. It was chaired by Fernando Reimers, the Ford Foundation Professor of International