In 2003, faculty members from Harvard Business School and Harvard Graduate School of Education launched the Public Education Leadership Project (PELP) to create and disseminate knowledge about how to manage urban school districts. The PELP team strives to identify effective leadership and management practices to support large-scale organizational change in urban school districts with the ultimate hope of improving teaching and learning for all students.
PELP Alumnus Arne Duncan now U.S. Secretary of Education
One of the original partners, Duncan has been bringing a team from Chicago Public Schools to PELP's executive education program since 2003.
According to Duncan: "The environment at PELP creates a very unique and special forum for school district leaders. The most valuable elements of the program are the experiences with world-class faculty, time together as a district team, and time with other districts--away from the day-to-day demands of our district jobs. It helped us define what success would look like and got us thinking about goals and strategy. We've come a long way as a district and the PELP experience has had a lot to do with our progress." Read more about Duncan here.