Students return to class, this time as consultants for urban schools

Master of Business Administration students at Columbia University have taken on one of the most daunting of management challenges -- not General Motors, not Morgan Stanley, not American International Group. Their classroom for the spring semester was New York City's mammoth public-school system, which serves 1.1 million children with decidedly mixed results.

Through the course, "Education Leadership Consulting Lab," 28 Columbia students were paired with nine principals on projects tapping the graduate students' analytical and problem-solving skills -- projects from developing a five-year technology plan to measuring reading-program results to boosting registration at a school medical clinic.

"The good news is that principals in New York are being evaluated more than ever for performance," says William Duggan, one of three professors leading the class. "But to be the real CEO of their schools, principals must develop a vision and marshal the resources to achieve it." Unfortunately, a school's comprehensive educational plan and its resources don't always match. That's where the teams came in. "Each team was consulting just as they would for a McKinsey client," says Don Waite, another teacher in the class and director emeritus of McKinsey, the consulting firm.

Encouraged by the results, Columbia Business School plans to repeat the course, increasing the number of principals to 15 this fall and 20 next year. The course was created in partnership with the New York City Leadership Academy, a nonprofit organization that recruits and trains principals for the city's approximately 1,300 schools. In the continuing effort to reform the school system, the academy believes bright, idealistic graduate students can assist harried principals short on financial expertise and leadership experience.

Because of the Columbia team, "we tackled assumptions, tried to slaughter sacred cows, and projected every possible scenario in spreadsheet budgets," says Lindley Uehling, principal of the successful but financially squeezed New York City Museum School, whose students make regular trips to local museums. "The Columbia team gave us clarity from their assessment, new contacts, ways to seek new partnerships, and the mantra, 'Where there is a will, there is a way.' "

During the course, students consulted academic literature and experts at Columbia's Teachers College to learn more about different instructional techniques. They also gained a firsthand look at the bureaucracy, a principal's limited authority in such basic decisions as hiring the janitor, and the byzantine world of public-school financing.

Bethany Hale, a first-year M.B.A. student, found the budget process "a frustrating conundrum." The Museum School, she says, "needs more teachers to accomplish its mission, but extra money in the budget can't be touched for staff because it is specifically earmarked for other purposes." At another school, students observed a principal who stockpiled copy-machine toner and paper in the basement for fear that if she didn't spend her budget allocation quickly enough, she'd lose it.

Columbia isn't the first business school to tackle urban schools. Stuart Greenbaum, dean of the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis, created a program in the late 1990s to share graduate students and undergraduates with local public schools. He says he hasn't always found it an easy sell. "We see the public-school problem as quintessentially a management challenge," says Dr. Greenbaum, "and some schools have embraced that approach. But others see it as misguided and believe the challenge isn't a paucity of management skills but rather a deficiency of resources." Nevertheless, he cites a number of improvements in the schools since his students became involved: less tardiness, more parental involvement and less disruptive classroom behavior.

•	Students return to class, this time as consultants for urban schools Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, June 14, 2005 Byline: Ronald Alsop