Leading Education Systems at the National Level: Effective Policy and Practice for Improving Outcomes

What You Will Learn

Leading Education Systems is a six-week online program designed for educational leaders from a broad range of countries. The program examines the challenges of leading the development and implementation of effective policy and practice in order to provide a quality education for all students.

Program Overview

Managing education systems requires simultaneous and systematic attention to multiple, concurrent issues. As an education leader you must have a vision and set standards for high student achievement, and provide the context for administrators, principals, teachers and students to each work to their highest potential. You must improve instructional practice, and assess and build upon learning outcomes. And you must find ways to provide schools with the resources to support effective school management and teaching. Meaningful use of performance metrics and frameworks for organizational improvement are also critical to establish broad-based participation in improvement efforts.

During the program you will work directly with Harvard faculty. You will study current research and analyze best-practices from the most effective school systems across the globe. You will think broadly and systematically about efforts to build and manage sustainable high-quality schools and school systems. And you will analyze and adapt emerging strategies for improving schools and apply them to your own systems.

Developing an Action Plan

The program culminates with each participant creating his or her own detailed action plan. In collaboration with Harvard faculty and your Leading Education Systems peers from around the globe, you will develop a plan to move your organization to the next level in delivering high-quality education for all students.

Program Objectives

Week 1: Define and describe the challenges your system faces and begin to develop collaborative relationships with LESN colleagues across a broad range of school systems from around the world.

Week 2: Analyze and compare national educational systems, identifying conditions necessary for implementing policy and program solutions in a range of contexts and in your own organization, school system or network.

Week 3: Employ systems thinking to move beyond incremental improvement strategies toward understanding how to create more holistic educational transformation.

Week 4: Examine effective school-level leadership strategies and actions toward establishing learning communities focused on improving the instructional core.

Week 5: Use performance measurement tools and frameworks to understand and improve key aspects of your educational system.

Week 6: Develop an action plan to address a central challenge in your organization or educational system.

Learning Experience

The program takes place over a six-week period and features a variety of instructional methods designed as a key element of your overall learning experience. You will work directly with Harvard faculty and you will collaborate online with educational leaders from around the world. Your work will focus on a key theme or topic each week. Each of these modules will consist of preparatory reading, an e-lecture with Harvard faculty, guided small group sessions, and live online sessions with faculty and teaching fellows. Each module is designed to help you focus on improvement strategies and tools as you develop your action plan.

Who Should Attend

• Education leaders from ministries, regional education authorities and schools, universities, education-related NGOs and representatives of donor and lending agencies
• Principals interested in strengthening their school management capacity
• Individuals in senior decision-making or management roles and senior staff serving as unit directors in areas such as school improvement, curriculum, teacher development, strategic planning and monitoring and evaluation
• Those preparing to assume increasing levels of responsibility and host country staff working in large donor-funded education organizations
• Country and institutional teams of participants from ministries, educational institutions, and donor agencies as well as individual participants
• Fluency in English is required.

Minimum System Requirements

To participate in this online institute, participants should have:

• A computer with speakers or headphones
• Access to the Internet (DSL connection or better)
• Windows XP or higher operating system (for PC) or Mac OS 10.5 or higher operating system (for Mac)
• Firefox 3.6 or higher web browser
• The latest Flash video plug-in
• The latest Java applet plug-in

Faculty

James Honan, Faculty Chair; Senior Lecturer on Education, HGSE. Honan is also a Lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School. His teaching and research interests include financial management of nonprofit organizations, organizational performance measurement and management and higher-education administration. Honan serves as a consultant on strategic planning, resource allocation and performance measurement and management to numerous colleges, universities, schools and nonprofit organizations, both nationally and internationally.

Thomas Cassidy has over 20 years of experience working with educators in ministries of education, regional education authorities, schools and donor and lending organizations around the world. As the director of the International Education Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (2000-2007) and the Harvard Institute for International Development (1995-2000), he managed large-scale international education reform and development projects in several countries. As a member of the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he taught courses on educational planning and policy analysis methods and models, monitoring and evaluation and the development of education management information systems. Since 2004 he has served as an advisor to the Global Education Initiative, a World Economic Forum initiative to promote the development of public-private partnerships for education.

Katherine Merseth, Senior Lecturer on Education; Director, Teacher Education Master’s Program, HGSE. Merseth has over 40 years of experience in instruction, administration and research in public education in the United States and internationally. Her work concentrates on charter schools, teacher education, mathematics education and the case method of instruction. Most recently she was the principal investigator for a study researching high-performing charter schools, the results of which have been turned into the recently published book: Inside Urban Charter Schools: Promising Practices and Strategies in Five High-Performing Charter Schools.

Fernando Reimers, Ford Foundation Professor of International Education; Director, International Education Policy Program, HGSE. Reimers focuses his research and teaching on identifying education policies that support teachers in helping low-income children succeed academically. He is particularly interested in studying how teachers help students who attain significantly higher levels of schooling than their parents and in understanding how to support quality teaching in systems where access to schooling has expanded rapidly. He is also interested in the role of education in preparing students for democratic citizenship. His current research focuses on the relationship between teacher quality, educational expansion, and social inequality in Mexico and on civic education in Latin America. He has also studied and published about the utilization of educational research in policy reform. In addition to his research and teaching, Reimers advises governments, development agencies, and private groups involved in education reform in developing nations. He has worked in several countries in Latin America, as well as in Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty, he worked at the World Bank, the Harvard Institute for International Development, and the Universidad Central de Venezuela. He is also active in several organizations supporting the development of global skills in American schools. Reimers has published several books, a number of which have been translated into other languages, as well as chapters and articles on education and development.

Enrollment Instructions

Leading Education Systems at the national Level is an application program. Applicants are responsible for submitting supplemental materials with their online application. You will be asked to upload two MS Word documents in order for the application to be considered complete:

1. A curriculum vitae or biographical resume

2. A document of not more than two pages detailing the following: how participation in the institute relates to your work; how the institute will contribute to your professional development; one major challenge that you would like to address during the institute

Participants will be selected based upon the match between their stated objectives and the goals of the program. To maximize the learning experience, the program aims to bring together as diverse a group as possible. Admission decisions are mailed three weeks after the application deadline.

Fees

The comprehensive program fee includes all sessions, instructional materials, refreshments, special events, certificate of participation and a letter indicating clock hours of instruction.

Payment or a purchase order is due 30 days after admission. Participants are responsible for their own travel expenses.

Cancellation Policy

Cancellations must be submitted via fax or email. Full refunds will be given up to 30 days prior to the start of the program. Due to program demand and pre-institute preparations, cancellations received 29–14 days prior to the start of the program are subject to a fee of 10% of the program tuition. Cancellations received within 13 days prior to the start of the program and no-shows are subject to the full program tuition. Please note: cancellation fees are based upon the date the written request is received.

Since the Harvard Graduate School of Education is not responsible for non-refundable travel arrangements or other expenses incurred, it is recommended that you not make lodging and travel arrangements until you are admitted to the program. The Harvard Graduate School of Education reserves the right to change faculty or cancel programs at its discretion. In the unlikely event of program changes, the school is not responsible for non-refundable travel arrangements or other planning expenses incurred.

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