Lessons in Leading a School District

“Let’s continue our journey to self-understanding,” says Tim Quinn, looking out over a downstairs ballroom at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey. “What are the five characteristics of peak performing leaders?”

Twenty-five men and women, all hotel guests for a four-day weekend, answer back. They discuss the words of Mohandas Gandhi and Lao Tzu. Quinn quotes Robert Frost, Rudyard Kipling and the movie “Pay It Forward.” Before declaring a five-minute break, Quinn urges his students to be “dedicated masters of self” and says: “Seize the day. Carpe diem.”

The class has the feel of an encounter session and the content of a New Age management seminar. It is neither.

This is the first meeting of a much-ballyhooed new academy to train urban school superintendents.

The 25 students, selected from more than 200 applicants, all want to head urban school districts. And Quinn, the group’s leader, works for the foundation of Eli Broad, the academy’s sponsor.

Billed as a first of its kind, the Broad Urban Superintendents Academy is an effort to apply the norms of corporate life to the management of public schools.

That idea reflects the personal belief of Broad, founder of multibillion-dollar businesses in housing and financial services, that a good manager can manage anything. Corporate-style governance, he argues, is needed to fix America’s large, ailing school districts.

That notion already has been embraced by school districts in a handful of cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago and Seattle, which in recent years have hired superintendents from outside education.

Broad wants to build on those examples. According to the program’s written goals, by the end of 2004, graduates of his foundation’s academy will lead 25 of the nation’s 75 largest urban districts.

“Someone who runs a large urban school district truly is a CEO,” says Broad. “If we could help to train leaders for those districts, and train them well, I think it could make a big impact on quality.”

Broad and his wife, Edythe, launched the foundation in 1999 with $100 million. Focused on kindergarten through 12th-grade education in large cities, the foundation makes grants to improve governance and management. Planning for the superintendents academy began 18 months ago.

So far, the foundation has spent $1 million on developing the academy and recruiting the first class of 25 “fellows.” The 25 students, who gathered for their first session in Marina del Rey last month, will meet on five additional weekends in Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Detroit and Washington, D.C., before year’s end. Topics range from “Politics of Urban School Leadership” to “Planning and Leading Systems Change” to “Securing a Job as an Urban Superintendent.” There is no tuition and all expenses are paid, at an estimated cost of $28,000 per person.

After those sessions and eight days of “independent learning,” the 25 will be considered graduates. In materials handed out to them, Broad indicates that his goal is to have at least 25% of fellows serving as superintendents within 18 months and 40% within 30 months of their graduation.

That is a tall order, particularly for an academy that recruits some executives with little or no experience in education. Broad and the foundation have pitched the school as a place that will turn corporate executives into superintendents.

But a visit to that first class suggests that promoting such mid-career changes will be more difficult than imagined. The group includes only four people from outside education: recently retired vice presidents from Eastman Kodak and AT&T;, a Philadelphia consultant, and a former publisher of the Los Angeles Times. And two of them taught earlier in their lives.

The other 21 are veteran education professionals: four current superintendents, 11 others who hold top positions in school districts, a charter school president, the leader of a Philadelphia education fund, the president of a for-profit educational company, and two administrators from higher education.

Though Broad calls the concept new, the academy actually parallels research and programs performed by the Michigan Leadership Institute, the billionaire philanthropist’s home state. Quinn, managing director of the Broad superintendents academy, also is president of the Michigan group.

Quinn leads the classes. He has served as superintendent of schools in Green Bay, Wis., as a deputy state superintendent in Wisconsin, and as president of a Michigan college, but he never led one of the large urban school districts that academy graduates seek to reach.

He does not see that as a liability. “Vince Lombardi never played professional football,” he says.

The academy relies heavily on guest speakers who have that top-level experience. A former president of the Maryland Board of Education and superintendents from Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco and Detroit all have spoken to the students.

The first session concludes with job-hunting advice from the president of a Seattle-area executive search firm. The academy’s “faculty,” as the Broad Foundation calls it, also includes academics and researchers. Ben Perez, an education consultant, discusses the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, an instrument that measures a person’s personality traits.

Though the discussion is leadership and education, Quinn steers the session repeatedly to the personal; students are urged to share stories from their lives. “Self-understanding” is the stated goal.

“This is the soft side of leadership we’re covering right here,” says Quinn. “If you don’t establish that understanding, you won’t know who you are and the people you want to lead won’t know who you are.”

Quinn sometimes breaks the students into groups of five. In one session, they are asked to share their answers to personal questions: What is your favorite keepsake? Which person most influenced you? Name something nobody knows about you.

Marti J. Smith, who recently retired from a vice presidency at Eastman Kodak, talked about her difficult childhood and a typing teacher who inspired her to go to college. Smith, 52, taught for a few years after college but switched to the business world, working at Coors, Miller Brewing Co., Tyson Foods and U.S. West Communications. She began thinking of a career shift after the death of her mother eight years ago. “There was more to leave on this Earth than a bank account for my nephews,” she says.

Last year, she posted her resume on monster.com, and Quinn sent her an e-mail. “Becoming a superintendent wasn’t a thought to me before that,” she says. But she likes the open and warm approach of Quinn and the academy.

“I love it,” she says. “Being a superintendent is something I know I’m going to love.”