Innovative cross-disciplinary professional development programs for school leaders have emerged as a way to provide educators with a new framework for analyzing old challenges as well as new tools for tackling old problems. These programs help principals take their leadership practice to the next level by exposing them to perspectives, strategies, skills, tools, concepts and philosophies generally associated with business, not education. Business and entrepreneurship-focused professional development programs like the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program (REEP) Business Fellowship for School Leaders give educators give educators new tools for problem-solving, management, and strategy.

1. The Business of School Leadership
New Perspectives On Public School Innovation

2. “We need to prepare kids for their
future, not our past.”
-Daniel Pink

3. This memorable quote speaks to a task that
presents one of the greatest challenges faced by
public education today. Namely, how can public
education be transformed to better serve the
needs of students heading into an increasingly
complex, ever-evolving world? Or...

4. How do we turn principals into organizational
leaders capable of effecting large-scale
transformation when their training is essentially
the same as it was 100 years ago?

5. Innovative cross-disciplinary professional
development programs for school leaders have
emerged as a way to provide educators with a
new framework for analyzing old challenges as
well as new tools for tackling old problems.

6. These programs help principals take their
leadership practice to the next level by exposing
them to perspectives, strategies, skills, tools,
concepts and philosophies generally associated
with business, not education.

7. Why is this a good idea?

8. This is a good idea because the job of a
principal extends well beyond the boundaries of
academics. It encompasses management,
communications, budgeting, personnel, technical
issues, PR, transportation, food, and
administration... In other words, if it’s related to
the school, it goes through the principal’s office.

9. And, yet, while principals tend to be talented
educators and good communicators with great
interpersonal skills, they also tend to lack
training in the day-to-day management of large
and complex organizational systems.
As H.D. Chambers, the superintendent of the
Alief ISD, puts it...

10. “We give them keys to a
multi-million dollar facility
and say good luck.”

11. Business and entrepreneurship-focused
professional development programs like the Rice
Education Entrepreneurship Program (REEP)
Business Fellowship for School Leaders give
educators give educators new tools for problem-
solving, management, and strategy.

12. Participants learn business skills like:
Needs Assessments Teamwork, Decision-
making and
Data Analysis Negotiations
SWOT Analyses and Accounting and Finance
Regression Analyses
Problem-solving and
Implementation Process Development
Strategy and Change
Management Structural Group
Dynamics and
Organizational Operations
Behavior Management
Communications and Leadership and
Marketing Innovation

13. They also gain new insights on leadership and innovation by…
Being exposed to new models Becoming energized by
and new ways of thinking sharing and trading of ideas
Experiencing fundamental Becoming passionate about
paradigm shifts and new improving public education
insights through innovation
Forming networks across Returning to districts to
districts and grade-levels share what they’ve learned
Gaining a big picture Becoming more open-minded
perspective of feeder and taking more professional
patterns initiative

14. Houston-area principals who go through the
REEP program experience a year-long immersion
in ideas and practices outside of their field,
which have the potential to have a
transformational effect on the world of public
education.

15. How? Two ways:
New business skills help New perspectives on
educators streamline leadership and
administrative tasks, innovation (as well as
optimize operations, streamlined operations)
identify and assess allow school leaders to
needs, solve problems, step back, see the big
and focus on student picture, and focus on
learning. large-scale innovations.

16. “I was putting out fires. What I
learned is that other people have
done this before. REEP has given me
the framework to help run my
school better.”
-- Pam Redd, Principal, Tipps ES, Cy-Fair ISD

17. The job of a teacher is not, as it used to be, to
serve as a conduit for information. Today,
students have almost unlimited access to
information.

18. The job of a teacher is to lead students through
experiences that will allow them to refine that
knowledge, to provide context that makes that
information meaningful, to guide and inspire
students in learning how to think and solve
problems -- to help them make meaning of facts.

19. Leadership and innovation don’t just apply to
business. As one participating principal said,
“Teachers are leaders, too -- leaders of students.”

20. Business school immersion exposes principals to a
different model, in which they learn to see their
work in a new light, to consider new ways of doing
things, to become more open-minded, and to take
more professional initiative. Principals who receive
business and leadership training come to see the
advantage of thinking differently...

21. Not only like educators,
but like leaders and
innovators.

22. RYHT is funding a cohort of Houston-area school
leaders to attend the Rice Education
Entrepreneurship Program (REEP) Business
Fellowship for School Leaders.
For more information on the REEP program, go to:
http://business.rice.edu/reep.aspx