Project Management: Lessons from Delaware and Tennessee
THE FIRST 100 DAYS
LESSONS LEARNED FROM RACE TO THE TOP ROUND ONE WINNERS
AUGUST 2010
Project Management:
Lessons from Delaware and Tennessee
As Sir Michael Barber, founder of the U.S. Education Delivery Institute, has said, winning the
federal Race to the Top (RTTT) competition
is at best only 10% of transforming a state’s
education system – the remaining 90% is
“implementation, implementation, implementation.” To this end, building the right team
to implement RTTT is critical to the long-term
success of the grant. Although each state will
have specific circumstances that influence
how it structures its implementation team, the
experiences of Delaware and Tennessee offer
several potential lessons for Round 2 winners.
As will be discussed below, the way Delaware and Tennessee built their teams in the
early phases of RTTT implementation differs
significantly from the way they are building their
long-term capacity. Specifically, in the early
phases of RTTT, both Delaware and Tennessee
relied primarily on reassigning existing staff to
focus on RTTT implementation and bringing in
outside consultants to provide short-term project management support. However, over time,
both states have begun building long-term
capacity by developing an oversight structure,
recruiting and hiring new staff, fundamentally
reexamining the structure of their state education agencies (SEAs), and bringing in state and
national experts to assist with specific RTTT
projects.
Short-Term
As Delaware and Tennessee experienced firsthand, the first phases of RTTT implementation
are intense. Not only do states have to finalize their budgets with the U.S. Department of
Education, but they also have to assist local
education agencies (LEAs) in writing scopes
of work and begin implementing state-funded
RTTT projects as outlined in their applications. Both Delaware and Tennessee dealt with
these immediate implementation challenges
by reassigning existing staff to focus on RTTT
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implementation and by bringing in short-term
outside consulting support.
In Delaware, Secretary Lillian Lowery made
several key staff reassignments within the Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) to allow
existing staff to focus large amounts of time on
RTTT implementation. Specifically, the Secretary assigned Deputy Secretary Dan Cruce
to oversee RTTT implementation, with Amelia
Hodges (Associate Secretary for College and
Workforce Readiness) and Wayne Barton (Director of Teacher and Administrator Quality) being
state’s RTTT application, made RTTT implementation the top priority of its three staff
members. At the same time, TDOE reassigned
several key staff to focus on RTTT implementation, including reassigning its communications
director to oversee all RTTT implementation
efforts and five high-performing staff members to lead specific components of RTTT (one
staff member was assigned to each of the four
RTTT assurances and the fifth staff member
was assigned to STEM). The GOSPP and TDOE
teams setup a twice weekly conference call and
a weekly in-person meeting to coordinate their
implementation efforts.
In addition, Tennessee brought in several
outside consultants to assist with short-term
RTTT implementation. At the request of the
Governor’s office, the Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE),
a statewide education non-profit, hired Education First Consulting, who had helped write the
state’s RTTT application, to conduct a two-day
RTTT strategic planning retreat. At the request
of Commissioner Tim Webb, SCORE also hired
J.B. Buxton, former Deputy Superintendent of
the North Carolina Department of Instruction,
for four weeks to assist TDOE with reconfiguring
its staffing structure to focus on RTTT implementation. After these initial engagements, the
state hired both Education First Consulting and
Buxton on three month contracts, with Education First focusing on overall RTTT project
management and Buxton focusing on realigning resources within TDOE to support RTTT
implementation.
In this way, both Delaware and Tennessee increased their immediate capacity by
reassigning existing staff to focus on RTTT
implementation and by leveraging external
consultants to provide short-term project management support. Over time, however, both
states have begun focusing on building the
long-term capacity they will need to sustain
RTTT reforms.
Delaware and Tennessee dealt
with their immediate capacity
challenges by reassigning
existing staff to focus on RTTT
implementation and by bringing
in short-term outside consulting
support.
assigned to oversee the process of revising the
state’s teacher and administrator evaluation
systems to include student achievement (one
of the main commitments the state made in its
RTTT application). With assistance from private and philanthropic funders, Delaware hired
the management consulting firm McKinsey &
Company to help accelerate DDOE’s implementation efforts. McKinsey, who also assisted
Delaware with its RTTT application, helped the
state design and develop documents to support the scope of work process and drafted job
descriptions for the long-term staff the DDOE
was planning to hire.
Like Delaware, Tennessee also built immediate implementation capacity by reassigning key
staff in both the Governor’s office and Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) to focus
on RTTT implementation. Specifically, the
Governor’s Office of State Policy and Planning
(GOSPP), who played a key role in crafting the
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