Jessica Harrison ’11

Jessica Harrison ’11 worked Education Pioneers, a national nonprofit that aims to train, connect, and inspire a new generation of education leaders dedicated to transforming the educational system through placements at premiere education organizations. Jessica worked at Uncommon Schools as an operations fellow. She worked on a project that focused on improving the data management and data analysis capabilities, systems and processes at the network level for twelve Uncommon New York City schools. She also helped drive the way Uncommon Schools uses and stores data at the school level and how the organization surfaces critical student achievement trends and insights across their schools.

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Journal 1

After working predominantly in the international development space prior to graduate school, I wanted to spend my summer working in domestic social enterprise, specifically on issues in education reform. I have been interested in the education sector for a long time — from mentoring young people through Big Brothers Big Sisters, reading Jonathon Kozol’s book, Savage Inequalities, in high school, and following education reform in the news. Moreover, Professor Rosen and Professor Smith teach an Education Consulting Leadership Lab, which inspired me to apply my strategy consulting background to addressing management and strategy gaps in education.

I applied to Education Pioneers because it is a well-respected platform for students who have not worked in education to try it out for the summer. Education Pioneers is a competitive program that places graduate students at education organizations for 10 weeks, organizations like the Department of Education, Teach for America, and charter management organizations. It is a robust fellowship program that hosts full-day workshops and trainings several times during the summer. Some of my favorite people at Columbia Business School, including Anne Eidelman ’10, Dan Gennaoui ’11 and Stacey Wang ‘11, were Education Pioneers in prior years and shared their positive experiences with me.

Through Education Pioneers, I was placed at Uncommon Schools, a leading Charter Management Organization (CMO) that is committed to closing the achievement gap and preparing low-income students for college graduation. Uncommon manages schools in Brooklyn, NY, Upstate New York, Newark, New Jersey, and Boston, MA. Uncommon operates through a network model — they group several schools together as a network that shares a management structure. Uncommon has six networks and I am working for the chief operating officer of the Collegiate Network, which is comprised of several middle schools in Brooklyn. The COO and I have a consulting background and MBA in common, so I am looking forward to learning how she uses these skills and experiences in the education world.

In addition to trying out the education sector, I will also be playing a more implementation-oriented role than I have played in the past during my consulting career. I have several different projects I am working on:

  1. An analysis of historical attrition rates — both to understand the key drivers and to estimate future attrition rates
  2. Build an enrollment-forecasting model that enables Uncommon Schools to do better budgeting and facilities estimates
  3. Conduct a regression analysis to assess whether student performance on internal assessments (school tests) are predictive of performance on state tests

One of my goals for the summer is to identify whether the education sector and implementation-oriented work is the right fit for me after graduate school. I am looking forward to this work and appreciate the support of the Columbia Social Enterprise Summer Fellowships Fund, without which I would not be able to participate in this great opportunity.

Journal 2

One of the best things about Education Pioneers is the cohort of approximately 70 other graduate students from different backgrounds, all of whom are interested in the education space. The cohort is comprised of many people who have education backgrounds — particularly those that have taught in low-performing schools in urban environments — and some like me who have never had any education experience. The diversity of backgrounds and perspectives enables us to have interesting and thought-provoking debates during times when we meet as a cohort — typically once every two weeks for a full-day session on a particular topic, like the achievement gap.

Since it is difficult to get to know 70 people well, we are also placed in “hybrid groups” of six fellows who have different placements and backgrounds for the summer. Getting to know my hybrid group has been the best part about the Education Pioneers experience. Outside of the workshops, my group has elected to meet in different parts of New York to catch up, have some fun, and typically have one person in the group present his or her project and elicit feedback from the group.

In addition to getting and contributing insightful feedback on our individual projects, my hybrid group has also tossed around some innovative entrepreneurship ideas for an education start-up. The founder of Education Pioneers has graciously agreed to hear our pitch in the future.

Journal 3

As my summer with Education Pioneers comes to a close, I realize I learned a lot more than I anticipated I would during a summer internship. I think my learning this summer could be grouped into two distinct categories:

  1. Education sector learning
  2. General professional insights — including what kinds of environments I thrive in and what functional work I enjoy doing

Education reform is one of the most important social justice issues in America, and I appreciate that this summer exposed me to the myriad of challenges that make this work so difficult. Coming from a strategy consulting background, it is often easy to assume we can develop a strategy and implement reform. However, from being immersed in the debates and engaging with different stakeholders, I have come to realize that politics drives a lot of decision-making and that self-interest often trumps the needs of children. I now have even more respect for the people who dedicate their lives to improving public education.

The people at Uncommon Schools work long hours and are consistently challenged in their mission to ensure that all children get a college degree, but, they come to work with an upbeat attitude and a commitment to results. I have learned a lot about the education sector this summer, including the politics around the charter school movement and teacher evaluations. At Uncommon Schools, I have learned a lot about the need for accurate data to drive decision-making and I feel fortunate I have been involved in improving data quality and building forecasting tools to help staff make better decisions.

I have also learned a lot about what I enjoy in a working environment — working in teams, collaborating on strategic issues, managing and mentoring others, and being involved in brainstorming sessions. The opportunity to do important data-oriented implementation work has been incredibly rewarding and I would like to complement this work with the upfront strategy-oriented work I have done through my past consulting work.

It is a challenge for organizations to manage summer interns and for interns to feel like they can add value in such a short time. I am happy that I have been able to add value to Uncommon Schools, and that I have a better sense of what I want to do after school, from a sector-based and functional perspective.