Minneapolis school board candidate, like schools’ exec and strategic plan, has McKinsey imprimatur

The giant international management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., which charted the restructuring effort of Minneapolis city government known as Focus Minneapolis earlier this decade, has lately turned its attention to the Minneapolis Public Schools. First, over the winter, came a McKinsey-led strategic plan for the beleaguered school system, followed in March by the installation of former McKinsey partner Jill Stever-Zeitlin as the first executive director of planning at MPS, a position funded by the Itasca Project, a group of local business and civic leaders.

Now a candidate with McKinsey credentials, Dan Miller (pictured above), has announced he’s running for school board. Miller’s hopes for a DFL endorsement ride on a better showing at this weekend’s DFL city convention than he had in 2005, when, as a University of Minnesota graduate student, he sought the DFL nod to run for the Ward 2 City Council seat. Miller was the last man (second-to-last person) standing of an original field of five, bowing out after four ballots to Cara Letofsky, who went on to lose a squeaker in the general election to the Green Party’s Cam Gordon.

How Miller’s McKinsey background plays at the DFL city convention probably depends on delegates’ feelings about the firm’s influence in Minneapolis. The secretive multinational helps cities on a pro bono basis to apply methods for increasing efficiency that the firm has developed in its work for the private sector and even national governments around the world. In Seattle, teachers — a key DFL constituency — rejected McKinsey’s school overhaul. Miller’s Web site doesn’t mention McKinsey, but when Mayor R.T. Rybak appointed him to the advisory committee that recommended (PDF) giving the city’s library to Hennepin County, Miller was listed as a McKinsey management consultant.

Miller does say at his campaign Web site, “As a management consultant, Dan advised on education initiatives in Minneapolis and New York, and led a complete redesign of the Cincinnati Public School system.” Last fall McKinsey & Co. released a report on Cincinnati’s schools that recommended governance and other changes.

Miller was unavailable Thursday morning, but spoke with the Minnesota Monitor later in the day. See below the jump for more about his McKinsey ties and his candidacy.

UPDATE: The DFL city convention endorsed Carla Bates and Jill Davis on the first ballot, and Lydia Lee on the second ballot. (Dan Miller was not endorsed.)

Continued: Click “Read More:” Miller, reached by phone Thursday afternoon, clarified his relationship with McKinsey & Co. After some political work following his 2005 graduation from the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Miller joined McKinsey in 2006 as a management consultant. His major project for McKinsey was a “top-to-bottom” study of the Cincinnati Public Schools, funded by the Gates Foundation.

That work led to his lending advice to several other school districts, including New York City’s. In Minneapolis he served on the team that developed a new strategic plan for the public schools. Miller left McKinsey in January 2008 and is in the process of starting his own business (which he declined to describe so as not to tip off the competition). Miller said he left the McKinsey name off his campaign Web site because he didn’t want to tie the firm to his candidacy or suggest that his former employer endorsed his run.

Miller said many of his views on schools coincide with ideas promoted by McKinsey, but some don’t. An example is his attitude toward school principals whose skills lie more in administration than in leading the instructional mission of their schools. Miller said he agrees with the McKinsey philosophy that principals should be instructional leaders, but he thinks districts can achieve that through attrition rather than transferring valued principals out of their positions.

Miller acknowledged he’s heard “rumblings” from some quarters that the strategic plan for the Minneapolis schools would be imposed top-down. While he emphasized the importance of gaining buy-in for the plan from all levels of people in the district, he said its broad outline would allow for input from the trenches. “Step One,” Miller said, “is ‘listen to teachers.’ It’s so obvious but so rarely actually done.”

Will he abide by the DFL endorsement Saturday? No. Miller abided by the DFL endorsement for Ward 2 City Council in 2005, but this time, due to his latecomer status (he announced 10 days ago) and the importance of this election, Miller said he will compete in a primary even if the DFL doesn’t endorse him. It isn’t right for 300 DFL delegates to determine the outcome of an election affecting 382,000 people, he said.

Voters will elect three at-large school board members in November, with only one of three incumbents (Lydia Lee) seeking DFL endorsement. Besides Miller, Carla Bates and Jill Davis are running for the endorsement. Also on the November ballot: a $60 million school referendum.