The longstanding partnership between Boston University and the Chelsea Public School District of Chelsea, Massachusetts is unique for many reasons. Perhaps the most recognizable feature of this Partnership, however, is that it is the only example of an American university engaging in the day-to-day management of a public school system.
The BU/Chelsea partnership will come to an official end in 2008. The original intent of the partnership has always been to provide Chelsea with the strong foundation to run its schools autonomously. In an effort to build this foundation, the university has, over the years, made a point of sharing its managerial and educational expertise. The future development and the effective and efficient management of the Chelsea School District will not depend solely upon whether the university has shared its expertise effectively, however. If that were the case, at the termination of the project, even the intangible assets, e.g. knowledge, upon which the success of the District was based, will be lost. Instead, Chelsea¿s opportunity to continue to achieve excellent performance results depends on how well Boston University, the ¿flagship business¿ of the Partnership, has been able to share, with the other members of the Network, the responsibility of managing the system. Moreover, continuing the good work begun almost twenty years ago depends on the intellectual capital the District has managed to ¿accumulate¿, and on the ability to produce new capital, through the promotion of knowledge-management processes.
This report endeavors to determine how the Partnership changed the involvement of staff members, students, their families and the community as a whole, thereby promoting the creation of a network of primarily private and non-profit institutions (already in existence or created at the time) to improve the schooling system.JRC.G.9-Econometrics and applied statistic
