Ed. Magazine, Winter 2011

Ed.

the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education winter 2011

also inside | financial aid overhaul | common standards | summer reading

the big picture

the appian way

September 23, 2010 It’s not often that a documentary film about education makes it to the big screen, never mind becomes a household name. But Waiting for “Superman,” which prominently featured Ed School graduate Geoffrey Canada, Ed.M.’75, managed to do both this past fall. A sneak peak of the film was shown at an Askwith Forum in September. Although director Davis Guggenheim couldn’t make the showing, with the help of Matt Weber, new and social media officer at the Ed School, he taped an introduction that was shown before the film and later posted online.

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Watch the introduction online.

aimee corrigan

Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Don’t Bank on It In 2010, President Barack Obama dramatically changed the nation’s financial aid system, eliminating private banks from issuing government-sponsored loans. With students now borrowing directly from the government, the legislation could save taxpayers billions of dollars.

features

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You Need /r/ /ee / /d / to Read

One for All. All for One?

Reading is a human invention, something our brains don’t learn to do automatically. So how do we figure out what to do with the squiggles we call letters and the words they make? A look at what it takes to get emerging readers reading.

Surprising many in education circles, particularly considering the long tradition of state and local control over schools, the country looks like it is moving ahead with common education standards.

Critics worry about creativity and a one-size-fits-all approach. Supporters say the move is long overdue.

a click away

stories and links found only online www.gse.harvard.edu

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What do children’s authors think Look for this logo of the literary throughout the world they’ve magazine to highlight related videos, helped create?

EdCasts, web In October, stories, and more. a panel of experts, prominent authors, and the creators of a new documentary, Library of the Early Mind, met in an Askwith Forum to talk about story telling, the impact of digital media, and why the picture book isn’t dead.

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Letters The Appian Way Alumni News and Notes Recess Investing

There’s been much ado about Joy Lamberton, Ed.M.’04, a director and teaching artist at a Cambridge, Mass., school.

Lamberton is helping to raise awareness about the importance of arts in education and the role of arts educators, including directing seventh-graders in a Shakespeare play. events www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/events twitter www.twitter.com/hgse facebook www.facebook.com/harvardeducation youtube www.youtube.com/harvardeducation flickr www.flickr.com/photos/harvardeducation scribd www.scribd.com/harvardeducation

What’s this? senior writer/editor Lory Hough lory_hough@harvard.edu production manager/editor Marin Jorgensen marin_jorgensen@harvard.edu designer Paula Telch Cooney paula_telch@harvard.edu Director of Communications Michael Rodman michael_rodman@harvard.edu Communications intern Matt Corby

contributing writers Matt Corby Katy Kroll Greg Esposito, Ed.M.’10 Brooke McCaffrey, Ed.M.’07 Mark Robertson, Ed.M.’08 Mary Tamer David McKay Wilson photographers Aimee Corrigan, Ed.M.’11 Caroline Fleming-Payne Briget Ganske, Ed.M.’10 Elena Gormley Tanit Sakakini Martha Stewart

illustrators Roger Chouinard Daniel Vasconcellos

Called a QR code, this two dimensional barcode used in Ed. is readable by mobile phones with cameras or scanners and takes readers directly online.

copyeditor Abigail Mieko Vargus © 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Ed. magazine is published three times a year. Third-class postage paid at Burlington, VT and additional offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Harvard Graduate School of Education, Office of Communications, 44R Brattle Street., Cambridge, MA 02138

To read Ed. online, go to www.gse.harvard.edu/ed.

I was delighted to read the article on David Ticchi (“Cane, Able”) in the fall 2010 edition of Ed. David and I taught junior high school English in Newton, Mass., during the 1971–72 school year. I left the following year to teach in Zurich, Switzerland, but I well remember him as a bright, enthusiastic, and creative colleague. How shameful to read about his early struggles to secure a teaching job despite his intelligence and credentials; and how wonderful to read about the great success he has enjoyed over the past 40 years. To use a tired but apt cliché, he is a credit to his profession.

— Barbara Doughty, Ed.M.’82

David Ticchi and I are longtime friends who attended public school together in a small town that valued education and children. As the article mentioned, we graduated before any kind of educational legislation for the disabled. In my opinion, positive attitudes and persistence on the part of parents, students, and the community are much more important than legislation.

At our high school graduation, I remember that David was recognized for perfect attendance during all 12 years of public school from first through twelfth grade. While he was not able to play varsity sports, he assisted the coaches with equipment preparation and worked out with several teams.

I also recall that he had a temporary job as our town police/fire dispatcher (pre-911). People trusted David would do what it took to get the messages through, and he did.

— Chris Read I was first puzzled about the braille on the issue of Ed. and then enjoyed the article about David Ticchi’s teaching.

The dots came through the mail just fine! In the explanation under “Dot Dilemma,” I’m surprised the magazine didn’t explain why the article was writ4

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ten with white letters on black. I assume this was because people with low vision often find white-on-black easier to read than black-on-white.

— Sondra Wieland Howe, M.A.T.’61 piano teacher who teaches music Braille Editor’s note: Yes. Our designer purposely chose a black background with white text because the sharp contrast makes it easier to read for some people with limited vision.

It is outrageous that the latest issue of Ed. magazine focused on the Education for All Handicapped Children Act and did not think about deaf people at all. As the first, and perhaps only, deaf graduate of HGSE, I was really upset when I went to view the video of the interview with David Ticchi and found that it was not captioned for deaf and hard of hearing people like me.

This is a common oversight that happens time and again; we are left out of and overlooked by society, which in many cases leaves us feeling invisible. However, for the Harvard Graduate School of Education to publish a magazine focused on the Individuals with

Disabilities Education Act and then not bother to even think of captioning a video of this type is inexcusable.

— Robert Menchel, Ed.D.’95 Editor’s note: Robert is right, which is why we have since added a written transcript of the video, which can be read online at www.gse.harvard.edu/ed/ extras. We are also working on a strategy so that all of our future content will be accessible. Stay tuned!

Long Way to Go It is great to see this article (“Long Way to Go,” fall 2010). It will be even better to see curricular and extracur-

pushback

I wanted to let you know how very much I appreciated and enjoyed Judah Leblang’s article. It’s good to see “our” journal giving some attention to an issue that is of so much importance to a significant part of its alumni! Thanks for remembering that we’re out here.

— David Newton, Ed.D.’71 Thank you for this thorough, clear piece of writing on this important topic.

I live on the west coast of Florida,

which is very much considered to be in “the South.” In my work as a mental health counselor, I have seen an odd mixture of apathy and hostility toward LGBT students and teachers. GLSN chapters exist, but generally not in schools; they are separate and meet outside of schools. We have a long way to go, no matter where you live.

— Anthony Quaglieri

It’s a Myth I found Amy Magin Wong’s comments in “Solid Foundation” (fall 2010) nice public relations for nonprofits, but I am disappointed she never challenged the myth that “the parent constituency of innercity schools is not politically powerful.” As a black male who taught in public schools in financially poor minority areas for more than 35 years and who has spent many years working with parents and politicians in these areas, I know that minorities are not politically powerless. Black politicians live in the communities they represent. They are accessible to their constituents.

Democrats throughout the country are constantly trying to figure out how to get minorities to come out to vote.

The people at the Boston Foundation are wrong in their assumption that the parents of financially poor minority students lack political power; they have the same political power as all citizens who vote. ­— Louis DeFreitas Sr., Ed.M.’71

Terrific Teacher Corinne Varon-Green (alumni profile, fall 2010) was one of my supervisors in the Cambridge Public Schools for almost a decade. It was nice to work for someone who really believes in bilingual education and emanates from [a mixed culture]. She integrates her Jewishness, her immigrant experience, and her perspective as a mother into her teaching and art, giving people in

courtesy of corinne varon-green

ricular attention paid to this issue in the HGSE community. The large number of educators and educators-in-training that pass through makes it a prime incubator for leadership against homophobia and transphobia. This article aptly points out that many teachers ignore heterosexism in the classroom, either because they do not know how to address it, or because it is just easier to pretend they didn’t hear. Schools of education must take this issue seriously and prepare our children’s educators to do the same. Young people — LGBTQ and straight — are dying, figuratively and literally. The degraded school cultures that result from and contribute to discrimination are unhealthy.

HGSE cannot call itself a leader while it continues to ignore this. Professors need to be trained and encouraged to address homophobia and transphobia in courses. The schools must initiate courses and workshops equipping teachers to create “safe spaces.” [The writer, Judah] Leblang mentions the (fully student-organized) panel on homophobia in schools that occurred last spring but leaves out the detail that there was only one professor in the entire 200-person audience. That professor, Steve Seidel, took this call to action seriously and has incorporated the lessons he learned there into his course and scholarship. Thank you, Steve. And thank you, Leblang, for the article, but HGSE has a long way to go, too.

— Jen Lehe, Ed.M.’10

contact with her a sense that meanings are always amalgamating and evolving, always subject to introspection.

— Hector Risemberg We are so lucky that both of our children get to spend a year with Corinne at the Amigos School. We especially appreciate her dedication to the whole student — her appreciation of art and feelings and culture as a critical part of her “curriculum.”

— Ruthann Rudel

Forward Motion I was glad to see a piece about Autumn McDonald (alumni profile, fall 2010), whose wisdom and passion for real change inspires me enormously. I have hope for our educational system knowing that Autumn is involved in moving it forward!

— Lena Entin

Required Reading?

Although I may not be in your target audience, being a retired attorney and receiving Ed. only because my late wife received an M.A.T. in 1960, I should like to offer my compliments for your efforts in assembling three articles describing the teaching careers, viz., your lead article on David Ticchi; Judah Leblang’s article on GSAs; and Josh Moss’ article on principalships. They are articles that I, as a taxpayer, think every superintendent and every school board member ought to read.

— Bill Malone Harvard Graduate School of Education

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briget ganske

briget ganske

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the appian way

lecturehall Assistant Professor James Kim

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It is a bit like Netflix for kids — but books, not movies.”

ames Kim, Ed.M.’98, Ed.D.’02, had to pound the pavement — hard. At some point, most professors do when they’re trying to find funding for a research project, but for Kim, the stakes were higher than usual. Kim was a finalist for one of the U.S. Department of Education’s recent Investing in Innovation (i3) grants. If he wanted the $12.7 million being offered, he had to scramble to raise 20 percent in matching funds. This past September he did, which allowed him to begin phase one of Project READS (Reading Enhances Achievement During the Summer), a reading intervention program for low-income children in North Carolina. The project gives books and lesson cards to students to read during summer vacation. The hope is that it will prevent them from falling behind academically. As research shows, and as Kim saw when he was teaching seventh-grade history in the mid-1990s, almost all students backslide a bit when they’re away from school for that long, but the gap between middle- and low-income students is especially wide.

“In our district, kids learned about U.S. history from the colonial era to the Civil War in sixth grade and Reconstruction to the present in seventh grade,” he says. “In September, it was clear to me that many of my students forgot what they had learned and had not read much in the summer. So we’d spend a few weeks on review materials.”

In graduate school, he continued learning about “summer loss,” as it’s known, and started creating a model for preventing it. After running two reading experiments, he and his team realized that simply getting kids to read over the summer wasn’t enough: In order to improve on comprehension, kids needed a mix of books they enjoyed, companion teacher-created lessons, and parent participation. In October, Kim spoke to Ed. about motivation, parents, and why the i3 grant was critical.

How many books prevent summer loss?

In the READS program, children typically receive eight books over the summer. It is a bit like Netflix for kids — but books, not movies. Every two weeks, each child receives two books and two reading postcards. In one of our studies where we saw a positive impact of READS, children enjoyed comprehension gains if they received the books and the end-of-year comprehension lessons. Children who received only books did no better than a control group. These findings suggest that the combination of the eight books and the teacher lessons are critical to making a difference in children’s reading comprehension skills.

they complete their books — this is the real-time measure. Another real-time measure is having teachers call children and record the conversations to see how well children are reading their books.

Isn’t it difficult to motivate kids to read during their months away from school?

It is very important to tap into children’s intrinsic motivation. We do this by giving children opportunities to indicate their reading preferences.

How do you know kids are actually reading the books?

We use a lot of different measures. We need to ask kids directly, survey their parents, and look at performance on real-time measures.

You found that in order for this to work, parent involvement is important.

We encourage parents to view themselves as key partners in the intervention. During the end-of-school-year lessons, teachers instruct children how to read aloud to their parents for homework. Parents are taught simple strategies for motivating their children, such as providing feedback on their children’s reading fluency and asking simple comprehension questions.

Real-time measures?

In my work, we do this by teaching children to complete reading postcards after

Teachers must love this.

We often receive positive feedback.

Teachers find it easy to understand

and implement. Our work underscores the importance of the teacher. In the absence of teacher-directed lessons at the end of the year, children enjoy no improvement in comprehension — even when they receive the books. To me, this is good news for American education: Teachers are critical for children’s success; they can even influence children’s success in the summer when they aren’t in school!

Growing up, what were you like as a reader?

I was an average reader. But one thing always made a big difference — my teachers. When my teachers did read aloud, I wanted to read those books.

Was the i3 grant critical for you?

The i3 grant enables us to conduct large-scale studies over a five-year period. This kind of research requires lots of time and money. It would definitely not have been possible without the i3 funding and the matching contributions.

— Lory Hough Harvard Graduate School of Education

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the appian way

How Brooke McCaffrey Read Her Way to Education

I grew up immersed in a world of words, with parents who relished reading and padded my bright blue bedroom with books. I would spend Saturday afternoons staring at long words, guessing at their meanings while racking my fouryear-old brain in an attempt to unlock this code of letters.

Reading came naturally to me, and it wasn’t long before I made the jump during my kindergarten year from singing the ABCs to reading Charlotte’s Web under the covers with a flashlight. I found myself fixating upon certain words, rolling them around on my tongue, ripping their sounds apart and examining their smallest bits, and then reconstructing them into solid pieces of my daily vocabulary. This relationship with words continued throughout middle school and high school, and it was through my own command of words that I navigated the rocky terrain of my teenage years by scrawling angst-ridden poetry in journals made of handmade paper.

During my sophomore year of college I began mentoring a third-grade student in a Harlem, N.Y., school. This little girl had a bright personality and a quiet creativity about her; however, at the age of nine she was reading far below grade level. She would jolt her way through sentences that I had breezed through in kindergarten, deriving no joy or excitement from the pages in front of her. At that time I was well aware of the fact that the world is riddled with injustice and that I was truly fortunate to have had the advantages that I did in my formative years. However, no amount of reading and consciousness-raising done within the brick walls of my liberal arts college could have prepared me for that moment when “unfairness” and “injustice” were plopped in front of me in a (hopelessly adorable) flesh-and-blood package.

I was bewildered by my mentee’s limited ability to navigate and comprehend the world of print — a world that had helped to carve the perimeter of my personality and talents. I remember wondering how this had happened. When I spoke with her teacher, she informed me that she was frantically trying to bridge the gap between where my mentee was and where she should have been. This teacher was dedicated to her student’s success, but there was a lot to be done in a limited amount of time.

One day, after a halted and exhausting reading of a Dr. Seuss book, my new friend smiled at me sheepishly. “I’m not so good at reading,” she said. That was the tipping point for me. I knew then that I would be trading my dream of becoming a writer with the dream of becoming a teacher.

I put my hand on my friend’s shoulder. “You can do this,” I said. “Reading takes a lot of practice and hard work, and that’s how you are going to get good at it.”

I had witnessed the many complicated aspects of teaching while volunteering in Harlem. However, I still envi8

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sioned that, for me, teaching would be a sparkling scene of students with noses in their books while the staccato beats of their pencils provided the soundtrack of our learning. In my mind, their love of reading would grow each day like a resplendent garden, with me at the forefront smiling and holding my figurative watering can of knowledge.

As it turns out, unsurprisingly, the reality was nothing like my fantasy. The first few months of teaching battered me. My students’ needs were great, and the available resources were few.

One student made his feelings about reading clear by throwing books across the room. However, after I swept up the pieces of my shattered visions, I did what I do best: I read. I got to work figuring out the science of reading, and stockpiling my toolbox with strategies and research. I became versed in the vocabulary of reading instruction. I began to see teaching reading as a systematic, intellectually stimulating pursuit, rather than a simply idealistic one.

As I have moved forward in my career, I have come to see the book corner — the cozy, pillow-and-book-filled nook in my classroom — and the guided reading table as transformative spaces. They are the sites of small victories and constant growth. As we bustle about in our busy day-to-day routines, I feel that what we do as teachers goes beyond simple altruism or an ethic of care; what we do is revolutionary. It is in the complex act of learning to read that students are laying down the groundwork for long-term change. Young readers are empowered. They will be the change agents.

After seven years in the classroom I still find myself as enraptured by the act of awakening young readers to the world of words as I am by the words themselves. I do, however, also find myself continuing to write in journals made of handmade paper, and reading way past my bedtime.

— Brooke McCaffrey, Ed.M.’07, teaches kindergarten at Prospect Hill Academy Charter School in Somerville, Mass., and spends a lot of time in the book corner reading with her students. She is featured in this issue’s cover story on how to read.

istockphoto.com

atob

lessonplan Professor Chris Dede

EdCast

We asked our Facebook fans to tell us what one question they would ask an Ed School faculty member if given the opportunity. Among the responses was one was from an assistant principal in Cumberland, R.I.

Jay Masterson What is the best way to make the initial technology investment that would be the foundation for future, efficient, and manageable maintenance for public school systems?

Education to Go-To: Harvard EdCast Launches

Professor Chris Dede Educational decisionmakers

You’re at the gym. The television set attached to your

are facing the complex challenge of making long-term

elliptical machine isn’t working. All of the magazines

investments in technology infrastructure at a time when

are from 2008. Most have pages torn out of them.

devices, applications, and media are all rapidly evolving.

It’s the perfect time to turn up the iPod and … learn.

As discussed in the 2010 National Educational Technol-

The Harvard Graduate School of Education’s newly

ogy Plan, several trends can guide the choice of what to do — and what

launched podcast, Harvard EdCast, allows listeners

not to do.

to learn about education on the go, in an accessible

First, many types of powerful online learning environments now require broadband access. Ensuring that students in and out of school can utilize wired or wireless broadband is a key investment for educators and communities to make.

Second, mobile wireless devices are an emerging infrastructure that

way, similar to the popular NPR Science Friday podcast that makes science user-friendly.

Hosted by Matt Weber, the school’s new and social media officer and a part-time student in the Technology, Innovation, and Education Program, the

simplifies the technology support that educational institutions must

show features a 15- to 20-minute discussion every

provide while repurposing devices (e.g., smart cellphones, e-readers) that

Wednesday with “thought leaders” in education, as

people — including children — already own. As I wrote in an article coau-

Weber describes them, both at Harvard and around

thored by two executives from Qualcomm and published in the March/

the world. Launched in September, he says that as

April 2010 issue of Educational Technology, “mobile wireless devices and

the series grows, the goal is to become the go-to

ubiquitous tools have the potential to transform teaching and learning in

place for thoughtful conversations about education.

K–20 schooling. When this potential is realized, students will benefit from

“We want to be a space for people who are seri-

24/7 access to digital curriculum that is highly personalized with respect

ously interested in what’s going on in education,”

to level, pace, and learning style. Teachers will benefit from digital partici-

he says, “and who know they can come to our show

pation in communities of practice with global reach and from dashboards

and hear leading experts.”

that actively display real-time data regarding their students’ progress.”

Weber says he’s excited about the format, a

The imminent release of smartbooks — devices that look and act like

downloadable audio file, because it allows listeners

laptops, but are scaled-up cellphones rather than scaled-down computers

to learn and reflect without sitting in a class or even

— will further empower this emerging infrastructure. “Cloud computing,”

in front of a computer. The shows can be listened to

or virtual servers on the Internet that replace local and organizational serv-

on computers, of course, but also on portable de-

ers and network management, is also an important component of this.

vices such as iPods, iPhones, or other MP3 players.

Third, open educational resources, based on the same type of bottom-

“You don’t need the Internet,” says Weber. “You

up contributions that characterize Linux and Wikipedia, are complement-

can listen to it while you’re

ing proprietary materials and software. I believe commercial services will

commuting or working out.”

still be needed for complicated or customized situations, but open educa-

To date, the show has

tional resources offer low-cost (though higher-maintenance) alternatives

included conversations on

for teachers.

topics such as summer read-

Overall, this is a very exciting time in reconceptualizing educational infrastructure.

Subscribing to the EdCast is free.

ing loss and the economic importance of kindergarten. Thought leaders have included Harvard President Drew Faust, author Lois

Want to see your question answered in a future issue of the magazine?

Lowry, and former governor Jeb Bush.

Visit the Ed School on Facebook and become part of the conversation: www.facebook.com/HarvardEducation.

— Lory Hough Harvard Graduate School of Education

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the appian way

Hide Your Knives

elena gormley

Julia and Jacques flat out told her she could never be a chef. And on a certain level, Netta Davis knew they were right. After a few months training under the two cooking giants in a culinary certificate program at Boston University (BU) after being laid off as an arts administrator in Boston Mayor Kevin White’s office, Davis still scared Pépin with her knife skills and asked questions like an academic, not a chef. But Child and Pépin had a solution: They were helping to launch a master’s program in gastronomy that would do more than teach how to cook — it would look at the role of food in history and society in a serious, interdisciplinary way. They wanted Davis to sign on.

“They told me to take the first class and see if this was a better fit, as a scholar,” says Davis. “I never looked back.”

Today, Davis is a lecturer in the program, in addition to her full-time job at Gutman Library as manager of administrative services.

She is also working on her Ph.D. in American studies at BU. Her love of all things food started young, a way to bond with her mother who worked for a time at Radcliffe. It was at Radcliffe, in fact, that Davis would forge her first connection to Child, who had started to donate some of her papers, as well as more than 500 rare cookbooks, to the culinary collection at the Schlesinger Library.

“It was so magical to be able to go into the stacks and touch them,” Davis says of the material. Since then, the stacks have been closed to the public, something that made a lot of people sad, she says.

The collection also got people mad. How could a feminist library allow cookbooks to share space with the records of the National Organization for Women and the writings of heavyweights like Adrienne Rich and Charlotte Perkins Gilman?

“I remember that some thought this was silliness, not scholarly. They’d say we’re trying to get away from women 10

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in the kitchen,” says Davis of the controversial decision. “As a young person, I thought, ‘Why is it shameful to remember that women’s history is rooted in the domestic realm?’”

Since then, the entire field of food studies has exploded with more and more programs like BU’s cropping up each year. Indiana University even offers a Ph.D. in food anthropology.

Davis isn’t surprised, given the huge role that food plays in our lives.

“Food is the only culturally significant act that you can’t not perform. You perform it several times a day,” she says.

“So of course it’s ubiquitous. It shows up everywhere but people just don’t notice it much.”

briefly At BU, Davis teaches a diverse group of students. About half have worked in professional kitchens. The rest cover a range of people, including those interested in policymaking, tourism, agriculture, consulting, teaching, and food writing. In addition to class discussions and lectures, with Davis they watch cartoons (“The Little Mermaid — it’s all about food!”) and Monty Python skits, always looking for the food angle. And they cook in the school’s professional demonstration kitchen, with recipes complementing the discussions.

“If I’m doing a lecture on the migration of food stuffs or where something like the chickpea belongs in world history,” Davis says, “I’ll give them recipes on how the chickpea is used in the Middle East and in Mexico and at what point these ingredients moved from one place to the next. We’ll look at the history of the spice route and the ways that different cultures relate to these ingredients. It’s interdisciplinary.”

Yes, she says, she does follow recipes — something Child would have appreciated.

“Julia followed recipes. She didn’t follow them slavishly though,” Davis says, which she learned while working for the woman who demystified French cooking at her Cambridge home three days a week. Davis was a student in the culinary program at the time, just before being hired at the Ed School.

“I remember the last summer I was working for her. She had brought all of her books over from France for the mass donation to the Schlesinger,” says Davis. “I had to make sure nothing weird was growing in them or had any of her notes in the margins — she was critical. She didn’t think all recipes were good. But she certainly believed in them.”

And what would Child and Pépin think now of Davis’ cooking skills, especially the long, slow-cooked “CSA box stew” she regularly makes with whatever she gets each week in her consumer supported agriculture delivery?

“What would they think of my CSA box stew?” Davis ponders.

“Well, Jacques is the king of smoking and curing. He taught a session in just that at BU as part of my Food and the Senses class last semester, so he would be delighted, I imagine, with the use of local hand-smoked bacon from Blood Farm and the frugal use of every useful part of the vegetables. They were both very conscious of freshness, of the delight in discovering local produce that you might not have ever tried to eat or cook.

“And the idea of cooking up a really big batch of it would delight Julia. I use the enormous Le Creuset vat she passed on to me to make it, too. It’s the only thing in my kitchen both tough enough and big enough,” she says. “Whenever I’m cooking or teaching in the BU kitchen, I get the eerie feeling Julia is sitting on her stool rolling her eyes at how disorganized I am. Luckily I’m not primarily trying to teach anyone how to cook food, just how to think about food better.”

Last fall, Professor Bridget Terry Long attended the White House’s first-ever Summit on Community Colleges, which included President Barack Obama and the secretaries of both education and labor.

In October, Marshall “Mike” Smith, Ed.M.’63, Ed.D.’70, was awarded the first Harvard Graduate School of Education Medal for Education Impact.

In November, the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy released a new case study, Charting the Course: Four Years of the Thomas W. Payzant School on the Move Prize, named after Professor Thomas Payzant, M.A.T.’63, C.A.S.’66, Ed.D.’68.

Ever wonder if professors get nervous before a new semester or how they prep for the new school year? Read a news story online.

The Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard recently released a new report, How High Schools Become Exemplary. The report explores 15 public high schools that made outstanding gains on state accountability exams over the past decade.

Condoleeza Rice.

Derek Bok. John Wood. Anne Sweeney.

Davis Guggenheim.

Prominent names.

Important topics. All at the Askwith Forum.

Competition can be good. A new study coauthored

by Assistant Professor Martin West shows that competition from private schools improves achievement for both public and private school students, and decreases overall

— Lory Hough

spending on education.

Links to studies and related stories.

Harvard Graduate School of Education

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the appian way

studybreak Aimee Corrigan, Ed.M.’11 Program: Technology,

Innovation,

and Education Tool for Change: A

camera

Hometown: Duxbury,

Mass.

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martha stewart

I

n many ways, a little boy in Haiti reminded Aimee Corrigan, a photographer and filmmaker, of why she came to the Ed School.

It was the end of summer, a few days before the fall semester was about to begin, and Corrigan was in a tent camp in Port-Au-Prince with the Life Is Good Kids Foundation. The NGO was training Haitian youth workers who were helping children who had survived the 2010 earthquake. “The conditions were beyond anything I’ve ever seen,” she says, now back in Cambridge where she is finishing her master’s in the Technology, Innovation, and Education Program. “It was 102 degrees, so hot that the tents were melting. Families were in short supply of all of their needs: food, water, and medicine.” Corrigan asked the boy, Jimmy, who was 12, if she could interview him about his experience. “He was extremely eager to do the interview and said he knew the perfect spot,” Corrigan says. “He brought me to a room full of broken desks, benches, and tables that was used as a classroom before the earthquake and it almost took my breath away.” January 12, the day of the earthquake, was still written on the blackboard. “Even though Jimmy is living in a tent and struggling for resources every day, he told me that more than anything else he wants a chance to go to school this year. Even before the quake, access to education was a challenge in Haiti because the nation does not have a universal public education system. Jimmy hoped that by telling his story, he might inspire people around the world to help kids in Haiti get the education they deserve.” Telling stories like Jimmy’s is why Corrigan has also traveled to Nigeria and Zimbabwe to take photos and be involved in documentary films. “My goal is to find stories of hope in places that are often portrayed as hopeless,” she says, “and to explore the power of new media in giving voice to those who are often not heard.”

I only need one camera these days: the revolutionary Canon 7D (or 5D). It shoots gorgeous HD video and stills. It’s perfect for overseas travel and low-impact documentation.

aimee corr igan

You’re heading overseas and only have room for a still camera or a video camera. Which do you bring?

Jimmy

Biggest misconception about poor countries.

All too often, poor countries are defined by suffering and disease, when in truth, they are also sources of great innovation and possibility. Media can change that misconception, and so I’m driven to bring focus to the individuals and innovations that spark hope.

Ansel Adams: 3genius r overrated r

r just another photographer

Your favorite photographer:

? r Dorothea Lange r Alfred Eisenstaedt r Margaret Bourke-White

3 other r

James Nachtwey and Lauren Greenfield, a Harvard alum. I’m most inspired by contemporary documentary photographers who embrace new technology in their quest to bring light to important social issues.

If you made a film about the Ed School, it would be called:

The Nexus. To capture how people from all around the world, from all walks of life, come together and center on one common goal: to improve opportunities for students.

Do you take photos or make photos?

I don’t take photos, I make them. The difference is when you make something it can be a true collaboration. My best photos are the result of a strong collaborative connection between me, the people I’m photographing, and the team I’m working with.

Are you an artist who educates or an educator who uses art?

Both!

Harvard Graduate School of Education

13

the appian way

homeroom Multimedia Lab

1 6 2

Gutman houses many things: library books, faculty offices, conference rooms, student computers, and — surprise, surprise! — boom mics and a green screen. Three years ago, a 930-square-foot multimedia lab opened on the third floor. Available to students, staff, and faculty, the lab is fully staffed with everything needed to make and edit movies, video, and audio productions.

14

Ed.

• winter 2011

1

Gino Beniamino, Ed.M.’09, an instructional technologist, runs

2

A bank of 10 Mac Pros with 23” flat screen

the lab with Susan Geddis Eppling,

monitors line the walls of the

an instructional media developer. He

lab, loaded with software

had experience with a similar lab at

needed to edit, animate, and

Dartmouth College and pushed for grant

mix: Final Cut Studio, iLife,

money to create the space. He’s become

and everything Adobe.

the go-to guy when students need help with the or equipment or software.

5

4 3

The lab offers 10 kits for users to borrow, in the studio

4

Students love the green screen. Chroma key

5

The boom operator, holding a fishpole and boom mic, helps

or off-site. Included: Canon GL2

technology has been used since

with sound during filming. Wireless

digital camcorder, mic, tripod,

the 1930s in Hollywood and for

lavalier mics, sometimes called pin-

and batteries. Students use the

decades with weather reporters,

on or lapel mics, are also available.

equipment for class assignments,

allowing filmmakers to easily

as well as for personal projects. For

add one image behind another.

example, students in the Teacher

“It’s particularly popular when

6

“Not many people use lights — it can be tricky — so these

Education Program videotape each

students use puppets and make

reflectors help bounce light,” says

other to evaluate their teaching

educational films for children.”

Geddis Eppling.

effectiveness.

says Beniamino.

Harvard Graduate School of Education

aimee corrigan

3

15

the appian way

The Pull of Public Service If a plastic rabbit can entice a greyhound to do laps around a racetrack, can public service incentives lure promising new teachers to low-performing urban schools? And can these bonuses keep them there?

Those were among the questions to be answered when Jennifer Steele, Ed.M.’04, Ed.D.’08, joined forces with Ed School professors Richard Murnane and John Willett for the recently released report, Do Financial Incentives Help LowPerforming Schools Attract and Keep Academically Talented Teachers?

Evidence from California. The report is based on Steele’s own experience as the recipient of a $20,000 Governor’s Teaching Fellowship while in a graduate teacher licensure program at Stanford University.

In light of last spring’s passage of the historic Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act — which enhances student loan forgiveness programs for those who enter public service, similar to what is already done for new doctors willing to work in urban hospitals — the recent study of California’s teaching fellowship program could cast considerable light on the value-added benefits of utilizing bonus pay to attract new talent to troubled schools.

“The key question of the study is, ‘Do these types of incentives reward people who would have already made this choice, or do they change people’s behavior?” says Steele, a policy researcher in the education unit at the RAND Corporation. What they found is that “many of the people who received these awards would have entered the same school where they gained employment,” even without the award. “But 28 percent of recipients would not have entered a low-performing school if the reward did not exist,” she says.

“It did influence people, but it didn’t influence everyone.”

Not even her. As one of the program’s 1,169 recipients, Steele fell into the greater category of those who would have chosen an underperforming urban school regardless of the $20,000 awarded to those in a teacher licensure program.

Having already taught in a private school and the test preparation industry, Steele felt drawn to public schools based on the students she met and her own secondary education experience.

“I loved my students, but these were students who already had a lot of advantages,” says Steele. “I [personally] came from a public school in Arkansas, so I also understood that education can make a huge difference in helping people to change their circumstances. That is when I decided to go back and get my teacher license.”

Steele says the incentive bonus was “a gift” for her, offering a way to increase her $33,000 base pay by approximately 15 percent per year. And while two in every seven bonus recipients acknowledged that their decisions were indeed based on the incentive pay alone, 75 percent of all recipients 16

Ed.

• winter 2011

“

Do these types of incentives reward people who would have already made this choice, or do they change people’s behavior?”

— Jennifer Steele, Ed.M.’04, Ed.M.’08

fulfilled their four-year commitments, a figure both Steele and Murnane found surprising.

“The state was still getting teachers with strong academic backgrounds who would not have chosen these schools before,” says Steele. “The bonus money came out to $254 per student, so it was not a huge amount of money. Then the question is, were [the incentivized teachers] more effective than their peers? That we don’t know. These teachers were novices, and we know that novices are somewhat less effective than teachers with three or four years of experience, but we also know that those with stronger academic backgrounds are modestly more effective than those with weaker academic backgrounds.”

Given their findings, and Obama’s forgiveness incentives, both Steele and Murnane believe that the policy implications of this latest report are promising, even as additional key questions remain.

“I think the findings are substantial,” says Murnane.

“When you offer any kind of financial incentive, you know that some of the money will end up going to people who would have taken those actions anyway. … The issue is this: For how many people are you able to change their behavior and how do you know?”

Both Steele and Murnane express frustration in not knowing what happened to the teachers in California beyond their four-year commitment.

“The thought was if we could get these teachers to these schools, they could start to become agents of change, but we don’t know if that was the case or if they achieved better levels of teacher effectiveness,” says Steele. “We need longitudinal data.”

Murnane adds, “You also need to create an environment where teachers want to work and can succeed in the environments they are in. That may mean a longer school day, a longer school year, more supports in place for families.

The job will still be difficult, so the money can be a piece of what’s needed, but you also need to create conditions for success. You need skilled professionals who want to be successful in helping children.”

— Mary Tamer is a Boston-based freelance writer who contributes frequently to Ed. Part of Jewell-Sherman’s collection

onmybookshelf

Associate Professor John Diamond

Currently reading: Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us by Claude Steele.

The thing that drew you to it: Steele’s work is really helpful for understanding how stereotypes affect academic performance.

It’s particularly useful for me in thinking about my current work on race and educational outcomes in integrated schools.

Last great read: Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh. It is about his experience studying a drug gang in a Chicago Housing Project. Once I picked up this book I could not put it down. It’s a powerfully human story. It was insightful, eye-opening, and made me think in new ways about the possibilities and limitations of social science research.

Book you have read over and over: Carter Godwin Woodson’s The Mis-Education of the Negro. Published in 1933, this book still resonates today. It is a probing critique of African American education. It shows that education has the potential to liberate but also to oppress.

Favorite spot to curl up with a good book: I think my favorite place is on my couch (as boring as that sounds). I guess I also occasionally read in bed.

Reading rituals: I can’t really read a book without underlining text and writing notes in the margins. As I write notes, I think they will make sense to me later but I really think it’s mostly just a ritual that helps me focus in the moment.

Noneducation genre of choice: My wife’s plays. My next read will probably be a rough draft of her latest work.

How you find the time: I don’t really. They just get read somehow.

Harvard Graduate School of Education

17

the appian way

W

Shelter: Where Harvard Meets the Homeless

Fire in the Heart: How White Activists Embrace Racial Justice

By Scott Seider

By Mark Warren

Ed.D.’08, explores the ramifications of that encounter through

I

the lens of the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter, where every

through interviews with white activists from across the country.

night from November to April Harvard students and the home-

Fire in the Heart describes his findings from 50 such interviews,

less gather to share sustenance, stories, and security.

“contributing to our understanding of the processes that lead

hat happens when you bring society’s most privileged and most marginalized groups together under one roof? In Shelter, Scott Seider, Ed.M.’04,

Drawing on detailed field notes from a single night at the shelter, Seider opens the book with a vivid chronological description of what happens between the arrival of the first

selves victims of discrimination come to develop a commitment to act for racial justice? Associate Professor Mark

Warren spent several years seeking answers to that question

some whites to an awareness of racism and a commitment to combat it,” he writes.

Warren weaves key quotes and stories into eight themed

Harvard volunteer at 6:30 p.m. and the team’s 8:30 a.m.

chapters, starting with an introduction that describes his

departure. These volunteers, when they could be studying at

research methods and provides a skeleton of the rest of the

the library or sleeping in their warm beds, are busy cooking

book. Subsequent chapters explore seminal activist experiences

and serving meals, washing dirty laundry, cleaning bathrooms,

and the moral impulse to act; relationships with people of color;

and occasionally settling disputes. Yet the homeless are by

moral visions and the purposeful life; challenging racism in the

no means the only parties that benefits from this encounter.

context of inclusion; multiracial collaboration; and building new

Seider writes, “The Harvard students volunteering at the

identities in racially diverse communities. At the conclusion,

shelter utilize the shelter as a mechanism for identity explora-

Warren asserts that large-scale social change cannot occur until

tion and as a ‘shelter’ from some of the academic, social, and

we create a national movement dedicated to racial justice.

personal pressures that are a part of the college years and young adulthood.”

Fire in the Heart is especially aimed at white students seeking inspiration and guidance in the effort to deepen their commit-

Told in three sections focusing on the impact the shelter

ments to racial justice and activism. As an example of the power

has — on its guests, the student volunteers, and society

of white activism, Warren repeatedly highlights the impact tens

— Shelter is both educational and emotionally moving, a

of thousands of white volunteers contributed to Barack Obama’s

blend of statistics and stories. Through nearly 300 pages,

presidential campaign. While Obama’s election surely did not

Seider takes special care to highlight the symbiotic nature

solve the problem of racism, it was an important step toward

of this unique encounter, providing countless examples of

racial justice, he writes, and shows the potential of Americans to

positive transformations both for the homeless and for the

come together on a national level around values-based politics

volunteers. He claims that the “youth and inexperience” of

calling for change.

the college students operating the shelter often combine to

As Warren demonstrates clearly through 250 pages, the road

create a teacher-student dynamic

to commitment has not been an easy one for any of the activists

that empowers guests in a way older

interviewed. Through numerous examples, he points out that it is

professional social service workers

common for white racial justice activists to be held in some sus-

cannot, ultimately making a persuasive case for the replication of the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter’s student-run model in other major cities across the United States.

18

t’s a puzzling dilemma: How do people who are not them-

Ed.

• winter 2011

Listen to an EdCast with Scott Seider and read interviews with the featured authors.

picion both by white Americans as well as by people of color, a suspicion that inhibits the formation of successful collaboration.

Despite the challenges, however, participating in this effort for a more just society has given white activists enormously fulfilling lives and, like the Obama volunteers, their own place in history.

Harvard education press AP: A Critical Examination of the Advanced Placement Program Philip Sadler; Gerhard Sonnert; Robert Tai, Ed.M.’94, Ed.D.’98; and Kristin Klopfenstein; 2010

Methods Matter: Improving Causal Inference in Educational and Social Science Research

By Richard Murnane and John Willett

E

ducational policymakers around the globe regularly make tough decisions about how to improve their educational

Instructional Rounds in Education: A Network Approach to Improving Teaching and Learning Lecturer Elizabeth City, Ed.M.’04, Ed.D.’07; Professor Richard Elmore; Sarah Fiarman, Ed.M.’05, Ed.D.’09; and Lecturer Lee Teitel, Ed.D.’88; 2009 Spotlight on Student Engagement, Motivation, and Achievement Caroline Chauncey and Nancy Walser, Ed.M.’10; 2009 Stretching the School Dollar: How Schools and Districts Can Save Money While Serving Students Best Frederick Hess, Ed.M.’90, and Eric Osberg; 2010

systems with the scarce resources available to them. Since

these decisions are rarely informed by sufficient evidence, knowledge

other books

of what works in different situations has been difficult to accrue. In

Below C Level: How American Education Encourages Mediocrity and What We Can Do about It John Merrow, Ed.D.’73; CreateSpace, 2010

Methods Matter, Professors Richard Murnane and John Willett offer guidance for those who evaluate educational policies. They cover basic principles of causal inference and introduce complex concepts previously inaccessible to nonspecialists: randomization by group, natural experiments, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, and propensity scores. With clear prose and relevant examples, Methods Matter challenges researchers and policymakers to think more critically about the evidence and assumptions in their work.

One of the book’s most persuasive features is the wide range of research examples offered in support of each argument. Specific causal inquiries include: “Does financial aid affect students’ and families’ educational decisions?” and “Does class size influence students’ achievement?” These questions are followed by descriptions of high-quality studies that led to informed scientific conclusions.

The authors highlight the fact that “evidence-based” policy proposals today are often constructed upon unreliable and invalid sources.

They subsequently outline the production process that leads to good evidence, explaining how the causal impact of educational and social interventions can be estimated from quantitative data.

Methods Matter is linked to real-world problems and solutions

Certifiable: Teaching, Learning, and National Board Certification David Lustick, Ed.M.’89; Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2010 Dream College: How to Help Your Child Get into the Top Schools Kpakpundu Ezeze, Ed.D.’83; Supercollege, Llc, 2010 Enhancing Student Learning in Middle School Martha Casas, C.A.S.’92, Ed.D.’97; Routledge, 2010 Faces: Illustrated Limericks Portraying People You May Know Carl Pickhardt, Ed.M.’66; Xlibris Corp., 2010 In Theda Bara’s Tent Diana Altman, M.A.T.’64; Tapley Cove Press, 2010 Ordinary Gifted Children: The Power and Promise of Individual Attention Jessica Hoffman Davis, Ed.M.’86, Ed.D.’91; Teachers College Press, 2010 Storytelling as an Instructional Method: Research Perspectives Thomas Derrick Hull, Ed.M.’09; Sense Publishers, 2010

rather than pure theoretical academia. In the words of the authors, “Our emphasis is not on mathematics, but on providing intuitive explanations of key ideas and procedures. We believe that illustrating our technical explanations with data from exemplary research studies makes this book widely accessible.”

The Teacher’s Toolkit Brad Olsen, Ed.M.’93; Paradigm Publishers, 2010 Through Veterans’ Eyes: The Iraq and Afghanistan Experience Larry Minear, M.A.T.’63; Potomac Books Inc., 2010

In recent decades, developments in research methodology, administrative record keeping, and statistical software have significantly enhanced the capabilities of researchers to make well-informed evaluations of the causal impacts of educational interventions. Methods Matter offers professional wisdom that will continue to increase the

The Tin Ticket: The Heroic Journey of Australia’s Convict Women Deborah Swiss, Ed.M.’75, Ed.D.’82; Berkley Hardcover, 2010 The Unofficial Diplomat: A Memoir Joanne Grady Huskey, Ed.M.’78; SCARITH, 2009

number of well-designed impact studies and educated policymaking.

— Briefs written by Matt Corby

Whole Child Education John Miller, M.A.T.’67; University of Toronto Press, 2010 Harvard Graduate School of Education

19

20

Ed.

• winter 2011

he students sitting criss-cross applesauce in a circle on the purple rug are looking at their teacher, Brooke McCaffrey, Ed.M.’07. They’re mostly quiet, having just spent a few minutes getting their wiggles out. It’s early in the school year, about a week shy of October. These 23 kindergarteners at the Prospect Hill Academy Charter School in Somerville, Mass., are all emerging readers, meaning they’re just beginning to learn the skills needed to read on their own.

“We’re going to sing our letter-sound song, so that we can learn our letter names and the sounds they make,” McCaffrey announces. “We do this so that we can learn how to … what?”

In unison, the students yell, “Read!” Then on her cue, they launch into a song that mentions every letter, every letter sound, and a corresponding word: A, /a/, apple, for example. When they get to H, McCaffrey stops the singing.

“Hold up, hold up,” she says. “H sounds like ‘ha’, like you’ve been running really hard. Let’s try it again.” The students practice the sound a few times and then launch back into the song. McCaffrey stops them again at P, reminding them to puff out with their mouths. As the song ends, the students sing, “I know all my letter sounds and you do, too!” They beg her to let them sing it again, which they do, this time even louder.

During the next 40 minutes, the class will recite a poem about an apple, learn a dozen new words for various moods (glad, joyful, frustrated), sing a short jingle about how we read text (“Top to bottom, left to right … ”), and come up with pairs of rhyming words (“sad” and “mad,” “train” and “chain,” “bee” and “pea”). One of the final exercises circles back to the idea of letter names versus letter sounds.

“I have a surprise for you!”

McCaffrey says, after telling her “superstars” how well they did that morning. She pulls out a big card with a playful monster on the front. by lory hough “What’s his name?” she asks.

“Mr. Groan!” the students shout. illustrations by roger chouinard “And his sound?”

“HUMPF!” “That’s right. Just like letters, Mr. Groan has a name and makes a sound,” McCaffrey says. “The letter C has a name. It’s C. But it doesn’t walk around all day going C, C, C. Who remembers what sound this letter makes?”

The chorus of /k/ /k/ /k/ begins.

A look at how emerging readers turn squiggles into sounds and then words.

Prereading and Parents o the casual observer, it might look like these young students are simply having fun with sounds and silly songs. They don’t look like they are reading at all. But as their teacher fully understands with her purposefully planned exercises, learning to read doesn’t just happen.

Unlike learning to walk or talk — “experience expectant” skills that Professor Jack Shonkoff says the brain is expecting to develop — reading is “experience dependent,” meaning the brain isn’t wired to automatically figure it out. It’s a human invention, and somehow, some way, we have to learn how to read, starting with sounds and silly songs.

So how exactly do we do this?

The reading process begins, of course, way before kids even walk into classes like McCaffrey’s. As Shonkoff, a former pediatrician and current director of Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child, says, “kids learn to understand words before they speak them.” As soon as parents and caregivers pick up a cooing baby and coo back, the process begins, with the baby beginning to understand the back and forth of conversation.

By the time a child is 18 months old, Shonkoff writes in his book, From Neurons to Neighborhoods, their world is a language explosion, acquiring, on average, about nine new words a day, every day, through preschool.

Lecturer Pamela Mason, director of the Ed School’s Language and Literacy Program and the Jeanne Chall Reading Lab, says adults continue nurturing this explosion with their babies, toddlers, and preschoolers by singing songs, making up rhymes, reading poetry out loud, telling fables, asking questions, and playing with language.

Introducing new words and using full sentences (“yes, we do need to put on our raincoats” rather than “yes, sure”) also expands vocabulary, which not only helps students when they are first learning to read at around the ages of five and six, but also later in elementary school when they take the next steps and work on comprehension and fluency — the ability to read text accurately and quickly.

And of course, reading books to children every day is also critical, and not only exciting stories, but simple ones, too.

22

Ed.

• winter 2011

“In the process of learning to read, there is a stage where you have to forefront the form because you’re not yet automatic at seeing the sequence of letters and turning them into words,” says Professor Catherine Snow, an expert on language and literacy. “So it’s very valuable to have these ‘dumb’ books. An example is Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss. The focus is on rhyme and the book is sufficiently predictable, so kids can memorize words or use the picture to figure out what the words are.”

And, as Mason points out, prereaders, as they’re often called, make learning to read more than just an exercise.

“Dr. Seuss is fun. I want literacy to be fun,” she says.

“We sometimes forget about the joy of communicating with one another.”

Squiggles & Sounds y the time children enter formal education, it is estimated that they know the meaning of about 5,000 to 6,000 words when they hear them, and can probably recognize in print a handful of easily memorized “sight words” — words like “the” and “to” and “stop” that pop up often in books and on signs and menus.

The next step in learning to read is to make the connection between oral and print. Erin Trumble Keleher, Ed.M.’06, a reading specialist at the Charles Haskell Elementary School in Edmond, Okla., starts by giving each of her students an assessment to see how much, if any, they know in this area. With kindergarteners, she’ll have them identify the front and back of a book or show her where you start reading on a page. She’ll have them write their name.

“I might show them the letters of the alphabet and have them provide the letter name, or show them the letters of the

alphabet and have them tell me the sound that each letter makes,” she says.

It’s these letter sounds that teachers initially spend a lot of time on with emerging readers.

Called phonemes, these sounds are a part of phonemic awareness — the academic term for understanding that letters and words are made of sounds. Initially, no print is involved, it’s only oral. A teacher might say three words to students — “rice,” “ball,” and “rocket” — and ask which two start with the same sound. A student might be told a word like “pen” and asked to find other objects in the room that start with the same sound.

Emerging readers then need to make the connection between sound and the arbitrary, visual squiggles we call letters. With phonics, students move from knowing that “pen” and “pig” start with the same letter sound, to learning that the letter name is P, written as P and p, and the letter sound is /p/, which we puff out as “peh.”

Unfortunately, making these connections isn’t necessarily easy, at least at first, and especially for children with dyslexia or who struggle with language. As David Sousa, author of How the Brain Learns to Read writes, “reading is probably the most difficult task we ask the young brain to undertake.” For starters, the letters of the alphabet are abstract and the sounds they represent are not natural parts of how we speak.

As Assistant Professor Jennifer Thomson, whose research focuses on reading difficulties, says, “speech is a continuous stream. We think about sounds like /a/ and /b/, but in speech, there’s no discreet cut between those sounds when we talk. And everyone’s way of saying /a/ also varies. It’s a complex task, really.”

Making it even harder is that while there are 26 letters in the alphabet, there are about 44 sounds. A word like “big” has three letters and three phonemes: /b/ /i/ /g/. But a word like “chop” has four letters and three phonemes: /ch/ /o/ /p/. There are also five vowels but about a dozen vowel sounds. It can be particularly tricky when two vowels (or two consonants) are together: the O in “tone” sounds different than the two Os in “toot.”

The S and the H in “ship” need to be sounded out together.

Milestones A developing reader’s typical milestones

Age

Talk, talk, talk! Read

Imitates speech (“nana”). Enjoys books with

Ways adults can support language and reading

6 months

books with faces, animals,

simple pictures

objects.

Understands several

Have “conversations”

simple phrases. Has one or more words. Enjoys

1 year

while pushing the stroller.

Read interactive books.

lift-the-flap books.

Reread and recite nursery

Has 250–350 words.

Holds books, looks at

2 years

rhymes. Got to the library to

pictures.

find books together.

Has 800-1000 words.

Point to pictures and words

Repeats common rhymes.

3 years

games.

Comfortably uses long sentences. Begins to rhyme

as you read. Play rhyming

Focus on a few new words

4 years

while you read. Repeat them

and play with words.

in other situations.

Has 3,000–5,000 words.

Call attention to letters on signs.

Starts to match letters with sounds. Uses complex and

5 years

Talk about letter sounds. (“‘Mom’ and ‘milk’ both have an ‘mmm’

compound sentences.

sound at the beginning.”)

Starts to read words

Have fiction and nonfiction

on the page. Makes predictions while reading

books and magazines

6 years

using knowledge,

available. Visit museums and libraries.

pictures, and text.

Limit screen time to

Starts to read words automatically. Expands knowledge by listening to

7 years

encourage reading.

Encourage the reading and

and reading books.

rereading of easy books.

Reads chapter books. Is

Help your child develop an

now learning an estimated 3,000 words a year.

8–9 years independent reading routine before bed.

Adapted from Turning the Page: Refocusing Massachusetts for Reading Success by Associate Professor Nonie Lesaux.

Harvard Graduate School of Education

23

“Children with difficulties often have trouble differentiating sounds,” Thomson says. “They may hear A as ‘aaah’ or ‘aack.’” It’s especially difficult with the English language, she says.

“English is a nightmare. It’s one of the languages where dyslexia is the most obvious. With a language like Finnish, the letter-sound matching is almost always consistent. A dyslexic person who speaks Finnish might be slower but would probably not make as many mistakes.”

And this really pushes the brain. “This lack of soundto-letter correspondence makes it difficult for the brain to recognize patterns and affects the child’s ability to spell with accuracy and to read with meaning,” writes Sousa.

Which is why experts say that emerging readers, no matter which reading philosophy is followed (see sidebar), have to practice, practice, practice, especially with how letters and sounds connect. Without it, as Associate Professor Nonie Lesaux points out in her recent study, Turning the Page: Refocusing Massachusetts for Reading Success, students fall further and further behind with reading as they progress through elementary school. She writes that “74 percent of children whose reading skills are less than sufficient by the third grade have a drastically reduced likelihood of graduating from high school.” Even more startling, says Stephanie Crement, Ed.M.’06, a special education teacher and reading specialist at the Clarence R. Edwards Middle School in Charlestown, Mass., “Some states, including California, use third-grade reading scores to help predict prison populations for 10 years down the road.”

Luckily, once emerging readers do understand this lettersound relationship, not only can they perhaps avoid becoming a dreadful statistic, but they can also begin to manipulate language and move forward as confident, independent readers. For example, once a child really recognizes individual sounds — /f/ as the first sound in the word “fun” — he or she can eventually: • identify other words that begin with the same sound (/f/ in “fun,” “fix,” “fall”) • change the first sound to make a new word (exchange /c/ in “cat” with /m/ and you get “mat”) • delete a sound (“bug” without the /b/ is “ug”) • group words (“bat,” “bug,” and “rock” — “rock” doesn’t belong because it doesn’t begin with the /b/ sound) • blend several individual sounds to make a word (/j//a//m/ make the word “jam”) • break apart a word into individual sounds (the sounds in “shirt” are /sh/ /ir/ /t/) 24

Ed.

• winter 2011

Light Bulbs and Brains arents often want to believe that when this happens, a light bulb goes off and a child suddenly “gets” how to read. This doesn’t really happen, Snow says, but it’s not usually a long process, either.

She saw it with her own son, now grown, at the beach one day before he started school.

“He said, ‘Explain to me how you read,’” Snow says. “So I picked up a stick and in the wet sand started writing a list of words that rhymed: rat, pat, sat, fat, bat. Then I explained it to him. It’s not like at that point he learned to read, but he figured out, ‘Oh. I see. It’s not so hard. You look for words that you know and you look for the parts of them.’”

Just before this decoding experience, he would often “read” The Cat in the Hat, a book he had memorized word for word.

“He’d turn the pages and read it fluently, but he wasn’t actually reading,” Snow says. After the beach episode, he continued to read the book, but now he read it disfluently.

“He was actually trying to decode the words. The reading went backwards, but it was because he was getting the code.”

In general, Snow says, with a typically developing child, this understanding that there is a predictable relationship between letters and sounds and reading takes about 20 hours, max.

“They either learn it in about 20 hours or they’ve got a reading problem,” she says. “Of course, some learn it in an hour, with 10 the mean. So it’s not exactly a light bulb, but it is pretty brief.”

It is estimated that between the ages of four and nine, according to the website readingrockets.com, children will master about 100 phonics rules and learn to recognize 3,000 words in print.

Most typically developing readers will begin to read independently during the first grade. Precocious readers read on their own in kindergarten, or even before. Research, however, shows there is no link between early reading and intelligence, and that those who struggle with reading often have aboveaverage IQs. Thomson says that neuroscience research on the brains of dyslexics post-mortem showed that it wasn’t about intelligence — there were actual structural differences.

“This really sparked the idea that this could be brain based,” she says.

Which is why Crement strongly believes that every child can read.

“Dyslexia can be ‘treated’ if it is identified and if the appropriate instruction is given,” she says. “My students are intelligent and can learn to read. Their brains are just

Phonics or Whole Word? wired differently so it will require a more intensive or different approach.”

Any brain, despite not being wired to read, of course plays an important role in the process. Donna Coch, Ed.M.’96, Ed.D.’99, principal investigator of the Reading Brains Lab at Dartmouth College, where she is an associate professor, says that a brain learning to read cobbles together a number of existing neural systems and networks such as the auditory, processing, and visual.

“Essentially, we — kids, parents, teachers — are constructing a brain that can read,” she says.

Maryanne Wolf, Ed.D.’79, director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University and author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, says it’s a “small miracle” the way the reading brain pulls from other, existing sources. Reading, she writes, “could only come about because of the human brain’s extraordinary ability to make new connections among its existing structures, a process made possible by the brain’s ability to be shaped by experience.”

But, she adds, that doesn’t mean learning to read should be rushed, as has increasingly been the case with competitive parents in the United States, where it’s not uncommon for preschoolers to begin the formal reading process. In contrast, in place like Finland, students don’t start learning to read until the age of seven, says Thomson, and then it takes only about three months to learn.

“In the United States [where we start earlier],” she says, “it takes two-plus years.”

And it certainly can’t happen, no matter what age, by just using a bunch of flash cards, as guaranteed by popular your-baby-canread TV ads. Children really do need guided instruction when their brains are ready for the task. As Wolf says, each of the neural networks and systems that a reading brain connects to first needs to be fully developed, and developed in a certain order. Otherwise, an emerging reader will struggle and become frustrated with reading, and at best, only memorize. This development is affected by something called myelin — a fatty sheath coating the axons, the primary transmission lines for the nervous system. The more myelin around the axon, the faster the nerve cells work. Although each sensory and motor region is myelinated before a person turns five — the visual nerves myelinate by six months, for example — the regions in the brain that support reading, such as the angular gyrus, which supports language comprehension, doesn’t myelinate until at least five years old, and often more slowly in boys.

So while parents and caregivers should support and nurture these systems through fun, pre-reading exercises such as making up rhymes, singing, and playing with language, they shouldn’t feel that it is a reflection of their caregiving skills if their child hasn’t mastered learning to read independently by the time the fifth birthday party rolls around. It’s a process.

As Mason points out, “We’re all, in some sense, continuing to develop our reading skills. If you gave me a book on astrophysics, I’d be sounding it out, too.” Ed.

Letters. Language. Sight Words. Sounds. Is there one curriculum that should be followed when it comes to teaching emerging readers how to read? Despite decades and decades of experiments and data behind us, the answer is no. In fact, for years, reading wars raged in America, made famous by books like Rudolf Flesch’s Why Johnny Can’t Read, with one camp saying the only way to teach emerging readers is to “break the code” and follow a phonics-only program. With this approach, children are drilled in the mechanics of reading, starting with the smallest part of a word — the sound of letters, called phonemes. The other camp argued that a whole language approach (also called sight reading or look-say) made more sense, with children memorizing whole words and figuring them out based on context using interesting text.

In a followup book called Why Johnny Still Can’t Read, Flesch compared the two approaches using the analogy of learning how to drive a car. With phonics, you learn the nitty-gritty mechanics of the car and the road first: how to shift gears, how to signal, how to park.

You learn road signs and what red lights mean, and then, when you have all of this down, you take a road test. Eventually you can drive.

With whole language, you start your car and drive, memorizing and then remembering landmarks along the way. Eventually you pick up the mechanics — how to step on the brake, what traffic lights mean.

From time to time, the favored approach taught in schools would shift, depending on which president was in office or which reading camp spoke the loudest. Unfortunately, says Professor Catherine Snow, neither side proved to be the one best way. Advocates of phonics “went overboard” with their focus on sounding out words, she says, giving little attention to content or making reading fun, while whole language advocates spent so much time teaching kids to look at the whole picture, that they failed to learn how all of the parts worked and students couldn’t figure out, on their own, words they hadn’t yet memorized. In the process, students were left behind, especially those who didn’t come to kindergarten with a strong vocabulary or wide exposure to books and songs.

So where has this left reading instruction? Everyone interviewed for this story agreed that a focus on phonics was a necessary part of any reading curriculum. As Assistant Professor Jennifer Thompson says, “You at least need to show them that there is a system,” she says. “It isn’t always going to work with every letter, but there are rules.” But, as she and others acknowledged, and as more research eventually revealed, learning to read also has to be interesting and mean something.

As Snow says, when it comes to learning how to read, “It’s got to be everything.”

Created by the Ed School for the Waiting for “Superman” Download it movie, this booklet for free. about reading milestones will be distributed to 40,000 new mothers in Colorado this year.

Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Don’t Bank on It When President Barack Obama overhauled healthcare in March 2010, he also overhauled student financial aid by taking something away: the banks.

by David McKay Wilson PHotography by caroline fleming-payne

T

he daughter of a Boston sheet metal worker, and the sixth of seven children, Patricia Reilly, Ed.M.’83, grew up figuring she’d live at home while attending college, as did her elder siblings. But Reilly’s high school counselor encouraged her to look beyond Route 128, insisting she’d qualify for enough financial aid to afford dorm life.

Williams College wanted Reilly, and thanks to the aid she received, Williams ended up costing her parents less than if she lived at home while attending a state university.

After graduating, she worked in Williams’ financial aid office, launching a career that led to her current post as Tufts University’s director of financial aid. The mother of four, she now knows the system from the inside and out. Two years ago, three of Reilly’s own children were in college.

“I’m so much better at my job now,” she says. “If you want to talk about need-based aid, work study, and student loans, I’ve lived it. So that gives me more credibility with parents. They know that I get it, and we can commiserate.”

Reilly’s perspective, honed over more than 30 years in the field, continues to mature as the financial aid system in the United States undergoes yet another round of reforms, and American families fret over how to pay the ever escalating costs of higher education. Advocates for low-income students, meanwhile, say increases in student aid and the availability of affordable students loans are the key to higher education access and a road out of poverty.

Major changes in the federal student loan industry last year capped several years of turmoil, including former New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s investigation of deceptive loan practices. The 2008 banking crisis, sparked by the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, had a huge impact on the private student-lending sector as capital dried up, and federal intervention was needed to keep money flowing to students and to the institutions that serve them.

Legislation signed by President Barack Obama in March 2010, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, eliminated the private banking industry’s involvement in subsidized student loans, with students now borrowing directly from the federal government. Until this change, banks received fees to originate loans plus a “special allowance payment” each quarter for the loans they carried on their books. The government, which guaranteed the loans, assumed almost all of the risk. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the 2010 reforms will save the government $61 billion over 10 years from payments now going to the private banking industry and nonprofit entities such as American Student Assistance (ASA) in Boston, one of the nation’s 34 guarantors of the government-insured private loans. Those savings will be plowed back into increased

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grant payments for low-income students under the Federal Pell Grant Program, improvements in the income-based repayment program, and deficit reduction.

Heading the Obama administration’s higher education initiative was Martha Kanter, Ed.M.’74, undersecretary of the Department of Education. It was tacked onto the landmark healthcare legislation in the spring of 2010, with the details hammered out in the budget reconciliation process.

“In these times of recession and pay-as-you-go sweeping the country, this seems like a great way to fund higher education for students, without further burdening taxpayers,” says Kanter, who came to Washington, D.C., in 2009 after working for three decades in the California community college system. “We want more low-income Americans to have an opportunity to go to college.”

Removing the private lenders from the subsidized loan program was not without pain. In 2010, Sallie Mae, the publically held banking concern that was the biggest player in the private market, slashed its workforce from 8,600 to 6,000.

It also closed offices in Florida, Texas, and Washington in a company-wide restructuring to cut operating expenses by $200 million.

The nonprofit guarantor agencies took a hit too, with ASA shedding 275 of 800 jobs in 2010. While ASA will still service $40 billion in loans for the government to 1.6 million student borrowers, the agency has embarked on an effort to rebrand itself as an organization that focuses on debt management and default prevention.

Defaulting on a student loan can haunt young adults for years, ruining their credit and remaining a debt, even if they file for bankruptcy. Federal student loans are rarely discharged in such proceedings. One financial aid officer recalls how an alumnus who landed a job with the federal government many years after graduation had to work out a payment schedule before he was hired.

“Debt management is a contact sport, and we are finding ways to communicate with students,” says Peter Segall, Ed.M.’85, a member of ASA’s board of directors and former president of Blackboard, the online education platform. “We helped them get in debt. Now we have to help them get out.”

The reformed federal financial aid system emerged as part of the Obama administration’s push to get more young adults in college and move them along to graduation. Obama has set a goal of having 60 percent of Americans earn a bachelor’s degree by 2020, says Kanter.

Financial aid experts say adequate financial aid — through grants and affordable loans — needs to be in place to achieve that goal.

“Students with identical academic credentials are six times less likely to graduate from college if they come from the bottom income quartile, compared to the top quartile,” says

William Fitzsimmons, Ed.M.’69, Ed.D.’71, Harvard College’s dean of admissions and financial aid. “No country can afford to waste so much talent if it hopes to play an important role in a world that needs more college graduates every year.”

Financial aid for college students involves public and private capital — from banks, the U.S. Treasury, and the 6,000 public and private colleges and universities that provided education for 20 million Americans in 2009. In 2008–09, the College Board reports that $168 billion in financial aid was distributed to undergraduate and graduate students in federal grants and loans, work study, federal tax credits, and deductions. In addition, students borrowed $12 billion, with federal loans comprising 45 percent of aid for undergraduates and 65 percent of student aid for graduate students.

Harvard’s Early Aid System Providing financial support for needy students dates back to the early days of American higher education. Just seven years after Harvard College was founded in 1636, Lady Anne Moulson Radcliffe donated £100 in a fund for “the maintenance of some poor scholar,” according to

Seymour Harris’ book Economics of Harvard. In 1814, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts imposed a bank tax, which over the next decade provided $10,000 a year to Harvard to defray the tuition fees of up to 50 percent of those enrolled.

By the early 20th century, Harvard was making loans to help students pay their tuition in a program that suffered one of the problems of today’s system: Students failed to repay their loans. In 1914, a report from Harvard’s president found that among 591 graduates with outstanding loans, 44 percent hadn’t repaid a cent.

Defaults remain an issue, but certainly not of that magnitude. Reports show that 7 percent of student college loans go into default within two years of graduation. Since 1995, 20 percent of all federally guaranteed student loans have gone into default, with another 20 percent delinquent at some point, says ASA President Paul Combe.

In 2010, new borrowers will be able to cap monthly payments at 10 percent of their discretionary income, down from 15 percent. And all remaining debt will be forgiven after 10 years of responsible payment for those working in public service, and 20 years for all others.

Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Federal Intervention

A brief look at the federal government’s involvement in student loans.

1958

Under the National Defense Education Act,

the federal government begins providing direct loans to students from the U.S. Treasury.

1965

Concerned with budget issues, the government

moves loans to the private banking sector but guarantees the loans, covering the remaining debt if a student fails to pay.

1994

The government again gets into the direct loan

business, creating a dual system: federally guaranteed loans sold by the private banking industry and new direct loans from the U.S. government.

2010

Legislation, tacked on to the Patient Protection

and Affordable Care Act, removes private banks as the go-between for all new federal loans made as of July 1, 2010. The government lends directly to students.

Discretionary income is defined as anything earned above 150 percent of the poverty line: In 2010, that was $16,245 for an individual, $33,025 for a family of four.

“This helps education be more affordable,” says Kanter.

“We really want to get the word out.”

The amount of outstanding student indebtedness is stunning — $830 billion, slightly more than Americans owe in credit card debt, according to Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, an information site on student finance issues.

“Student loan debt has been growing steadily, and students have borrowed $300 billion in the last four years,” says Kantrowitz.

Reforms under the Obama plan now allow students to extend their repayment beyond the standard 10-year schedules from the program’s earlier years. On the down side, Kantrowitz predicts that in a decade, there will be parents strapped to help their children go to college because they will still be paying off their own student debt.

“It’s going to be a problem,” he says.

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The federal government entered the student loan market in 1958, providing direct loans from the U.S. Treasury through the National Defense Education Act, according to New America Foundation’s Federal Education Budget Project. By the mid-1960s, the push to expand the program ran into strict budget rules, in which loans would be counted as expenditures in the year they were made. So in 1965, Congress opted to move the program to the private banking sector, where the federal government guaranteed the loans but any federal payments on the defaults would be several years down the line.

By 1990, Congress required that the costs of default payments be included in the current year projections, forcing policymakers to look at the real costs of making student loans. That sparked interest in again developing a direct loan program through the U.S. Treasury. By 1993, it was in place under the administration of President Bill Clinton, with the proviso that direct lending be phased in over time. Then came the Republican revolution of 1994, and the GOP targeted direct lending for elimination. What emerged was a dual system — federally guaranteed loans sold by the private banking industry, and new direct loans from the U.S. government. This dual system was in place until the Obama plan passed in March 2010.

Rodney Oto, Ed.M.’82, associate dean of admissions and director of student financial services at Carleton College in Minnesota, says the emergence of the government’s direct loan program resulted in improved customer service by the private banks. It also encouraged banks to make private capital available for the loans. At the time, there were complaints from students that the private banks wouldn’t lend to them.

“The competition helped in the early 1990s,” recalls Oto, whose career in financial aid has taken him to Colorado College, Austin College (Texas), the University of Minnesota, and now Carleton. “We’d been having trouble getting the private lenders to make the loans.”

Despite the emergence of the direct loan program, by the early 2000s, private lenders had stepped up their marketing efforts and controlled a majority of the subsidized student loan market. The banks were also bundling the loans as securities, and selling them in the secondary market, providing new capital for the banks.

But the financial crash of 2008, which sent shockwaves through the entire banking industry, dried up credit, and left banks scrambling for capital to lend.

“Securitization made sense, banks had a stable rate of return, and it was a way to generate capital for new loans at a low cost,” says Harrison Wadsworth, a spokesperson for the Consumer Bankers Association. “But then there was trouble in the mortgage sector, it imploded, and capital dried up.”

“

It’s really a national imperative that 100 percent of qualified students have a chance to go to college.”

Many banks left the guaranteed loan program, and by 2008, the Department of Education under President George W. Bush had stepped in to buy loans from private lenders, providing them with capital to originate new loans.

That led to President Obama’s push for full direct lending, which was passed this spring, ending the dual system and the banking industry’s ability to originate subsidized federal loans. (Banks can still provide private loans, but the loans are no longer guaranteed by the government.) The banking industry unsuccessfully fought the plan, arguing that the dual system provided the dynamic that led to better service and lower prices.

The transition to the new system has gone smoothly, according college officials across the country. At Carleton, Oto says his staff worked out the kinks this past summer, and students barely noticed. But he remains concerned about what happens in the future, without the competition to keep the federal government sharp.

“The Department of Education has done a great job getting it off the ground and making sure it works,” he says.

“But time will tell if the government becomes lax and less responsive. Hopefully not, but when you have only one game in town, it can become easy to see customer service decline.”

At Tufts University, the transition occurred without a hitch. Lee Coffin, Ed.M.’90, dean of undergraduate admissions and enrollment management, and an Ed School adjunct lecturer, remains concerned that that Pell Grants, which don’t need to be repaid and benefit low-income students, haven’t kept pace with the rise in education costs.

“As need goes up, students aren’t getting the federal dollars to offset the cost,” he says. “That puts pressure on institutions to raise funds and use endowment income to meet those full needs.”

Need Still Great While the federal loan program helps students from the full spectrum of income levels finance their education, the Pell Grant Program is targeted to families demonstrating financial need. The increases under the new Obama plan in the maximum Pell Grant this year will certainly help low-income students. But the Pell Grant, which Undersecretary Kanter says once covered two-thirds of college costs, now only covers one-third, leaving low-income students hunting for loans and institutional aid to make ends meet.

— Martha Kanter, Ed.M.’74

In a 2007 paper in the Harvard Educational Review, Ed School Professor Bridget Terry Long says the loss of the Pell Grants’ buying power has hurt low-income students.

“Years of research demonstrate that grants make a difference in enrollment decisions,” she wrote. “Unfortunately, the purchasing power of the Pell Grant is only a fraction of its original level.”

Donald Heller, Ed.M.’92, Ed.D.’97, director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Pennsylvania State University, says the financial pinch has created a stratified system of higher education, with wealthier families able to afford more selective four-year colleges, and lower-income students flocking to community colleges.

The rise of merit-aid programs in many states, like the Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally (HOPE) scholarship program in Georgia, has provided financial support to huge numbers of middle- and upper-income students whose families could afford to pay the tuition bill — not the program’s intention.

Georgia students who qualify for HOPE scholarships receive full tuition to attend state universities if they maintain a B average in high school. In 2004, the commission found that only 30 percent of the HOPE scholars came from lowand moderate-income.

“The money goes disproportionately to wealthy families,” says Heller.

The Obama plan adopted in March made significant progress in addressing the needs of low-income students. The maximum annual Pell Grant — now at $5,550 — will be tied to the Consumer Price Index for 5 of the program’s 10-year period. The Congressional Budget Office estimates an increase in Pell spending of $21 billion from 2010 to 2014, with an additional $15 billion earmarked for students by 2019.

Undersecretary Kanter says this bodes well for low-income students over the coming decade. But she acknowledges reaching the president’s college-graduation goals will take considerable efforts, with low-income students among those targeted for increased achievement on the higher-education level.

“It’s really a national imperative that 100 percent of qualified students have a chance to go to college,” she says.

“And more American students with low income want to have that opportunity.”

— David McKay Wilson, who writes for university magazines around the country, is a regular contributor to Ed. magazine. Ed. Harvard Graduate School of Education

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One for All

All One? A look at the not-so-new, but gaining speed, push for common education standards across the country.

By Greg Esposito illustrations by Daniel vasconcellos

C

ompared with the typical pace of politics and the adoption of education policy, the Common Core State Standards Initiative has developed at a lightning-fast rate. In 2009 and 2010, drafts of the standards were written, public comments were made, and a final draft was produced. And in one short, hot summer, state after state signed on to a common definition of the skills and knowledge their students should have in math and English at various points during their academic careers.

Considering the long tradition of local control in American education, this is no small feat. But those who have been closer to the movement know that the events leading to their development and adoption did not occur over the course of a year. Politicians and education leaders — including many Harvard Graduate School of Education alumni and faculty — have debated the merits of national standards for decades.

Their experiences have given them insight into why the movement is gaining traction now and where it might go in the future.

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A Rudderless System Senior Lecturer Paul Reville, secretary of education for Massachusetts, held various roles over the past two decades that placed him in the middle of the discussion of measuring progress and setting education goals. The former president of the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy and former executive director of the Pew Forum on Standards-Based Reform can trace his personal memories of the debate back to the mid-1980s. There was a growing perception then of a rudderless education system that lacked clear goals, he says.

“I think that this [current movement] is all part and parcel of the education reform movement generally and the perception growing in the mid-’80s that what we were doing in education was outdated and outmoded,” Reville says.

Spurred by concerns about international competition, economic troubles, and a perceived stagnation or regression in student performance outlined by the now famous 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, the standards debate gained new life as politicians looked for ways to clarify goals, measure progress, and hold schools accountable.

Chief among those politicians was President George H.W. Bush. In 1989, following vows that his presidency would focus on education reform, he met with state governors at a national education summit in Charlottesville, Va. A joint statement issued by the president and the governors at the start of the summit acknowledged that education should remain a state responsibility and a local function. But the document outlining objectives at the close of the summit was rife with language now common in the education reform debate — accountability, competitiveness, readiness, and national goals.

The summit brought attention to and built momentum for the movement for national educational objectives. It brought together governors who believed education reform was an important moral and economic issue. It led to an announcement of national education goals by the president four months later. Moreover, it led to more thought and discussion by governors about equity within their states. And one did not have to make a large leap in logic to apply that ideology to the country as a whole, Reville says.

“If you draw the conclusion that all the children in your state are the responsibility of the state’s education system irrespective of the geographic accident of birth … then you don’t want there to be widely variable standards” on a national level, he says.

The problem, according to Fordham Institute President Chester Finn, M.A.T.’67, Ed.D.’70, was found in the details.

“There was a general agreement that yes, every kid in every school should demonstrate proficiencies in core subjects,” he says. “But what the heck are proficiencies?”

As chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, Finn applauded when Bush handed out grants for states to 34

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develop national standards for core subjects. And then he was disappointed when the movement gained no traction.

The standards movement within states was slow and arduous on the ground as leaders struggled to find fair measures.

The summit did signal advances for the conversation on the 30,000-foot policy level, but it didn’t lead to widespread reform. And it certainly didn’t convince states to turn education over to federal control. Bush’s calls for an American Achievement Test in certain grades didn’t make it through Congress. It appeared that while leaders recognized that there was an issue that needed to be addressed, anything that smacked of federal intervention in education remained something of a third rail that no member of Congress wanted to touch. This lesson was not lost on the chair of the Charlottesville summit — an activist governor from Arkansas who would soon be involved in the education reform debate from a completely different vantage point.

The Clinton Years Just around the time of the Charlottesville forum, Marshall “Mike” Smith, Ed.M.’63, Ed.D.’70, was coauthoring an article on national curriculum in the United States that would lead to proposals for standard-based reform. He has advised on education matters for multiple administrations, including the current one.

In 1991, Bush signed legislation creating a National Council on Education Standards and Testing and called for the development of voluntary national testing as part of his “America 2000” initiative. Although Bush was voted out of office, his basic ideas for education reform survived.

Academic Dean Robert Schwartz, C.A.S.’68, and Smith served on a transition team that wrote a report stating that fundamentally, the standards movement was headed in the right direction. Plans to provide money to states to put standards in place were made, and the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act included tying Title I money to standardization across districts within states.

“We used a little leverage,” Smith says. “We said, ‘Gosh, guys, Title I money goes to poor schools. We want every one of those schools to have standards, and they have to be the same as [the standards for] other kids in their state.’”

Following these advances in standardization within states, President Bill Clinton signed the Goals 2000 Educate America Act in 1994. It established an outcomesbased framework to set goals of American student achievement relative to students in other nations. Graduation rates, teacher quality, student preparation, teacher development, and literacy were other national goals listed in the legislation. It also provided for federal funding to allow schools to achieve these goals. Voluntary national testing was proposed again.

“

The problem with national testing is that conservatives don’t like the national and liberals don’t like testing.”

— Chester Finn, M.A.T.’67, Ed.D.’70 These efforts became something of a target for the Newt Gingrich–led Congress in the mid-’90s, however.

“Republicans saw the president getting leverage out of this and they went crazy,” Smith says.

Republican Congressman Bill Goodling, chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, spoke out against the testing program on the floor of the House, calling it “Smith’s Folly.”

Smith says, “I remember chuckling to myself, thinking, ‘Well, Seward’s Folly turned out OK.’” With Republicans waiting to pounce on anything that looked like further expansion of the federal government, Clinton used the second education summit, in 1996, to make clear that the education reform movement wasn’t about enforcing federal standards on the states. It was about state responsibility.

“If this had been left entirely to the politics of Washington and Congress, this [recent interest in common standards] never would’ve happened,” says Schwartz, a major contributor to the standards-based reform movement for decades.

Schwartz recalls the 1996 summit as a “locking of arms” moment among Democratic and moderate Republican governors, as well as a lineup of heavy-hitting corporate CEOs who were convinced that standards-based reform was the answer for the country to remain competitive in the global economy. Aware of this issue but also of the political dynamics of the movement, Clinton was not a major presence at the summit, which was held at IBM in Palisades, N.Y. He did, however, speak candidly to governors at the summit — out of earshot of the media, Schwartz remembers.

“He said, ‘Look, this is good politics as well as good policy.

No governor has lost an election because he supported education reform.’”

Achieve, Inc., a nonprofit education reform organization that helps states raise academic standards and education requirements as well as improve assessments and strengthen accountability, was born out of the 1996 summit. Schwartz served as president of the independent, Washington, D.C.– based organization from 1997 to 2002. A supporter of the Common Core State Standards Initiative since its inception, Achieve has led initiatives such as the American Diploma Project Network, a coalition of states looking to better align high school demands with college and career expectations of students. Its creation signaled a shift toward increased

collaboration across states in expectations, measurement, and accountability.

But, while the second summit helped stabilize the standards movement, like the first education summit, its momentum only went so far. An attempt by Clinton in 1996 to develop voluntary assessments for fourth-graders in reading and eighth-graders in math was thwarted when Congress refused to fund it. The death knell for Goals 2000 sounded shortly after the Clinton presidency. In late 2001, Congress eliminated its funding.

Teacher Concerns In addition to facing challenges from the right, the national standards movement had to navigate around objections from some constituencies on the left. Professional educators and their organizations were largely absent from the education summits, and complaints against policy shifts that encouraged “narrowing of the curriculum” and “teaching to the test” began to crop up.

Finn, a self-identified Republican, “at least on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays,” says he is one of the few people who has consistently supported standards over the past two decades. He says the political fallout that has led to the starting and stalling process has been messy, “but it’s very American.” He recalls a comment he made about the narrow political window for the standards movement as “the only significant epigram I ever coined in 66 years on this planet.

“I said, ‘The problem with national testing is that conservatives don’t like the national and liberals don’t like testing.’”

Christine Carr, Ed.M.’99, a social sciences teacher at Hopkinton High School in Massachusetts, says the standards movement is a noble effort, but she is dubious about the execution of it. She’s been involved in an effort to design curriculum within her district, which might involve four education professionals in a room discussing the writing curriculum, and has proven difficult. She shudders to think what an effort that transcends states might involve.

Standards-based assessment can quash creativity in the classroom, Carr says. Some of her best moments working with students are spontaneous. But at times she finds herself thinking about the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests rather than simply seizing upon a teachable moment.

“I have to stop and make a judgment on the spot,” she says. “Now I might say, ‘Gee, I have to give this test in X amount of days and I don’t really have time.’ And that’s in a school in a high-performing district with students who are doing quite well.”

Carr’s advice about the standards movement is “proceed with caution.” While policymakers make and remake standards and debate goals, teachers are working in real time.

Harvard Graduate School of Education

35

The standards, if done wrong, could serve as a distraction that narrows the curriculum and inhibits creativity that is sometimes needed to get through to students, she warns.

Reville acknowledges this concern. A teacher and principal early in his career, he says the standards are not about creating a “teacher-proof curriculum.” In their best form, standards are a “relatively spare” statement of what students should know at various points of their academic careers.

“Policymakers should be deferential,” he says. “There are many roads to Rome, so to speak. So there are a variety of ways of getting a student proficient in math, for example.”

No Child Left Behind The election of President George W. Bush may have signaled a philosophical shift by the resident of the White House in many respects. But it didn’t slow down the standards-based reform movement. In fact, the initiatives that Clinton failed to pass because they were seen as federal overreach were less prescriptive than the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act — passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2001.

NCLB increased federal funding in education and required states to develop assessments for students starting in 36

Ed.

• winter 2011

the third grade in order to receive federal funding. Schools’ performances on these tests was tied to funding. The usual complaints about narrowing of the curriculum and teaching to the test surfaced, as did the question of allocating resources away from already troubled schools. While in some ways it signaled a new era of accountability for schools, the act stipulated that states set the standards. Because so much was at stake, it led some to install low standards, effectively creating a “race to the bottom” to protect against school failure. This created a system of perverse incentives and brought more attention to the educational inequities between states.

“The big unintended consequence of No Child Left Behind was to bring to the surface the kind of absurdity of trying to have a single accountability system superimposed after each state had developed its own standards, tests, and definition of proficiency,” Schwartz says. “We’re living in a world in which Massachusetts, which leads the country in NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress], has half of its schools labeled ‘failing’ and where Alabama has a single-digit number of schools in the ‘failing’ category.”

That lesson from No Child Left Behind, combined with the continued concern about America’s economic com-

petitiveness, set the stage for the current Common Core Standards Initiative — an initiative by state leaders now convinced that individual state silos are not the way to go when it comes to setting standards.

“An awful lot of people, including state leaders, have gotten the message that state standards have been a major disappointment,” Finn says.

So just as the Clinton administration policy helped pave the way for education reforms of the second Bush administration, the shortcomings of No Child Left Behind helped along a reform initiative supported by the Obama administration. Of course, as supporters of the Common Core Standards Initiative will tell you, the effort is a state-led effort coordinated by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

But one doesn’t have to look far to see federal support for the initiative. The Department of Education’s Race to the Top program, which is allocating billions of federal dollars to states on a state-by-state application basis, included state commitments to the Common Core as one of the criteria assessed in the applications. Massachusetts, which did not receive funding in the first round of awards but did receive $250 million in the second round after signing on to the standards, is something of a poster child of the discussion.

Massachusetts’ state standards are seen as a model for other states and the commonwealth boasts the top students in the nation on the basis of the NAEP. Critics of Massachusetts’ decision to adopt the new standards have wondered if Bay State leaders allowed the motivation of receiving federal money to supersede the goal of having standards that best serve the commonwealth’s students.

Reville, who as Massachusetts secretary of education was responsible for putting together the Race to the Top applications, says he would not have supported the move to embrace the standards movement if he felt it would water down the commonwealth’s standards. He believes there is much to be gained by states pooling resources and sharing ideas. And if Massachusetts has something to contribute to a movement that is being adopted by the vast majority of states, withholding participation would be bad for the country and the commonwealth.

“The alternative is to sit on the sidelines with our arms folded,” he says. “In addition to being negligent of our responsibilities as citizens of this nation, it will guarantee a road to irrelevance for Massachusetts.”

Looking Ahead So what lies ahead for the standards movement, particularly with the Republican wins in the 2010 election? Unlike many

education issues, the United States is a follower, not a leader in nationwide standards. Virtually every country the United States is competing with has national standards, Schwartz says. Through the 1960s, education was a strictly local matter in nearly every state. The federal government had no place in K–12 education until the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 authorized federally funded education programs and set up measures to guard against educational inequality.

Those equality issues and the push and pull of federal, state, and local involvement remain an issue today. Finn is heartened by the fact that there will be no direct federal involvement in the standards but worries what impact the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind will have on the Common Core implementation. He sees the Common Core initiative as the setting of a quality destination.

“Though they’re not perfect according to our reviewers and my own eyeballing, they are much better than I ever thought they would be,” he says of the reforms. “They’re better than three-quarters of the states and a toss up in other cases.”

But setting a destination and getting there are two very different things. Just as implementing ideas that sprang out of the Education Summit in 1989 was more difficult than agreeing on the need for reform, so too will implementing the vision of the Common Core be easier said than done.

Collaboration can produce best practices that lead to better measures and more prepared teachers, but it can also lead to poor compromises, disjointed goals, and the sacrifice of excellence to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Reville believes the answer will be vigilance at every level.

Leaders will have to be proactive and he has vowed that Massachusetts will not support the standards if they veer off course and don’t add value.

“We haven’t signed away our prerogatives on standards and assessment forever,” he says.

While it may go against the historical roots of a nation formed from individual colonies, in the eyes of supporters of the standards movement, some degree of shared responsibility for the competitiveness and prosperity of the nation is long overdue. With anxiety over international competitiveness at an all-time high, Finn believes there is enough support to create a more united educational blueprint.

“If China really is going to eat our lunch and people understand that education has something to do with our response, the right way to do that is not to propose that kids in Kansas and kids in Maine and kids in New Mexico should be learning different things,” he says.

— Greg Esposito, Ed.M.’10, is a former education writer with The Roanoke Times. Ed. Harvard Graduate School of Education

37

lars skroder

oneonone Steven Kirby

D

eciding what to do with his life was never a struggle for Steven Kirby, Ed.M.’04; he’s been working with children in schools since he was a teen. What was — and still is — a struggle for him, though, is where his efforts are most needed: the United States, where the opportunity and resources exist, but some schools, especially in urban areas, are still failing; or in less-fortunate nations like Haiti, where the resources are scarce and schooling is not guaranteed. Although, he says, his “heart will always be with urban education in the United States,” for now he’s chosen Haiti.

The hardships endured by Haitian children, particularly street children and orphans, have concerned Kirby since he arrived in 2009. And conditions have only worsened since the devastating earthquake of January 2010. While working toward his doctorate at Vanderbilt University requires him to be in Nashville part time, he continues to commute to Haiti to run H.E.R.O., an organization he cofounded to provide housing, education, and rehabilitation for the children who need it the most.

“I will return to the United States one day,” Kirby says, “but my current calling is to work in Haiti with children that have never entered a formal learning environment. … Education is the only true vehicle for escaping poverty, and every child on this earth deserves the opportunity for an effective, efficient, and high-quality education.”

38

Ed.

• winter 2011

alumni news and notes Why education?

My lifelong devotion to education began in the Fiji Islands at the age of 16, when a local headmaster asked if I would like to volunteer as a teacher for his third- and fourth-grade classes.

Despite being known as a tropical paradise, Fiji is actually an impoverished country. It was in Fiji that I truly experienced life in a developing country for the first time, and after teaching for a brief one-week period at the local primary school, I was hooked.

How did you come to Haiti?

I mentored Haitian youth during my senior year at the University of Miami.

[Later] I was hired as a high school English/writing teacher at Union School in Port-Au-Prince.

Any surprises about Haiti?

Despite having visited developing countries like Ghana, Tanzania, and Fiji, Haiti was a shock to my system. As an educator, I was truly in disbelief that it was not uncommon to find communities of 200,000 people where not one single public elementary school existed.

After having worked for three months at a school that provided education for the most elite of Haiti’s population, I knew that I had to expand my efforts to reach the other 80 percent of Haiti, the people that live on less than $2 a day.

So what did you do?

I found SOPUDEP (Society of Providence United for the Economic Development of Petion-Ville), a local grassroots organization that provides an education to children in Haiti, regardless of their ability to pay.

They had an afternoon program that specifically targeted street children, providing a daily meal and formal educational experiences. I began working with the street children teaching English.

And from that work, H.E.R.O emerged?

In November 2009, I unofficially formed H.E.R.O. (Housing, Education, and Rehabilitation of Orphans) through a self-created blog with the ultimate goal of raising sufficient funds to build a residence for street children and orphans. After the earthquake, the need for a self-sustainable residence became even more pressing.

and triage at several major hospitals in Port-Au-Prince. Ten days after the earthquake, all six of us were evacuated from Haiti.

You experienced the earthquake?

Yes. [It was] unforgettable. I had just returned home from work with five other teachers to our shared apartments. We were oblivious to the impending disaster. At 4:53 p.m., the entire apartment complex began to shake violently, swaying vigorously side to side. I immediately ran to the doorframe and stood underneath it.

I could hear my colleagues yelling, and plates and glasses smashing to the kitchen floor.

How is it going?

H.E.R.O. provided school supplies and English instruction to more than 150 children in April. Of these, approximately 25 were street children. We have recently rented a house in Port-Au-Prince that will temporarily house 12 children orphaned by the earthquake. We are still in the development phase of our permanent residence. We have been donated one and a half acres of land in the province of Nippes, approximately three hours outside of Port-Au-Prince. We have partnered with several organizations to create a residence that will support up to 50 children.

A main focal point of our development is to become as self-sustainable as possible. To accomplish this task we will be using solar and wind energy, rainwater collection, and innovative farming practices to decrease our reliance on third parties for our operation. The residence is slated to open on January 12, 2011, the one-year anniversary of the earthquake.

How did you react?

As the earthquake subsided I ran outside to gauge the status of my colleagues, thankfully finding that they had all survived uninjured. We ran down to the open lawn of our complex and stared at each other, amazed by the absolute silence that lasted for more than a minute. And then the screaming began. We watched as a cloud of dust and dirt rose to the sky from a povertystricken neighborhood nearby, and we could hear the yelling of the injured.

I ran up to my apartment and grabbed first aid supplies, bottles of water, and flashlights. I was immediately joined by the other five teachers in the apartment building. Through the night we set up temporary first aid stations in soccer fields filled with thousands of people, now homeless.

For the next seven days we provided first aid

How did Union School fare?

It found itself with an enrollment of 30 children, down from 300. Subsequently my services were no longer needed, and for the first time in my life I found myself involuntarily unemployed.

Rather than pursuing additional job opportunities in the United States, I instead focused on H.E.R.O.

Go to www.haitihero.blogspot.com to visit Kirby’s blog. — Marin Jorgensen Harvard Graduate School of Education

39

alumni news and notes

1985

jill and ers on

Julius Wayne Dudley

2007 Camille (Lapidario) Aragon

1994

2005

Christopher Kennedy

Louie Rodriguez

2007 Kevin Boehm and Laura (Potenski) Boehm

2009 Heidi Cook, Mina Kim, and Erin Sudduth

40

Ed.

• winter 2011

1954

1967

1972

1978

Morton Gold, M.A.T., was

John Miller, M.A.T.,

Jack Quinn, M.A.T., was

Adrienne Grant, Ed.M., is

honored with a Kavod Award at the National Convention of the Cantors Assembly of North America in May 2010 for his contribution to sacred music, vocal and instrumental. He continues composing, reviews plays and concerts, and works as an organist and choir director.

1956 Diana A msden, Ed.M.,

lives in Southern California, where she is writing Mother Love and Sacrifice, a study of Amish psychology, family abuse, and sociopathy. She has six children and 20 grandchildren.

recently had two books published: Whole Child Education and Spirituality, Religion and Peace Education. He is author of more than a dozen books in curriculum theory and holistic education, and his work has been translated into eight languages. In 2009, he was one of 24 educators invited to Bhutan to help that country align its educational system with the country’s goal of gross national happiness. Miller is a professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.

named to the Sheldon Arts Foundation in St. Louis for a renewable, three-year term.

He also serves on the Sheldon’s Friends Board.

celebrating her 14th year as owner and producing artistic director of Arundel Bran Playhouse in Kennebunkport, Maine.

On Task: Shazia Amjad, Ed.M.’09

S

hazia Amjad used to have free time. But the reading, hikcourtesy of shazia amjad

ing, and gardening that she once enjoyed in her leisure time have taken a back seat in recent months. And she

couldn’t be more thrilled. In October 2009, the government of her home country established the Pakistan Education Task Force. Amjad was selected to serve as an education expert.

“I was totally amazed and surprised [to be chosen] as the competition was very tough,” says Amjad. “I actually believed that I would never make it!”

Now she finds herself working with a task force cochaired

So far, the task force has succeeded in completing the firstever performance assessment of reform initiatives in the four provinces and continues to work closely with local governments

by Shahnaz Wazir Ali, special assistant to the prime minister

to develop long-term strategy and action plans to improve

on social sectors, and Sir Michael Barber, former head of the

performance of the education sector. They have also developed

United Kingdom Delivery Unit and current distinguished visiting

a school report card in the Khyber Puktunkhawa province that

fellow at the Ed School. The main goal of the group is to sup-

makes school district performance available to policymakers for

port the new national education policy in Pakistan by helping

the first time.

increase the capacity of the federal and provincial governments to implement reforms.

This couldn’t be a better fit for Amjad, as helping to put a new education policy into practice in Pakistan has been among her goals since before coming to the Ed School. Even just the existence of the task force shows they are on the right track, she says.

“I believe that political leadership and will is in dearth — and motivated and committed individuals as champions can make a

Although Amjad is still adjusting to the “rollercoaster ride” of the task force, including the fast pace of the work, the extensive travel, and — yes — the lack of free time, the clear progress being made makes it well worth it.

“At the task force secretariat, we believe that we are not here to write another report,” she says, “but to translate policy into concrete actions and to make a visible difference to the lives of children in schools.”

huge difference on the ground,” she says. “I consider my present work and assignment as a step forward in that direction.”

— Marin Jorgensen Harvard Graduate School of Education

41

alumni news and notes

Breaking Ground: Norman Smith, Ed.D.’84

T

he greater the challenge, the greater the appeal. Over the course of his 40-year career in higher ed administration, Norman Smith

helped several institutions — including the Ed School courtesy of norman smith

— overcome enrollment and finance issues. But after a term as the longest-serving president of Wagner College in New York, as well as six years as president of Richmond, The American International University in London, Smith retired from full-time academia, spending his time writing and consulting.

That is until he was lured back by his biggest challenge yet: building a university from the ground up. In Egypt.

Earlier this year, Smith headed to the North African country to become founding chancellor of Alamein University on the Mediterranean, a resort area that had been underdeveloped.

“I was the university’s first employee, starting with a completely blank sheet of paper,” he says.

Northridge, to build a foundation of leadership and managerial skills. Smith also aspires to draw students to Alamein from outside Egypt in order to build an international culture within the university and the city around it.

“One of the reasons I was asked to head the project,” Smith says, “was my experience with international universities and with academic themes like globalization, world awareness, and inter-

The university is being developed by the same private-public partnership responsible for the resorts in the area. The hope is that it will draw international attention to the region and keep it

national relations, topics that I consider in the forefront of what today’s generation of university students should be learning.”

With a scheduled opening date of September 2011, Smith

vital throughout the year, something that had been difficult to do

has plenty to do, and few people yet to help him do it. In addition

outside of the summer holiday months. Smith is confident that

to recruiting faculty and staff, a typical week includes planning

the decision to build a school is a good one.

the curriculum, working with architects on designing the 100-

“Alamein will be the only Egyptian-chartered, English-speaking, American-accredited, residential university,” Smith explains.

“The American University in Cairo … is largely enrolled by Cairo

acre campus, and even personally writing the content of the school’s website.

Does he ever long for the easier days of his brief retirement?

commuting students. All Alamein students will live full-time at the

“I’m not sure I ever had a retirement mindset,” he says. “I was

university.” They will also have access to many of the resort ame-

just taking time away from being a president. … I am ready to step

nities, including housing, restaurants, and recreational areas.

back into a demanding and, hopefully, rewarding experience.”

All students will be required to take a liberal arts core curriculum, designed in collaboration with California State University,

— Marin Jorgensen

Richard Simon, Ed.M., has

(www.ays.org), for teenagers aged 16–19. The organization has 22 trips planned for next summer in five different counties.

been named superintendent of schools for the West Islip Unified School District on Long Island, N.Y., which consists of 5,400 students and nine schools.

1979 Marcia Chellis, Ed.M.,

recently published The Girls from Winnetka, a book in which five women who come of age in the 1950s tell how and why their lives changed in the subsequent decades.

42

Ed.

• winter 2011

A nne Salzman, Ed.M., is

truly enjoying being a head of school again. She is at The MASTERS Program, an early college charter school located on the campus of Santa Fe Community College in New Mexico.

1980 Elisabeth RhodesBingham, Ed.M., with her

husband, Glenn, started an international service organization, Alliance for Youth Service

1981 Catherine Golden, Ed.M.,

is a professor of English at Skidmore College. Her book, Posting It: The Victorian Revolution in Letter Writing, was awarded the 2010 George A. and Jean S. DeLong Book History Book Prize from the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing.

1982 Annie Davis, Ed.M., is the educator for the National Archives at Boston in Waltham, Mass., which holds the federal records for the New England states. As the education specialist, she develops curricula, presents teacher training, and manages school field trips, all connected to the millions of documents in the National Archives.

One place you don’t have to limit yourself to 140 characters.

Send us the latest news about your life and career. classnotes @ gse.harvard.edu

1983 Marcia Bradley, C.A.S., has retired (again) and has moved from Cape Cod to Medford, Mass., next door to her oldest son and his family. She still does some consulting from time to time and loves being in schools and mentoring teachers.

1984 Joan Lonergan, Ed.M., is now the head of the Hewitt School, a private K–12 day school for 500 girls in Manhattan.

Norman Smith, Ed.D., has

been appointed founding chancellor of Alamein University, under construction on the Egyptian Mediterranean (see profile p.42). He recently published From Bottom to Top Tier in a Decade: The Wagner College Turnaround Years, a memoir about his time as president of Wagner College.

1985 Julius Wayne Dudley,

Ed.M., recently visited M. Agnus Jones Elementary in Atlanta. In addition to speaking to the children about giving back to the community, he handed out prizes to the winners of an student essay contest, donated books to the library, and presented the school with a rare Obama campaign poster as a reminder of the president’s message.

Mo Guernon, Ed.M.,

recently retired from King Philip Regional High School in Wrentham, Mass., after 35 years of teaching. In September he

launched a new consulting business, Quest Writing Solutions, which offers an array of academic, corporate, and executive communications services.

Ellen Spiegel, Ed.M., is

the founding director of the BRIDGE Program, an alternative middle school in Lowell, Mass., for students with behavioral problems. The program, which began in 1997, services 50 students annually.

1986 Charlotte Agell, Ed.M.,

has published The Accidental Adventures of India McAllister, an illustrated picture book about fourth-grader India, her best friend Colby, and her dog Tofu.

It is the first book in a series about India.

Elena DeVos, Ed.M.’83,

Ed.D., is working on an international grant proposal project with the Constitutional Rights Foundation in Los Angeles and the Movimiento Nacional por la Integridad in Guatemala, designing and delivering civic education programs for elementary school children. For those interested, contact her at elenadevos1@gmail.com.

1989

1992

David Lustick, Ed.M.,

Elizabeth Larkin,

published Certifiable: Teaching, Learning, and National Board Certification in November 2009. The book explores the problems the United States faces regarding exceptional teaching.

1991 Alexander Russo, Ed.M.,

will publish Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors, a book about the effort to revamp South Central Los Angeles’ Locke High School by an outside charter school network called Green Dot. The book is due out spring 2011.

David Shernoff, Ed.M.,

is a professor of educational psychology at Northern Illinois University. He recently received the school’s 2010 College of Education Award for Exceptional Contributions to Scholarly and Creative Activity.

Ed.M.’86, Ed.D., is a professor of childhood education and literacy studies at the University of South Florida, SarasotaManatee. She was recently elected the first president of the newly created Faculty Advisory Council.

1993 David Fleishman, Ed.M.,

was named superintendent of Newton (Mass.) Public Schools in spring 2010. Previously, he served as superintendent of schools in Chappaqua, N.Y.; assistant superintendent of schools in Wellesley, Mass.; and assistant superintendent for human resources in Ossining, N.Y. Fleishman began his career in education as a teacher in the New York City Public Schools.

HGSE Alumni Council, 2010–2011 Jiraorn Assarat, Ed.M.’04 Marilyn Annette Barber, Ed.M.’83 *Barbara Brown, Ed.D.’90 Tara Brown, Ed.M.’01, Ed.D.’05 *Anthony Cipollone, Ed.D.’90 Stella Flores, Ed.M.’02, Ed.D.’07 Rowena Fong, Ed.D.’90 David Greene, Ed.M.’91, Ed.M.’94, Ed.D.’02 Deborah Hirsch, Ed.M.’86, Ed.D.’89, chair Marc Lewis, Ed.M.’99

1987 John Christopher, Ed.M.,

is serving as president of the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. He was elected a fellow of the American Psychological Association in 2009. Christopher is a professor of counseling at Montana State University in Bozeman.

Ellie Loughlin, Ed.M.’06, C.A.S.’07 Will Makris, Ed.M.’00 *Rebecca Mannis, Ed.M.’85 Tanya Odom, Ed.M.’98 *Christine Pina, Ed.M.’99 Samuel Robinson, Ed.M.’88 Douglas Wood, Ed.M.’96, Ed.D.’00

* denotes a new council member Harvard Graduate School of Education

43

alumni news and notes

1994

Gwang -Jo K im, Ed.M.’84,

Christopher Kennedy,

Ed.M., was named the 2010 Rhode Island elementary principal of the year. He is the principal at Nayatt School in Barrington.

Ed.D., was appointed director of the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Education in Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok. He is former deputy minister of education of the Republic of Korea.

1995

1996

Deb Gaffin, Ed.M., recently

Janice Barrett, Ed.D., was

moved to London and joined the children’s publishing start-up Nosy Crow. As digital product director she is launching iPad/iPhone story apps that get young children excited about reading.

Masahiko Minami,

Ed.M.’88, Ed.D., is professor at San Francisco State University.

For the past five years, he has been president of the Northern California Japanese Teachers Association and is now also president of the Foreign Language Association of Northern California.

promoted to full professor at Lasell College in Newton, Mass.

She now holds the title of professor of communication.

1997 Dennis Holtschneider,

Ed.D., president of DePaul University, served as the keynote speaker at the Ed School’s Alumni Council reception in Chicago last April.

career shift] gave me hope that I would gain a sense of direction that I hadn’t been able to find.”

Sarson is now a producer for Oregon Public Broadcasting, where she works on the Emmy Award–winning weekly series Oregon Art Beat, which focuses on local artists and events. As part of that series, Sarson recently wrote and produced the halfhour special Teaching Creativity: Is Art the Answer? about the state of arts education in Oregon’s public schools.

“Funding for education is in trouble in Oregon, and the first thing that usually gets cut is the arts,” she says. “But if kids vince patton

aren’t exposed to arts in the classroom, how are they learning to

Creative Thinking: Katrina Sarson, Ed.M.’03

W

hen Katrina Sarson decided to go back to school, she already had a decade of experience under her belt as a TV producer, having worked for HGTV, ESPN,

think creatively? If we aren’t teaching kids how to think creatively, we’re not teaching them anything.”

With painting, drawing, singing, and dance classes dwindling in public schools, Sarson hopes the half-hour special opens up a dialogue between administrators, policymakers, parents, and teachers about the importance of such activities and the potential consequences of raising generations of children that aren’t encouraged to appreciate the arts or think outside the box.

“It’s a problem that no one is really talking about because it’s not hot and happening on the nightly news,” she says. “Unless

and the Food Network. But what she really wanted to do was

you have a child in school, you probably don’t realize there’s a

merge this experience with her other interest: arts in education.

serious lack of the arts in schools these days. And if it’s happen-

This decision was affirmed by her Ed School professors, who enhanced her interest in education. One professor in particular

ing in Oregon, it’s happening in other places. But if no one talks about it, nothing’s going to change.”

stands out to the Boston native. “When I was in kindergarten, [Professor] Howard Gardner was a student-teacher for my class,”

Teaching Creativity: Is Art the Answer? can be seen on Oregon

she recalls. “At HGSE, he remembered me. He told me his

Public Broadcasting or at www.opb.org/teachingcreativity.

time as a student-teacher helped him realize that he was more passionate about research and academics. … [The story of his

44

Ed.

• winter 2011

— Katy Kroll

1

1

1 2

2 4

3

5

Alumni Events 1

The HGSE Alumni Council hosted a Chicago area alumni reception at the W Lakeshore Hotel in Chicago. April 2010

2

The Recent Alumni Circle Committee of Boston/Cambridge hosted a family-friendly “Pumpkin Fest” in Boston. The event featured pumpkin decorating, carving, apple strudel, and pumpkin bisque soup. October 2010

3

Washingon, D.C., alumni event, “Career Paths Beyond the School Setting: Nontraditional Opportunities for Education Graduates.” July 2010

4

Alumni gathering in Bangkok, Thailand. Among the attendees were host Jomphong Mongkhonvanit, Ed.M.’04 (sixth from left), and Professor Fernando Reimers (center).

October 2010

5

Recent alumni wine and cheese tasting in Boston. June 2010

Harvard Graduate School of Education

45

alumni news and notes

Your facebook page is full of photos.

Why not send one our way?

Send us a high-resolution photo of yourself or your family, including context, and we just might publish it in the next issue. classnotes @ gse.harvard.edu

and group/individual work in 22 countries to launch their own social enterprises. Ipp oversees the development and strategic deployment of programs in countries as varied as South Africa, Israel, Spain, and the United States.

2008 Rasheed Meadows, Ed.M.,

is among the first cohort of the Ed School’s Doctor of Education Leadership Program (Ed.L.D.).

1998 John Lewis, Ed.M., was ap-

pointed headmaster of Gunston Day School in Centreville, Md.

1999 Jeffrey Riley, Ed.M., has

become the academic superintendent for middle and K–8 schools for Boston Public Schools after several years as principal at the Edwards Middle School in Charlestown, Mass.

2000

2005 Louie Rodriguez, Ed.M.’99, Ed.M.’01, Ed.D., is assistant professor in educational leadership and curriculum at California State University, San Bernardino. In September, he was honored at the fourth annual 30 Under 30 Recognition Breakfast, which recognizes Latino and Native American young adults who are making a difference in the greater San Bernardino community.

2006 Amrita Dhamoon Sahni,

Ed.D., was named president of Creighton University in Nebraska. He will begin in his new position in July 2011.

Ed.M., has been director of instruction at the Edwards Middle School in Charlestown, Mass., for the past four years. She recently was named woman of the year by India New England.

2002

2007

Hikaru Kozuma, Ed.M., was

Camille (L apidario) Aragon, Ed.M., joined the

Timothy Lannon, Ed.M.’96,

named executive director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Office of Student Affairs, effective July 2010.

Carlos Santos, Ed.M.,

finished his Ph.D. in developmental psychology at New York University in 2010 and is now a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Social

46

and Family Dynamics. His research was recently featured in Time magazine, the Toronto Star, the Irish Examiner, and on BBC News.

Ed.

• winter 2011

Peace Corps and will be working in the eastern Caribbean as a youth development volunteer. She will be creating and managing educational programs in collaboration with country partners in schools, NGOs, and the local communities of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Vince Bertram, Ed.M., is

superintendent of the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation in Indiana. In July 2010, he received the Distinguished Hoosier Award, one of the highest awards given by the state of Indiana to its citizens.

Kevin Boehm, Ed.M., and Laura (Potenski) Boehm,

Ed.M., were married on July 31, 2010, in Sayreville, N.J. They honeymooned in Ireland.

He is the assistant director for student activities at the Ed School. She is an eighth-grade special education teacher at Oak Hill Middle School in Newton, Mass. Other 2007 Ed School alums at the wedding were Sara Stephens, Ed.M., and Kathleen CastilloClark, Ed.M.

Sam Garson, Ed.M.,

received a 2010 Outstanding Educator award from the Washington State Parent Teacher Association. The honorees are chosen from staff and parent nominations and written recommendations of their departments.

Monica Groves, Ed.M.,

was appointed dean of the new KIPP Vision Academy located in Atlanta.

Lior Ipp, Ed.M, is the direc-

tor of global programming for Ashoka’s Youth Venture (YV), a position held since graduating from the Ed School. YV guides young people (aged 12–20) through workshops, gatherings,

Jonathan Epstein, Ed.M.,

was given the John B. Muir Editor’s Award by the National Association for College Admission Counseling for his article, “Behind the SAT-Optional Movement: Context and Controversy” which appeared in the organization’s Journal of College Admission.

2009 Heidi Cook, Ed.M., attended the Communities Connecting End of Summer Celebration hosted by the Governor Deval Patrick campaign, at which she discussed school leadership with Lt. Governor Tim Cahill. Also part of the conversation were Mina Kim, Ed.M., and Erin Sudduth, Ed.M.

Will Yeiser, Ed.M.’09, is

founder and director of French Broad River Academy in Asheville, N.C. He was recently featured on Western North Carolina public radio discussing single-sex education.

2010 Allison Brian, Ed.M., is

working at Stanford University as assistant director of student and young alumni philanthropy.

Prior, she worked in the development office at the Ed School.

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contains the excitement and joy that a child has experienced while not being ‘educated.’” eF si Su It was helpful, of course, to also have a sense of playfulness. By all accounts, Lesser had it and helped instill it in Sesame Street, which was, as writer Malcolm Gladwell once noted, an “artful blend of fluffy monsters and earnest adults.” During an early promotional video for the show, for example, Lesser took it in stride when Kermit the Frog, one of the shows most identifiable puppet characters, jokingly said, “When you get back to Harvard, how are you going to explain that you spent all day in New York talking to a frog?”

Linda Rath, Ed.D.’94, worked with Lesser when he served as an advisor for the series Between the Lions, where she is a curriculum developer. She remembers how Lesser encouraged others to have fun, too, while making meaningful television.

“His dedication to education was profound, but he delighted in the playful and silly ideas of writers and producers of the series,” she says. “With diplomacy and warmth, he constantly nudged the team to aim high, respect our audience, and reach Read or contribute our educational goals.”

it

T

he huge number of comments posted online in response to the Ed School story about the death of Professor Emeritus Gerald Lesser on September 23, 2010, at the age of 84, says a lot about Lesser’s appeal — that and the fact that his obituary was featured in sources ranging from The New York Times to IGN news in Rome to the Muppet wiki.

“He touched the lives of millions,” wrote one person.

With his long career in education and children’s television, Lesser certainly did. After earning a Ph.D. in child development and psychology in 1952 from Yale University, Lesser taught at Hunter College and Adelphi University before joining the Ed School in 1963. He stayed at Harvard for 35 years, teaching developmental psychology and chairing the Human Development Program, before retiring in 1998.

During this time, starting in 1966, he became involved in the Children’s Television Workshop, now known as Sesame Workshop. Serving as chair of its board of advisors, Lesser helped create the curriculum for Sesame Street, which debuted in 1969 and is now widely considered one of the shows that changed television.

Lesser was an innovator, understanding early on that education and entertainment didn’t necessarily compete for the attention of children. As he wrote in his 1974 book, Children and Television: Lessons from Sesame Street, which included sketches from Maurice Sendak, “Entertainment is seen as frivolous. Education is seen as serious and earnest. … To use entertainment in the service of education is tantamount to coddling.” What needed to be done, he wrote, was to make entertainment instrumental to learning, “so that learning

h

Gerald Lesser, 1926–2010

to the online comments.

— Lory Hough

In Memory Harold Cummings, Ed.M.’42

Ann Muncaster, Ed.M.’58

Hedley Beare, Ed.D.’70

Patricia Jencks Gordon, M.A.T.’42

Priscilla Hastings Dunn, Ed.M.’59

Edward McMillan Jr., Ed.D.’71

Marjorie Gould Shuman, M.A.T.’42

Elizabeth Ann Bordeaux, Ed.M.’60

Jane Perrin, M.A.T.’71

Louise Keenan, Ed.M.’43

Marcia Woodruff Dalton, M.A.T.’60

Mary Holmes, Ed.M.’72

Jean Winchell, M.A.T.’43

David Eldridge, M.A.T.’60

Mary Bowes Winslow, Ed.D.’74

J. Warren Perry, GSE’47

Carol Armstrong Hamilton, M.A.T.’60

Gerald Sullivan, Ed.M.’75

John Gianoulis, M.A.T.’49

Joseph John Petroski, Ed.D.’60

Betty Martin Viereck, M.A.T.’75

Walter Deane, Ed.M.’50

Donald Gibbs Palmer, GSE’61

Carol Silva, Ed.M.’77

Philip Geffin, M.A.T.’51

Louise Goodridge, Ed.M.’63

Caroline Robinson, Ed.D.’78

Ralph West, Ed.M.’51

Michael Brown, M.A.T.’65

Noeline Purser, Ed.M.’80

Helen Neuhaus, M.A.T.’52

John Wright Jr., Ed.M.’66

Lawrence Zuckerman, Ed.M.’66, Ed.D.’86

Virgil Pitstick, M.A.T.’52

Duncan Circle, Ed.D.’68

Meredith Aldrich, C.A.S.’90

Yolanda Lyon Miller, M.A.T.’54

Natalie Gratovich, Ed.M.’69

Robyn Moore, Ed.M.’94

Cornelia Rose Levin, Ed.M.’55

Robert Whitman, Ed.M.’69

Timothy Sloate, Ed.M.’99

Donald Blyth, Ed.D.’57

Isabelle Cowens, Ed.M.’69, C.A.S.’70

istockphoto.com

recess

Hey, Hey, It’s a Monkey!

It’s so outlandish that it almost sounds made up. But the story about how a monkey nearly ruined doctoral candidate Anjali Adukia’s chance at finishing her dissertation is absolutely true.

It started in the summer of 2007 when Adukia, Ed.M.’03, was trying to get data about Indian schools from a local government agency located about 300 miles from where her parents grew up in Mumbai. For nearly a year, through e-mails and phone calls, the agency promised the data but never sent it. Finally, Adukia decided to show up in person.

Armed with biscuits, tea, and her own chair, she camped out for an entire week. On the last day, they gave her the muchneeded data on a DVD. “I thought, great, my dissertation is done,” she says.

But a couple of days later, after leaving a meeting with a local NGO to discuss sanitation issues connected to her research, her luck changed.

“I was walking out of the meeting, DVD in one hand, a banana in the other, when I felt something. Then I saw a flash of a monkey racing by,” she says. “The monkey had snatched the DVD out of my hand and was running! I hadn’t 48

Ed.

• winter 2011

made a copy of the data yet, so I ran after it and started yelling. Then I threw the banana and bonked it in the back.”

Adukia felt bad. “We were near the Gandhi ashram and Gandhi did not condone violence,” she says. But she also knew she wasn’t going to give up her hard-earned data that easily. Luckily, the unharmed monkey stopped, dropped the DVD, grabbed the banana, and walked away. She picked up the DVD and thought, humorously, “I just defended my dissertation,” at least for the first time.

Back in Cambridge, Adukia is finishing her research on the impact of health on education in India and other places, including how the lack of adequate sanitation affects learning. In retelling her monkey story, she jokingly credits Harvard’s office softball league for her Jonathan Papelbon– like skills.

“I’ve always thought that the only reason I hit the monkey,” she says, “is because I was on the school’s Ed Sox team.”

— Lory Hough

Watch a video re-enactment.

investing Connect Ed Ed.L.D. Donors Make Personal Links to New Students

B

eth Rabbitt, a former associate partner at a venture philanthropy firm who aspires to lead a public school system, had two choices for grad school: a top-ranked business school or the Ed School’s new Doctor of Education

Leadership (Ed.L.D.) Program. The choice to attend the Ed School was an easy one when she was offered full fellowship support for three years.

“Because I won’t need to repay school loans, my career path in education won’t be restricted,” Rabbitt says.

Thanks to the generosity of institutional and individual donors, Rabbitt and each of her 24 classmates in the first Ed.L.D. cohort is attending the Ed School tuitionfree and with a living expense stipend. The faculty who developed the program knew that this level of funding was necessary in order to attract new talent to the education sector and to convince successful midcareer practitioners to leave jobs and make major life changes.

As part of the fellowship model, each Ed.L.D. student is matched with a donor who is, in essence, funding his or her three years. In most cases, shared geography or interests between the donors and students have made for deep, personal connections.

Diana Nelson said that in funding a fellowship, she and the other trustees of her family’s Twin Cities–based Carlson Family Foundation hoped to develop a relationship with an Ed.L.D. student. They were thrilled to learn that their fellow, Rhoda Mhiripiri-Reed, was just as interested in connecting with them.

“I was completely moved by Rhoda. She’s truly inspiring,” Nelson says of Mhiripiri-Reed, the former principal of Champlin Park High School in Champlin, Minn. “We look forward to staying in close touch with her to learn more about the

Rhoda Mhiripiri-Reed, Diana Nelson

program and its role in education reform,” one of the foundation’s priorities.

Mhiripiri-Reed, who hopes to become an urban superintendent, is similarly moved by the foundation’s generosity and interest in her work.

“Everyone in Minnesota knows about the Carlson Companies, so I was thrilled when I found out their foundation was supporting my education,” she says. “It’s impressive [that] Diana and the other program donors have taken a special interest in us as people. They are just as committed to the idea of every student in our country receiving a great education as we [the fellows] are.”

Similarly, for Rabbitt, getting to know her fellowship donors Don Gant and his children, Chris and Sarah R. Gant, Ed.M.’94, has been particularly meaningful because, with backgrounds in business and education, they understand her motivations in pursuing the Ed.L.D. “We share a multisector view of this problem, believing that problems in educa-

Tommie Henderson, Karl Wendt, Jim Rothenberg, Amy Loyd

tion are as much management-related as they are programmatic,” says Rabbit.

After meeting Rabbitt and her classmates, Chris Gant says he was heartened that Harvard was using its resources to attract such a strong group.

“This is an incredibly impressive group of people,” he says of the first cohort. “To leverage Harvard’s strengths in educational administration, business executive training, and public policy to prepare these future leaders makes so much sense.”

Harvard University Treasurer Jim Rothenberg, who with his wife Anne is supporting three fellows — Tommie Henderson, Amy Loyd, and Karl Wendt — agrees, describing the program as “all about partnership and collaboration.” He invested in “The impact of these students will be felt by generations of learners,” he says.

— Mark Robertson, Ed.M.’08

Sarah B. Gant, Don Gant, Beth Rabbitt, Dean Kathleen McCartney, Chris Gant

Harvard Graduate School of Education

elena gormley

the Ed.L.D. students now because they will invest in others down the road.

49

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Harvard Graduate School of Education Office of Communications 44R Brattle Street Cambridge, MA 02138

You don’t have to be famous to end up here.

E-mail us a picture of yourself (or someone in your family) reading Ed. and you may find yourself on the back cover, too. kathleen mccartney

classnotes@gse.harvard.edu

Where’s Ed.?

We caught a couple of celebrities reading Ed. recently. In October, Dick Wolf, the Emmy award-winning producer of Law and Order, pored over the fall 2010 issue (to get ideas for an upcoming show, we’re sure). And last March, best-selling author Jodi Picoult, Ed.M.’90, didn’t have to hide her support for the magazine after meeting with Ed School students and alumni at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge.