On the crisp autumn Friday of September 19, the Harvard Graduate
School of Education (HGSE) canceled classes and closed off Appian Way for the
launch of its $250-million capital campaign, part of the University’s
$6.5-billion fundraising drive. Students, faculty members, alumni, and
other supporters gathered on the lawn of Radcliffe Yard for a day of talks and
panels themed around “Critical Conversations and Bold Ideas.” Featuring speeches
from Dean James E. Ryan and President Drew Faust, and musical performances by students
from the Conservatory Lab Charter School in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood and
by Yo-Yo Ma ’76, D.Mus. ’91, and the Silk Road Project, the kickoff concluded
with a block party—and the announcement that the school had already raised $111
million: 44 percent of the total goal.
Charged with urgency and optimism, the conversations at the kickoff
were laced with the dual rhetoric of crisis and promise. Rumblings about the
achievement gap and the prison pipeline duetted with talk of the new
opportunities discovered by research. Collectively, the discussions expressed what
Ryan, in his afternoon address, called “a unique confluence of need,
opportunity, and interest.”
The event aimed to celebrate the accomplishments of the HGSE community,
and to demonstrate what organizers called the school’s “convening power.” This was
amply proven by the more than 1,300 attendees, and a roster of speakers that
began, at 9 a.m., with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan ’86 (whose presence drew a small crowd of polit protestors opposed to high-stakes testing), and included a lunchtime keynote address by Harlem Children’s Zone
founder Geoffrey Canada, Ed.M. ’75, L.H.D. ’01.
The launch was also an occasion for Ryan, now a
year into his tenure, to formally introduce his vision for the
school. He described HGSE as a small institution that already has a large
impact—and that now wants to expand. The campaign will fund initiatives to
attract talent to education, develop faculty members and their research
projects, and strengthen the impact of the academy on the field.
In an education sector ever more crowded with competing and often
conflicting players—tech disruptors, charter groups, social entrepreneurs, and nonprofits
of all shapes and stripes—the campaign needed to communicate not only “why
now,” but “why HGSE.” The school
emphasizes its position as a center for rigorous research, free of the desire
to conform to ideology or party line. As academic dean Bridget Terry Long put
it, an interview before the event: “A university doesn’t owe anyone a point of
view.”
Ryan phrased the school’s mission this way: “We aim to be the place
that people think of first when they want honest answers and bold ideas. We can
become the very brightest beacon in the sometimes foggy world of education.”
“This Work Is
Not for the Faint of Heart”
The morning’s first conversation was held
on-stage, between Duncan and Monica Higgins, McCartney professor of education
leadership. Duncan told the story of how he had become interested in
education—his mother had run a tutoring program on Chicago’s South Side —and answered audience questions, drawn from a Red Sox lunch box, on
topics ranging from universal preschool to summer learning loss.
Duncan also had a response to HGSE’s
proposed new teacher-training program for undergraduates. The program needed to
be rigorous, making its expectations for student outcomes clear to the young
teachers, and holding them accountable.
“And I would ask you to try and make sure
your teachers reflect the tremendous diversity of our nation’s children,” Duncan
added. “I worry about the growing disconnect between what our teachers and our
administrators look like, and what our students look like. Harvard can be part
of the solution there.”
When Higgins asked the education
secretary for his final words for the HGSE community, he spoke of children’s
need for adults who inspire them, who create opportunities, and have high
expectations. Then he reminded the audience: “This work is not for the faint of
heart.”
Canada spoke along similar lines during
his keynote speech. “Changing public policy is a full-contact sport,” Canada said,
and those who aren’t cut out for it should do something easier: “Go sell stocks and bonds or something, maybe
make some money.”
Education is a singular field, Canada continued:
“If you try to do something, the system is determined to stop you.” In other
lines of work, people guard their innovations jealously. Education reform has
no patents system, and yet “Nobody wants to steal a great idea from someone
else,” he declared, speaking to school districts’ reluctance to try new
approaches. “It’s crazy.” Although education can be just as science-minded and
data-driven as the tech industry, he pointed out, other businesses have a
higher tolerance for risk, and are patient with initial setbacks while a
product is being perfected: no one gave up on smartphones when the prototypes
had bugs.
Throughout, Canada returned to his
enduring respect for and fond memories of HGSE: “This is literally the scene of
the crime for me.” Harvard taught him about bridging the theoretical and the
practical, and he had professors and mentors who challenged him to go into the
field and prove his ideas:
“Why not go for it? That’s what I think, when I think of the ed
school. That’s what it means to me. That’s what the people I met, who taught
me—that’s what they taught me. ‘Go out and really do it.’”
Bold Ideas: 8 for 8
Before the event, academic dean Long described
the launch as a chance to “make visible a number of things we’ve been doing,”
including faculty and alumni work. Smaller panel discussions convened in Longfellow
Hall’s Askwith Hall and the Gutman Conference Center on topics ranging from
global education and the role of superintendents to technology in higher
education and early learning and the brain. The afternoon also included a brisk
showcase of faculty research: eight professors giving eight-minute talks about
their recent work, in what the moderator, Meehan professor in adult learning
and professional development Robert Kegan joked was “a topless bar of
academics.”
Keppel professor of practice of
educational policy and administration Paul Reville started things off with the
explanation that since the 1980s, the United States had undergone an intense
period of education reforms and experimentation in an effort to effect a
nationwide rise in excellence and equity outcomes. His initial pronouncement was
dire. “The quest for ‘all means all’ thus far has failed,” he declared, “but we
have now an opportunity learn from our failure,” namely the continuation of a
model of schooling that produces a bell curve of student achievement. An
industrial economy could accept this result, he said, but a new era would
require a redesign.
The speakers following Reville covered a broad
range of topics. Some introduced simple interventions with broad consequences:
how simplifying the college- application process had made big differences in
college access and in students’ continued enrollment afterward; how schools might
engage more deeply with families, to aid classroom learning; how teachers might
use complex vocabulary in their classroom “talk” to improve student literacy.
Other talks introduced paradigm shifts in how to conceive of teachers and
learners: one discussed how teaching programming in schools requires a more
collaborative model of learning, easing the pressure for teachers to behave as
if they have all the answers. Another introduced the new “science of the
individual,” which eschews trying to describe the average brain, body, or learner and instead uses principles from a
mathematical field called “dynamical systems” to accurately describe individuals. With these insights in
mind, education innovators could design more effective teaching methods and
technologies to meet students’ diverse needs.
Thomas Kane, director of the University’s
Center for Education Policy Research, presented his vision for implementing new
ideas in education. He diagrammed how school districts could volunteer to serve
in experimental and control groups for research, and argued that Harvard should take the lead in establishing this
system. The University’s network and concentration of data analysis and other
experts, Kane said, uniquely qualified it for a major role in building such a
network. “It would have an historic impact,” Kane added. “And if we don’t do
it, I have no idea who will.”
“The Grittiest Place at Harvard”
The launch’s talks culminated in a
planned Community Celebration featuring President Faust and Ryan, who spoke
between the musical performances. The president’s keynote took the audience
back in time, to the ed school’s founding in 1920. She described the event they
held for the occasion, a gathering of University figures for a dinner that,
prolonged by manifold debates about education at Harvard, wore on until
midnight. Though this kickoff would move less ponderously, Faust said, today’s
HGSE continued to embrace debate.
“The GSE is not Harvard’s most
well-resourced school,” Faust acknowledged. “Though we’re here today to change
that.” Throughout its history, she said, the ed school has prevailed in
producing “explorers” who changed their field. Today, “The work of education is
more scrutinized and sometimes downright assailed than ever before,” making the
ed school “quite possibly—and some would say unexpectedly—the grittiest place
at Harvard.”
Her introduction of Ryan as “explorer-in-chief”
was followed by his introduction of himself as an unusual prospect for the
deanship: he was a law student and professor, and continues to be a Yankee fan
and Yale alum. But growing up in a blue-collar neighborhood in New Jersey, his
experience with education committed him to the field for life: he saw that his
success was the result of the dedicated efforts of his teachers and mentors. He
also saw, he said, that the system had failed others.
Although it lacks the abundance of space
and resources of its sister schools, Ryan said, the GSE had “something
invaluable—a mission that is critical to all of our futures.” He continued, to
general laughter, “I should hasten to add that more resources would not be
incompatible to our mission.”
Ryan kept the tone light as he also
introduced the campaign’s motto, joking about the others that had been proposed
and discarded during the planning stages: “Embrace disruption”; “We have both
qualitative and quantitative methodologists who work across a range of
important and interesting intellectual disciplines”; “Who says we’re the
problem?” Ultimately, Ryan and his colleagues hit upon “Learn to Change the
World”—in his words, a triple-entendre concise enough to fit on a banner or a
tote bag.
The tagline expresses what he termed the
school’s “fundamental identity,” via a three-fold belief: that education was
“the only sure path” for world change; that, at HGSE, anyone could learn about making
a difference through education; and finally, that the school’s community would
change the world of education itself.
Three Cs
for Change
As part of its strategy to expand its
impact, the school sorts its goals and priorities into three broad categories,
called the “three Cs”:
1. Cultivate world leaders and innovators.
The HGSE seeks to draw top talent to
Harvard, and to education more generally. The school prides itself on preparing
students not just to operate within current school systems, but to change them.
To that end, HGSE seeks to:
Increase financial
aid, through fellowships and other funding, for both doctoral and master’s
candidates.
In recent
years the school has established new degree programs: the Ed.L.D, or doctorate
in education leadership, and the Ph.D., a University-wide doctorate in
education, whose first cohort arrived on campus this fall. Many candidates are
five or 10 years into promising careers, Ryan explained in an interview before
the launch, and taking out time for further education involves an opportunity
cost. Living expenses can further deter prospective students even from these
tuition-free programs. Increased financial aid may be even more crucial to
master’s students, whose programs are not free.
Recruit Harvard
undergraduates to teaching, through a new Harvard Teachers Fellows program.
According
to Layton, this proposal has already generated a lot of excitement from
potential donors. In an interview before the launch, she outlined its potential
design: an application during senior fall, then moving a move into the
certification program in the spring, followed by an intensive summer with
courses and practice teaching at the Cambridge-Harvard Summer Academy with
local high-school students. Fellows would be placed in partner districts in September
(with an approximate 80 percent teaching load), and take HGSE distance courses,
before returning to Cambridge the following summer for a capstone project.
Interested students could earn a master’s degree, specifically designed for the fellows program. All would receive on-call
coaching and support for their next few years in the profession. The program
would be free of charge.
A small certification program is already available to undergraduates, but they have often found its demands difficult to
balance with their regular coursework. The new program emerges in response to a
perceived surge in interest in education at the College. When senior lecturer
Katherine Merseth, M.A.T. ’69, Ed.D. ’82, first offered an undergraduate general
education course, “Dilemmas in Equity and Excellence in American K-12 Education,”
in 2011, it garnered so much interest—90 applicants vying for 47 seats—that she
had to choose students by lottery. In 2013, she decided to offer it during both
semesters, and still, the spring term saw 300 students entering the lottery for
60 spots.
Expand online and
hybrid learning.
HGSE’s
first HarvardX course drew 70,000 students, Faust said in her address. The
school seeks to make more investments in digital learning, and is particularly
interested in offering professional development to principals and
superintendents who cannot access a residential degree program.
Fuel innovation
with fellowships and expertise.
HGSE wants
to create more fellowships at the Harvard iLab, and also seeks support for its
Scaling Up Project, intended to help reformers expand educational ventures that
have demonstrated success locally. The 15,000 school districts in the United
States present a significant barrier to wide adoption of promising local
ventures, which must struggle to adjust for, and overcome, this vast and
daunting diversity. The Scaling Up Project will give conferences and workshops,
and will eventually establish a professional education institute to improve the
situation.
2. Collaborate on questions that matter. The school will encourage interdisciplinary approaches—among its own
concentrations, but also across all of Harvard’s schools—to pursue research
that will help practitioners. HGSE wants to:
Shape its future
with faculty hiring.
The
next few years look to be a time of generational change for the education
school, Ryan recently told the Harvard
Gazette. Although it is a “poignant moment” for the school as its senior
faculty moves into retirement, that shift also presents the opportunity to
change the future of the school. A number of searches are already planned for
the coming year, focusing on experts in quantitative methods, and researchers
studying education equity.
The
school also wishes to expand in promising fields like neuroscience and learning
technologies. Because these fields are relatively new, they may require a new
kind of search. “Rather than conduct a specific search,” Ryan said, “we are
educating ourselves about what, exactly, within those broad fields is the most
promising and is the most exciting, so that when we do a search we’ll be sure
that we’re searching for the right person in the right area.” Attracting
experts in those areas, said Long, may require that HGSE find a way to create
opportunities outside the traditional tenure track: “It may involve
partnerships and exchanges with industry.”
Fund research projects.
The school
wants to establish a Dean’s Venture Fund, which will provide seed funding to
teams of faculty working across disciplines. Examples include the Education
Redesign lab, led by Reville, and a joint effort between HGSE and HBS to
improve career and technical training, smoothing young adults’ transition from
high school to their post-secondary paths.
Increase support for existing research centers.
HGSE wants
to bolster its organizations, such as the Center for
Education Policy Research and the Center for the Developing Child, to
encourage their efforts to generate research with partners in the field, such
as school districts.
3. Communicate with the field. With its institutional mission to foster leaders in education, and the
change they will bring to their field, HGSE wants to bridge the gap between
academia and practice. It seeks funding to:
Make research more accessible.
Two weeks
ago, HGSE launched its Usable Knowledge project, an online collection of faculty
and student work translated into summaries, illustrations, and videos. To share
the school’s findings with the outside world, Usable Knowledge will disseminate
these materials through a new website, newsletter, and social media presence.
Ryan hopes that it will become “the most
trusted place where people can come to get answers to real questions”—not just
for education professionals but for parents who want advice, or reporters who
want a trustworthy source of information.
Convene stakeholders in modern facilities.
The school
wants to make “strategic investments in HGSE’s facilities” in order to gather
groups of advocates, philanthropists, and practitioners. There are currently no
explicit, concretized plans to physically expand, Layton said, but currently the school “is incredibly space-constrained,” which hampers its
ability to host large conferences or provide office space to visiting scholars.
Education’s Moment
To meet these goals, the school will need
to speak to an audience larger than its immediate community of alumni.
“We do not have a naturally
affluent alumni base, because the field of education is not especially
lucrative,” said Ryan in his interview. “We have to appeal to those who may not
have any formal connection to the Ed School or even any formal connection to
Harvard, but are interested in education, and would invest in us if they
believe in our ideas and our programs.”
But the school is energized, and
optimistic about what a more outward-looking campaign may yield. HGSE had recently announced that its campaign would be co-chaired by Ralph
James, M.B.A. ’82, the executive director of external relations at Harvard
Business School. Layton said that she feels “really encouraged” by the support
of people across the University—the president, business school leadership, and
others—and by what seems an unprecedented interest in education exhibited by
society at large, because, “There’s no question—we can’t do this on our own.”
At the launch, Ryan told the attendees,
“The details matter less than this question: if not us, who? If you believe
that education in this country and abroad needs improvement, perhaps dramatic
improvement, who else is in a better position to make that happen? What other
institution or organization has the range, the reach, the access to world-class
talent and the independence needed to make a real difference?” And then: “Who
else has all of you?”
We are experiencing “education’s moment,”
he said. HGSE’s needs are great, but so are its ambitions. With support, it can
meet both.