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
Watch the intro-
shown before the film and
duction online.
later posted online.

B Ed. • winter 2011

 aimee corrigan

Harvard Graduate School of Education 1

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

26
20
32
features

You Need /r/ /ee / /d / to Read
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.
One for All. All for One?
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

16 6 What do
children’s
authors think
of the literary
Look for this logo
throughout the
world they’ve magazine to high-
helped create? light related videos,
EdCasts, web
In October,
stories, and more.
a panel of
experts,
prominent authors, and
the creators of a new documentary, Library of

10
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.

There’s been much ado

about Joy Lamberton,
4 Letters Ed.M.’04, a director
and teaching artist at a
6 The Appian Way
departments

Cambridge, Mass., school.

38 Alumni News and Notes Lamberton is helping to

38 48
49
Recess
Investing
raise awareness about
the importance of arts in
education and the role of

48
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

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
What’s this?
Called a QR code, this two dimensional
barcode used in Ed. is readable by
contributing writers illustrators
mobile phones with cameras or scanners
Matt Corby Roger Chouinard
and takes readers directly online.
Katy Kroll Daniel Vasconcellos
Greg Esposito, Ed.M.’10
Brooke McCaffrey, Ed.M.’07 copyeditor
Mark Robertson, Ed.M.’08 Abigail Mieko Vargus
Mary Tamer
David McKay Wilson © 2011 by the President and
Fellows of Harvard College.
photographers Ed. magazine is published
Aimee Corrigan, Ed.M.’11 three times a year. Third-class
Caroline Fleming-Payne postage paid at Burlington, VT To read Ed. online, go to
Briget Ganske, Ed.M.’10 and additional offices. www.gse.harvard.edu/ed.
Elena Gormley
Tanit Sakakini POSTMASTER: Send address changes to:
Martha Stewart Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Office of Communications, 44R Brattle
Street., Cambridge, MA 02138

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 educa-
tional legislation for the disabled. In my
opinion, positive attitudes and persis-
tence on the part of parents, students,
and the community are much more
important than legislation.
At our high school graduation, I re-
member 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 writ-
4 Ed. • winter 2011
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
ten with white letters on black. I assume Disabilities Education Act and then not
this was because people with low vision bother to even think of captioning a
often find white-on-black easier to read video of this type is inexcusable.
than black-on-white. — Robert Menchel, Ed.D.’95
— Sondra Wieland Howe, M.A.T.’61
piano teacher who teaches music Braille Editor’s note: Robert is right, which
is why we have since added a written
Editor’s note: Yes. Our designer pur- transcript of the video, which can be
posely chose a black background with read online at www.gse.harvard.edu/ed/
white text because the sharp contrast extras. We are also working on a strategy
makes it easier to read for some people so that all of our future content will be
with limited vision. accessible. Stay tuned!
It is outrageous that the latest issue of
Ed. magazine focused on the Education Long Way to Go
for All Handicapped Children Act It is great to see this article (“Long
and did not think about deaf people Way to Go,” fall 2010). It will be even
at all. As the first, and perhaps only, better to see curricular and extracur-
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 so-
ciety, 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
pushback
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 ho-
mophobia 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 contrib-
ute 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 en-
tire 200-person audience. That profes-
sor, 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
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 mi-
nority 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 politi-
cally 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
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 chil-
dren 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 know-
ing 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 de-
scribing 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 5
briget ganske

briget ganske
 “
the appian way
It is a bit
like Netflix
for kids —
lecturehall Assistant Professor James Kim but books,
J 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
not movies.”
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 les-
sons, 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 typi-
cally receive eight books over the sum-
mer. 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 compre-
hension 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 compre-
hension skills.
How do you know kids are actually read-
ing 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.
Real-time measures?
In my work, we do this by teaching chil-
dren to complete reading postcards after
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 chil-
dren’s intrinsic motivation. We do this
by giving children opportunities to
indicate their reading preferences.
You found that in order for this to work,
parent involvement is important.
We encourage parents to view them-
selves as key partners in the interven-
tion. 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.
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 chil-
dren’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 with-
out the i3 funding and the matching
contributions.
— Lory Hough

Harvard Graduate School of Education 7

 the appian way
atob 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 four-
year-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, roll-
ing 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 relation-
ship 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 hand-
made 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 excite-
ment 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 navi-
gate 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 teach-
ing while volunteering in Harlem. However, I still envi-
8 Ed. • winter 2011
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 hold-
ing 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
istockphoto.com
shattered visions, I did what I do
best: I read. I got to work figur-
ing 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 transforma-
tive 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 en-
raptured 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 hand-
made 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.
lessonplan Professor Chris Dede
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?
Professor Chris Dede Educational decisionmakers
are facing the complex challenge of making long-term
investments in technology infrastructure at a time when
devices, applications, and media are all rapidly evolving.
As discussed in the 2010 National Educational Technol-
ogy Plan, several trends can guide the choice of what to do — and what
not to do.
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 com-
munities to make.
Second, mobile wireless devices are an emerging infrastructure that
simplifies the technology support that educational institutions must
provide while repurposing devices (e.g., smart cellphones, e-readers) that
people — including children — already own. As I wrote in an article coau-
thored by two executives from Qualcomm and published in the March/
April 2010 issue of Educational Technology, “mobile wireless devices and
ubiquitous tools have the potential to transform teaching and learning in
K–20 schooling. When this potential is realized, students will benefit from
24/7 access to digital curriculum that is highly personalized with respect
to level, pace, and learning style. Teachers will benefit from digital partici-
pation in communities of practice with global reach and from dashboards
that actively display real-time data regarding their students’ progress.”
The imminent release of smartbooks — devices that look and act like
laptops, but are scaled-up cellphones rather than scaled-down computers
— will further empower this emerging infrastructure. “Cloud computing,”
or virtual servers on the Internet that replace local and organizational serv-
ers and network management, is also an important component of this.
Third, open educational resources, based on the same type of bottom-
up contributions that characterize Linux and Wikipedia, are complement-
ing proprietary materials and software. I believe commercial services will
still be needed for complicated or customized situations, but open educa-
tional resources offer low-cost (though higher-maintenance) alternatives
for teachers.
Overall, this is a very exciting time in reconceptualizing educational
infrastructure.
Want to see your question answered in a future issue of the magazine?
Visit the Ed School on Facebook and become part of the conversation:
www.facebook.com/HarvardEducation.
EdCast
Education to Go-To:
Harvard EdCast Launches
You’re at the gym. The television set attached to your
elliptical machine isn’t working. All of the magazines
are from 2008. Most have pages torn out of them.
It’s the perfect time to turn up the iPod and … learn.
The Harvard Graduate School of Education’s newly
launched podcast, Harvard EdCast, allows listeners
to learn about education on the go, in an accessible
way, similar to the popular NPR Science Friday pod-
cast 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
show features a 15- to 20-minute discussion every
Wednesday with “thought leaders” in education, as
Weber describes them, both at Harvard and around
the world. Launched in September, he says that as
the series grows, the goal is to become the go-to
place for thoughtful conversations about education.
“We want to be a space for people who are seri-
ously interested in what’s going on in education,”
he says, “and who know they can come to our show
and hear leading experts.”
Weber says he’s excited about the format, a
downloadable audio file, because it allows listeners
to learn and reflect without sitting in a class or even
in front of a computer. The shows can be listened to
on computers, of course, but also on portable de-
vices such as iPods, iPhones, or other MP3 players.
“You don’t need the Internet,” says Weber. “You
can listen to it while you’re
commuting or working out.”
To date, the show has
included conversations on Subscribing to the
topics such as summer read- EdCast is free.
ing loss and the economic
importance of kindergarten. Thought leaders have
included Harvard President Drew Faust, author Lois
Lowry, and former governor Jeb Bush.
— Lory Hough
Harvard Graduate School of Education 9
 the appian way

Hide Your Knives

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 ad-
ministrator 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, interdisci-
plinary 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
elena gormley

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 heavy-
weights 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
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.”

10 Ed. • winter 2011

 briefly
At BU, Davis teaches a diverse group of students. About half Last fall, Professor Bridget
have worked in professional kitchens. The rest cover a range Terry Long attended
of people, including those interested in policymaking, tourism, the White House’s
agriculture, consulting, teaching, and food writing. In addition first-ever Summit on
to class discussions and lectures, with Davis they watch cartoons Community Colleges,
(“The Little Mermaid — it’s all about food!”) and Monty Python skits, which included President
always looking for the food angle. And they cook in the school’s Barack Obama and the secretaries of both
professional demonstration kitchen, with recipes complementing education and labor.
the discussions.
“If I’m doing a lecture on the migration of food stuffs or where In October, Marshall
something like the chickpea belongs in world history,” Davis says, “Mike” Smith, Ed.M.’63,
“I’ll give them recipes on how the chickpea is used in the Middle Ed.D.’70, was awarded
East and in Mexico and at what point these ingredients moved the first Harvard Graduate
from one place to the next. We’ll look at the history of the spice School of Education Medal for
route and the ways that different cultures relate to these ingredi- Education Impact.
ents. It’s interdisciplinary.”
Yes, she says, she does follow recipes — something Child would In November, the Rennie Center for Education
have appreciated. Research & Policy released a new case study,
“Julia followed recipes. She didn’t follow them slavishly though,” Charting the Course: Four Years of the Thomas W.
Davis says, which she learned while working for the woman who Payzant School on the Move Prize, named after
demystified French cooking at her Cambridge home three days a Professor Thomas Payzant, M.A.T.’63, C.A.S.’66,
week. Davis was a student in the culinary program at the time, just Ed.D.’68.
before being hired at the Ed School.
“I remember the last summer I was working for her. She had Ever wonder if professors
brought all of her books over from France for the mass donation get nervous before a new
to the Schlesinger,” says Davis. “I had to make sure nothing weird semester or how they prep for
was growing in them or had any of her notes in the margins — she the new school year? Read a
was critical. She didn’t think all recipes were good. But she certainly news story online.
believed in them.”
And what would Child and Pépin think now of Davis’ cooking The Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard
skills, especially the long, slow-cooked “CSA box stew” she regularly recently released a new report, How High Schools
makes with whatever she gets each week in her consumer supported Become Exemplary. The report explores 15 public
agriculture delivery? high schools that made outstanding gains on
“What would they think of my CSA box stew?” Davis ponders. state accountability exams over the past decade.
“Well, Jacques is the king of smoking and curing. He taught a ses-
sion in just that at BU as part of my Food and the Senses class last Condoleeza Rice.
semester, so he would be delighted, I imagine, with the use of local Derek Bok. John
hand-smoked bacon from Blood Farm and the frugal use of every Wood. Anne Sweeney.
useful part of the vegetables. They were both very conscious of Davis Guggenheim.
freshness, of the delight in discovering local produce that you might Prominent names.
not have ever tried to eat or cook. Important topics. All at the Askwith Forum.
“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 Competition can be good. A new study coauthored
make it, too. It’s the only thing in my kitchen both tough enough and by Assistant Professor Martin West shows
big enough,” she says. “Whenever I’m cooking or teaching in the BU that competition from
kitchen, I get the eerie feeling Julia is sitting on her stool rolling her private schools improves
eyes at how disorganized I am. Luckily I’m not primarily trying to achievement for both public
teach anyone how to cook food, just how to think about food better.” and private school students,
Links to studies
and decreases overall
and related stories.
— Lory Hough spending on education.

Harvard Graduate School of Education 11

 the appian way

studybreak Aimee Corrigan, Ed.M.’11

Program: Technology, Innovation,

and Education
Tool for Change: A camera

Hometown: Duxbury, Mass.

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, bench-
es, and tables that was used as a classroom before the earthquake
and it almost took my breath away.” January 12, the day of the earth-
quake, 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
martha stewart

as hopeless,” she says, “and to explore the power of new

media in giving voice to those who are often not heard.”

12 Ed. • winter 2011

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

aimee corr igan

documentation.
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: If you made a film about the Ed School,

r overrated r3genius r just another it would be called:
photographer
The Nexus. To capture how people from all around
the world, from all walks of life, come together and
Your favorite photographer:
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
r Dorothea Lange
is when you make something it can be a true
r Alfred Eisenstaedt collaboration. My best photos are the result of a
r Margaret Bourke-White strong collaborative connection between me, the people
3 other
r James Nachtwey and Lauren Greenfield, I’m photographing, and the team I’m working with.
a Harvard alum. I’m most inspired by contemporary
documentary photographers who embrace new Are you an artist who educates or an educator
technology in their quest to bring light to important who uses art?
social issues. Both!

Harvard Graduate School of Education 13

 the appian way
homeroom Multimedia Lab
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
Gino Beniamino, Ed.M.’09, an
1 instructional technologist, runs
the lab with Susan Geddis Eppling,
an instructional media developer. He
had experience with a similar lab at
Dartmouth College and pushed for grant
money to create the space. He’s become
the go-to guy when students need help
with the or equipment or software.
A bank of 10 Mac Pros
2 with 23” flat screen
monitors line the walls of the
lab, loaded with software
needed to edit, animate, and
mix: Final Cut Studio, iLife,
and everything Adobe.

The lab offers 10 kits for
3 users to borrow, in the studio
or off-site. Included: Canon GL2
digital camcorder, mic, tripod,
and batteries. Students use the
equipment for class assignments,
as well as for personal projects. For
example, students in the Teacher
Education Program videotape each
other to evaluate their teaching
effectiveness.
Students love the green
4 screen. Chroma key
technology has been used since
the 1930s in Hollywood and for
decades with weather reporters,
allowing filmmakers to easily
add one image behind another.
“It’s particularly popular when
students use puppets and make
educational films for children.”
says Beniamino.
5
The boom operator, holding a
5 fishpole and boom mic, helps
with sound during filming. Wireless
lavalier mics, sometimes called pin-
on or lapel mics, are also available.
“Not many people use lights —
6
it can be tricky — so these
reflectors help bounce light,” says
aimee corrigan
Geddis Eppling.
Harvard Graduate School of Education 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 Low-
Performing 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, offer-
ing 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 effec-
tive than teachers with three or four years of experience,
but we also know that those with stronger academic back-
grounds 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 know-
ing 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 bet-
ter levels of teacher effectiveness,” says Steele. “We need
longitudinal data.”
Murnane adds, “You also need to create an environ-
ment 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 suc-
cess. 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 edu-
cational outcomes in integrated schools.
Last great read: Gang Leader for a Day by
Sudhir Venkatesh. It is about his experi-
ence 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 limita-
tions 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 liber-
ate 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
Shelter: Where Harvard
Meets the Homeless
By Scott Seider
W I
hat happens when you bring society’s most
privileged and most marginalized groups together
under one roof? In Shelter, Scott Seider, Ed.M.’04,
Ed.D.’08, explores the ramifications of that encounter through
the lens of the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter, where every
night from November to April Harvard students and the home-
less gather to share sustenance, stories, and security.
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
Harvard volunteer at 6:30 p.m. and the team’s 8:30 a.m.
departure. These volunteers, when they could be studying at
the library or sleeping in their warm beds, are busy cooking
and serving meals, washing dirty laundry, cleaning bathrooms,
and occasionally settling disputes. Yet the homeless are by
no means the only parties that benefits from this encounter.
Seider writes, “The Harvard students volunteering at the
shelter utilize the shelter as a mechanism for identity explora-
tion and as a ‘shelter’ from some of the academic, social, and
personal pressures that are a part of the college years and
young adulthood.”
Told in three sections focusing on the impact the shelter
has — on its guests, the student volunteers, and society
— Shelter is both educational and emotionally moving, a
blend of statistics and stories. Through nearly 300 pages,
Seider takes special care to highlight the symbiotic nature
of this unique encounter, providing countless examples of
positive transformations both for the homeless and for the
volunteers. He claims that the “youth and inexperience” of
the college students operating the shelter often combine to
create a teacher-student dynamic
that empowers guests in a way older
professional social service workers
cannot, ultimately making a persua- Listen to an EdCast
sive case for the replication of the with Scott Seider
Harvard Square Homeless Shelter’s and read interviews
with the featured
student-run model in other major
authors.
cities across the United States.
18 Ed. • winter 2011
Fire in the Heart:
How White Activists
Embrace Racial Justice
By Mark Warren
t’s a puzzling dilemma: How do people who are not them-
selves victims of discrimination come to develop a com-
mitment to act for racial justice? Associate Professor Mark
Warren spent several years seeking answers to that question
through interviews with white activists from across the country.
Fire in the Heart describes his findings from 50 such interviews,
“contributing to our understanding of the processes that lead
some whites to an awareness of racism and a commitment to
combat it,” he writes.
Warren weaves key quotes and stories into eight themed
chapters, starting with an introduction that describes his
research methods and provides a skeleton of the rest of the
book. Subsequent chapters explore seminal activist experiences
and the moral impulse to act; relationships with people of color;
moral visions and the purposeful life; challenging racism in the
context of inclusion; multiracial collaboration; and building new
identities in racially diverse communities. At the conclusion,
Warren asserts that large-scale social change cannot occur until
we create a national movement dedicated to racial justice.
Fire in the Heart is especially aimed at white students seeking
inspiration and guidance in the effort to deepen their commit-
ments to racial justice and activism. As an example of the power
of white activism, Warren repeatedly highlights the impact tens
of thousands of white volunteers contributed to Barack Obama’s
presidential campaign. While Obama’s election surely did not
solve the problem of racism, it was an important step toward
racial justice, he writes, and shows the potential of Americans to
come together on a national level around values-based politics
calling for change.
As Warren demonstrates clearly through 250 pages, the road
to commitment has not been an easy one for any of the activists
interviewed. Through numerous examples, he points out that it is
common for white racial justice activists to be held in some sus-
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.

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
systems with the scarce resources available to them. Since
these decisions are rarely informed by sufficient evidence, knowledge
of what works in different situations has been difficult to accrue. In
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 discontinu-
ity, 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 stu-
dents’ 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 propos-
als 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
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 illustrat-
ing our technical explanations with data from exemplary research
studies makes this book widely accessible.”
In recent decades, developments in research methodology, admin-
istrative record keeping, and statistical software have significantly
enhanced the capabilities of researchers to make well-informed eval-
uations of the causal impacts of educational interventions. Methods
Matter offers professional wisdom that will continue to increase the
number of well-designed impact studies and educated policymaking.
— Briefs written by Matt Corby
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
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
other books
Below C Level: How American Education Encourages Mediocrity
and What We Can Do about It
John Merrow, Ed.D.’73; CreateSpace, 2010
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
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
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
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, remind-
ing 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. A look at how emerging
“I have a surprise for you!”
McCaffrey says, after telling her readers turn squiggles into
“superstars” how well they did that
morning. She pulls out a big card with
sounds and then words.
a playful monster on the front.
“What’s his name?” she asks. by lory hough
“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.
 “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.
Prereading and Parents “Dr. Seuss is fun. I want literacy to be fun,” she says.
o the casual observer, it might look like these young “We sometimes forget about the joy of communicating with
students are simply having fun with sounds and one another.”
silly songs. They don’t look like they are reading at
all. But as their teacher fully understands with her purpose-
fully 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,” mean-
ing 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
Squiggles & Sounds
words a day, every day, through preschool. y the time children enter formal education, it is
Lecturer Pamela Mason, director of the Ed School’s estimated that they know the meaning of about
Language and Literacy Program and the Jeanne Chall 5,000 to 6,000 words when they hear them, and can
Reading Lab, says adults continue nurturing this explosion probably recognize in print a handful of easily memorized
with their babies, toddlers, and preschoolers by singing “sight words” — words like “the” and “to” and “stop” that
songs, making up rhymes, reading poetry out loud, tell- pop up often in books and on signs and menus.
ing fables, asking questions, and playing with language. The next step in learning to read is to make the con-
Introducing new words and using full sentences (“yes, we do nection between oral and print. Erin Trumble Keleher,
need to put on our raincoats” rather than “yes, sure”) also Ed.M.’06, a reading specialist at the Charles Haskell
expands vocabulary, which not only helps students when Elementary School in Edmond, Okla., starts by giving each
they are first learning to read at around the ages of five and of her students an assessment to see how much, if any, they
six, but also later in elementary school when they take the know in this area. With kindergarteners, she’ll have them
next steps and work on comprehension and fluency — the identify the front and back of a book or show her where you
ability to read text accurately and quickly. start reading on a page. She’ll have them write their name.
And of course, reading books to children every day is also “I might show them the letters of the alphabet and have
critical, and not only exciting stories, but simple ones, too. them provide the letter name, or show them the letters of the

22 Ed. • winter 2011

alphabet and have them tell me the sound that
each letter makes,” she says.
It’s these letter sounds that teachers initially
Milestones
spend a lot of time on with emerging readers.
Called phonemes, these sounds are a part of A developing reader’s Ways adults can support
phonemic awareness — the academic term for
typical milestones Age language and reading
understanding that letters and words are made Imitates speech (“na- Talk, talk, talk! Read
of sounds. Initially, no print is involved, it’s only na”). Enjoys books with 6 months books with faces, animals,
oral. A teacher might say three words to stu- simple pictures objects.
dents — “rice,” “ball,” and “rocket” — and ask
which two start with the same sound. A student Understands several Have “conversations”
might be told a word like “pen” and asked to simple phrases. Has one while pushing the stroller.
find other objects in the room that start with 1 year
or more words. Enjoys Read interactive books.
the same sound. lift-the-flap books.
Emerging readers then need to make the
connection between sound and the arbitrary, Reread and recite nursery
Has 250–350 words.
visual squiggles we call letters. With phonics,
Holds books, looks at 2 years rhymes. Got to the library to
students move from knowing that “pen” and find books together.
pictures.
“pig” start with the same letter sound, to learn-
ing that the letter name is P, written as P and p,
Has 800-1000 words. Point to pictures and words
and the letter sound is /p/, which we puff out
Repeats common rhymes. 3 years as you read. Play rhyming
as “peh.”
games.
Unfortunately, making these connections
isn’t necessarily easy, at least at first, and Comfortably uses long Focus on a few new words
especially for children with dyslexia or who sentences. Begins to rhyme 4 years while you read. Repeat them
struggle with language. As David Sousa, author and play with words. in other situations.
of How the Brain Learns to Read writes, “reading
is probably the most difficult task we ask the
Has 3,000–5,000 words. Call attention to letters on signs.
young brain to undertake.” For starters, the
Starts to match letters with Talk about letter sounds. (“‘Mom’
letters of the alphabet are abstract and the 5 years
sounds. Uses complex and and ‘milk’ both have an ‘mmm’
sounds they represent are not natural parts of
compound sentences. sound at the beginning.”)
how we speak.
As Assistant Professor Jennifer Thomson,
whose research focuses on reading difficulties, Starts to read words Have fiction and nonfiction
says, “speech is a continuous stream. We think on the page. Makes books and magazines
about sounds like /a/ and /b/, but in speech, predictions while reading 6 years available. Visit museums
there’s no discreet cut between those sounds using knowledge, and libraries.
when we talk. And everyone’s way of saying pictures, and text.
/a/ also varies. It’s a complex task, really.”
Making it even harder is that while there Starts to read words Limit screen time to
are 26 letters in the alphabet, there are about automatically. Expands encourage reading.
7 years
44 sounds. A word like “big” has three letters knowledge by listening to Encourage the reading and
and three phonemes: /b/ /i/ /g/. But a and reading books. rereading of easy books.
word like “chop” has four letters and three
phonemes: /ch/ /o/ /p/. There are also five Reads chapter books. Is Help your child develop an
vowels but about a dozen vowel sounds. It now learning an estimated 8–9 years independent reading routine
can be particularly tricky when two vowels (or 3,000 words a year. before bed.
two consonants) are together: the O in “tone”
sounds different than the two Os in “toot.” Adapted from Turning the Page: Refocusing Massachusetts for Reading
The S and the H in “ship” need to be sounded Success by Associate Professor Nonie Lesaux.
out together.

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 espe-
cially 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 sound-
to-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 let-
ters 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 letter-
sound 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 read-
ers. 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 inde-
pendently 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 above-
average 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

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, exist-
ing sources. Reading, she writes, “could only come about because
of the human brain’s extraordinary ability to make new connec-
tions 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-can-
read 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 some-
thing 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 astrophys-
ics, I’d be sounding it out, too.” Ed.
Phonics or Whole Word?
Letters. Language. Sight Words. Sounds. Is there one curriculum
that should be followed when it comes to teaching emerging read-
ers 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 lan-
guage 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 be-
hind, 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 Thomp-
son 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 re-
search eventually revealed, learning to read also has to be interest-
ing 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 Wait-
ing 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 25
26 Ed. • winter 2011
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, insist-
ing 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 flow-
ing 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 allow-
ance 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 govern-
ment $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
28 Ed. • winter 2011
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 land-
mark 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 sweep-
ing 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 col-
lege 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 pub-
lically 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 man-
agement 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 pri-
vate 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 deduc-
tions. 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 magni-
tude. 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 29

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 guaran-
tees 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 stun-
ning — $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 stu-
dents 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 sched-
ules 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.
30 Ed. • winter 2011
Federal Intervention
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 expendi-
tures 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 pay-
ments 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. govern-
ment. 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, provid-
ing 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 admis-
sions and enrollment management, and an Ed School ad-
junct 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 dol-
lars to offset the cost,” he says. “That puts pressure on institu-
tions 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 finan-
cial 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 differ-
ence 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 strati-
fied 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) scholar-
ship 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 low-
and 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 in-
crease 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 reach-
ing the president’s college-graduation goals will take consider-
able 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 31
 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.
Harvard Graduate School of Education 33
 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 for-
mer 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 percep-
tion 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 re-
port, 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 gover-
nors 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 sub-
jects,” 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 Ed. • winter 2011
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 wide-
spread 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 recog-
nized 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 ar-
ticle 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 outcomes-
based framework to set goals of American student achieve-
ment relative to students in other nations. Graduation rates,
teacher quality, student preparation, teacher development,
and literacy were other national goals listed in the legisla-
tion. It also provided for federal funding to allow schools to
achieve these goals. Voluntary national testing was pro-
posed 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 contribu-
tor to the standards-based reform movement for decades.
Schwartz recalls the 1996 summit as a “locking of arms”
moment among Democratic and moderate Republican gov-
ernors, 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 dynam-
ics 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 stan-
dards movement, like the first education summit, its mo-
mentum 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 encour-
aged “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 conser-
vatives 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 cur-
riculum, 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 work-
ing 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 “pro-
ceed 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 prin-
cipal 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 re-
quired 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 teach-
ing 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 adminis-
tration, the shortcomings of No Child Left Behind helped
along a reform initiative supported by the Obama admin-
istration. 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 stu-
dents 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 educa-
tion programs and set up measures to guard against educa-
tional 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 responsibil-
ity for the competitiveness and prosperity of the nation is
long overdue. With anxiety over international competitive-
ness 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 impover-
ished 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 communi-
ties 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, regard-
less of their
ability to pay.
They had an af-
ternoon program
that specifically
targeted street
children, provid-
ing 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.
You experienced the earthquake?
Yes. [It was] unforgettable. I had just
returned home from work with five
other teachers to our shared apart-
ments. 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 did you react?
As the earthquake subsided I ran
outside to gauge the status of my col-
leagues, 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 poverty-
stricken 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 immedi-
ately 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
and triage at several major hospitals
in Port-Au-Prince. Ten days after the
earthquake, all six of us were evacuated
from Haiti.
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.
How is it going?
H.E.R.O.
provided school
supplies and
English instruc-
tion to more than
150 children in
April. Of these,
approximately 25
were street chil-
dren. We have
recently rented a
house in Port-Au-Prince that will tem-
porarily 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 develop-
ment is to become as self-sustainable as
possible. To accomplish this task we will
be using solar and wind energy, rainwa-
ter 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.
Go to www.haitihero.blogspot.com to visit
Kirby’s blog.
— Marin Jorgensen
Harvard Graduate School of Education 39
 alumni news and notes

1985
Julius Wayne Dudley

jill and ers on

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
Morton Gold, M.A.T., was
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 con-
tinues 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.
1967 1972 1978
John Miller, M.A.T., Jack Quinn, M.A.T., was Adrienne Grant, Ed.M., is
recently had two books pub- named to the Sheldon Arts celebrating her 14th year as
lished: Whole Child Education Foundation in St. Louis for a owner and producing artistic
and Spirituality, Religion and renewable, three-year term. director of Arundel Bran Play-
Peace Education. He is author He also serves on the Sheldon’s house in Kennebunkport, Maine.
of more than a dozen books in Friends Board.
curriculum theory and holistic
education, and his work has
been translated into eight lan-
guages. 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 Curricu-
lum, Teaching, and Learning
at the Ontario Institute for
Studies in Education at the
University of Toronto.

On Task: Shazia Amjad, Ed.M.’09

S
hazia Amjad used to have free time. But the reading, hik-
ing, and gardening that she once enjoyed in her leisure

courtesy of shazia amjad

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 com-
petition was very tough,” says Amjad. “I actually believed that I
would never make it!”
Now she finds herself working with a task force cochaired
by Shahnaz Wazir Ali, special assistant to the prime minister
on social sectors, and Sir Michael Barber, former head of the
United Kingdom Delivery Unit and current distinguished visiting
fellow at the Ed School. The main goal of the group is to sup-
port the new national education policy in Pakistan by helping
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 exis-
tence 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
huge difference on the ground,” she says. “I consider my present
work and assignment as a step forward in that direction.”
So far, the task force has succeeded in completing the first-
ever performance assessment of reform initiatives in the four
provinces and continues to work closely with local governments
to develop long-term strategy and action plans to improve
performance of the education sector. They have also developed
a school report card in the Khyber Puktunkhawa province that
makes school district performance available to policymakers for
the first time.
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 be-
ing 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.”
— 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
— overcome enrollment and finance issues. But after a

courtesy of norman smith

term as the longest-serving president of Wagner College
in New York, as well as six years as president of Rich-
mond, 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 Medi-
terranean, a resort area that had been underdeveloped.
“I was the university’s first employee, starting with a completely
blank sheet of paper,” he says.
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
vital throughout the year, something that had been difficult to do
outside of the summer holiday months. Smith is confident that
the decision to build a school is a good one.
“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
commuting students. All Alamein students will live full-time at the
university.” They will also have access to many of the resort ame-
nities, including housing, restaurants, and recreational areas.
All students will be required to take a liberal arts core curricu-
lum, designed in collaboration with California State University,
Northridge, to build a foundation of leadership and manage-
rial 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-
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
has plenty to do, and few people yet to help him do it. In addition
to recruiting faculty and staff, a typical week includes planning
the curriculum, working with architects on designing the 100-
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?
“I’m not sure I ever had a retirement mindset,” he says. “I was
just taking time away from being a president. … I am ready to step
back into a demanding and, hopefully, rewarding experience.”
— Marin Jorgensen

Richard Simon, Ed.M., has

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.
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 Rhodes-
Bingham, Ed.M., with her
husband, Glenn, started an
international service organiza-
tion, Alliance for Youth Service
(www.ays.org), for teenagers aged
16–19. The organization has 22
trips planned for next summer
in five different counties.
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 ed-
ucator 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.

42 Ed. • winter 2011

 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 chan-
cellor of Alamein University,
under construction on the Egyp-
tian 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
launched a new consulting busi-
ness, Quest Writing Solutions,
which offers an array of aca-
demic, corporate, and executive
communications services.
Ellen Spiegel, Ed.M., is
the founding director of the
BRIDGE Program, an alterna-
tive middle school in Lowell,
Mass., for students with behav-
ioral 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 inter-
national grant proposal project
with the Constitutional Rights
Foundation in Los Angeles
and the Movimiento Nacional
1989
David Lustick, Ed.M.,
published Certifiable: Teaching,
Learning, and National Board Certi-
fication 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 Ed-
ucation Award for Exceptional
Contributions to Scholarly and
Creative Activity.
HGSE Alumni Council, 2010–2011
Jiraorn Assarat, Ed.M.’04
Marilyn Annette Barber, Ed.M.’83
*Barbara Brown, Ed.D.’90
1992
Elizabeth Larkin,
Ed.M.’86, Ed.D., is a professor
of childhood education and
literacy studies at the University
of South Florida, Sarasota-
Manatee. 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.

Julius Wayne Dudley, Tara Brown, Ed.M.’01, Ed.D.’05

Ed.M., recently visited M.
Agnus Jones Elementary in
Atlanta. In addition to speak-
ing 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
por la Integridad in Guate-
mala, designing and delivering
civic education programs for
elementary school children. For
those interested, contact her at
elenadevos1@gmail.com.
1987
John Christopher, Ed.M.,
is serving as president of the So-
ciety for Theoretical and Philo-
sophical 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.
*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
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 direc-
tor 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
Deb Gaffin, Ed.M., recently
moved to London and joined
the children’s publishing
start-up Nosy Crow. As digital
product director she is launch-
ing 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 Lan-
guage Association of Northern
California.
1996
Janice Barrett, Ed.D., was
promoted to full professor at
Lasell College in Newton, Mass.
She now holds the title of pro-
fessor 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 half-
hour 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
aren’t exposed to arts in the classroom, how are they learning to
think creatively? If we aren’t teaching kids how to think creatively,
vince patton

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
Creative Thinking: a dialogue between administrators, policymakers, parents, and

Katrina Sarson, Ed.M.’03 teachers about the importance of such activities and the poten-
tial consequences of raising generations of children that aren’t

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,
and the Food Network. But what she really wanted to do was
merge this experience with her other interest: arts in education.
This decision was affirmed by her Ed School professors, who
enhanced her interest in education. One professor in particular
stands out to the Boston native. “When I was in kindergarten,
[Professor] Howard Gardner was a student-teacher for my class,”
she recalls. “At HGSE, he remembered me. He told me his
time as a student-teacher helped him realize that he was more
passionate about research and academics. … [The story of his
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
you have a child in school, you probably don’t realize there’s a
serious lack of the arts in schools these days. And if it’s happen-
ing in Oregon, it’s happening in other places. But if no one talks
about it, nothing’s going to change.”
Teaching Creativity: Is Art the Answer? can be seen on Oregon
Public Broadcasting or at www.opb.org/teachingcreativity.
— Katy Kroll

44 Ed. • winter 2011

 1 1

1
2 2

Alumni Events
5 1 The HGSE Alumni Council hosted a Chicago area alumni reception at the W Lakeshore
Hotel in Chicago. April 2010

The Recent Alumni Circle Committee of Boston/Cambridge hosted a family-friendly

2 “Pumpkin Fest” in Boston. The event featured pumpkin decorating, carving, apple
strudel, and pumpkin bisque soup. October 2010

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

Alumni gathering in Bangkok, Thailand. Among the attendees were host Jomphong
4 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
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 su-
perintendent for middle and
K–8 schools for Boston Public
Schools after several years as
principal at the Edwards Middle
School in Charlestown, Mass.
2000
Timothy Lannon, Ed.M.’96,
Ed.D., was named president of
Creighton University in Ne-
braska. He will begin in his new
position in July 2011.
2002
Hikaru Kozuma, Ed.M., was
named executive director of the
University of Pennsylvania’s
Office of Student Affairs, effec-
tive July 2010.
Carlos Santos, Ed.M.,
finished his Ph.D. in develop-
mental psychology at New York
University in 2010 and is now
a professor at Arizona State
University’s School of Social
46 Ed. • winter 2011
and Family Dynamics. His
research was recently featured
in Time magazine, the Toronto
Star, the Irish Examiner, and on
BBC News.
2005
Louie Rodriguez, Ed.M.’99,
Ed.M.’01, Ed.D., is assis-
tant professor in educational
leadership and curriculum at
California State University,
San Bernardino. In September,
he was honored at the fourth
annual 30 Under 30 Recogni-
tion 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.M., has been director of in-
struction 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.
2007
Camille (L apidario)
Aragon, Ed.M., joined the
Peace Corps and will be work-
ing in the eastern Caribbean as
a youth development volun-
teer. 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 Corpora-
tion in Indiana. In July 2010, he
received the Distinguished Hoo-
sier 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 Castillo-
Clark, Ed.M.
Sam Garson, Ed.M.,
received a 2010 Outstand-
ing 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,
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
Jonathan Epstein, Ed.M.,
was given the John B. Muir
Editor’s Award by the National
Association for College Admis-
sion Counseling for his article,
“Behind the SAT-Optional
Movement: Context and Con-
troversy” 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 devel-
opment office at the Ed School.
Gerald Lesser, 1926–2010

T
he huge number of comments posted online in contains the
response to the Ed School story about the death excitement and
of Professor Emeritus Gerald Lesser on Septem- joy that a child
ber 23, 2010, at the age of 84, says a lot about Lesser’s has experienced
appeal — that and the fact that his obituary was featured while not being

h
in sources ranging from The New York Times to IGN news in ‘educated.’”

ug
zh
eF

it
Rome to the Muppet wiki. It was helpful, of Su
si

“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 develop-
ment 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
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 promo-
tional 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 meaning-
ful television.
“His dedication to education was profound, but he de-
lighted in the playful and silly ideas of writers and produc-
ers of the series,” she says. “With diplomacy
and warmth, he constantly nudged the team
to aim high, respect our audience, and reach
our educational goals.” Read or contribute
to the online
comments.
— Lory Hough

In Memory
Harold Cummings, Ed.M.’42
Patricia Jencks Gordon, M.A.T.’42
Marjorie Gould Shuman, M.A.T.’42
Louise Keenan, Ed.M.’43
Jean Winchell, M.A.T.’43
J. Warren Perry, GSE’47
John Gianoulis, M.A.T.’49
Walter Deane, Ed.M.’50
Philip Geffin, M.A.T.’51
Ralph West, Ed.M.’51
Helen Neuhaus, M.A.T.’52
Virgil Pitstick, M.A.T.’52
Yolanda Lyon Miller, M.A.T.’54
Cornelia Rose Levin, Ed.M.’55
Donald Blyth, Ed.D.’57
Ann Muncaster, Ed.M.’58
Priscilla Hastings Dunn, Ed.M.’59
Elizabeth Ann Bordeaux, Ed.M.’60
Marcia Woodruff Dalton, M.A.T.’60
David Eldridge, M.A.T.’60
Carol Armstrong Hamilton, M.A.T.’60
Joseph John Petroski, Ed.D.’60
Donald Gibbs Palmer, GSE’61
Louise Goodridge, Ed.M.’63
Michael Brown, M.A.T.’65
John Wright Jr., Ed.M.’66
Duncan Circle, Ed.D.’68
Natalie Gratovich, Ed.M.’69
Robert Whitman, Ed.M.’69
Isabelle Cowens, Ed.M.’69, C.A.S.’70
Hedley Beare, Ed.D.’70
Edward McMillan Jr., Ed.D.’71
Jane Perrin, M.A.T.’71
Mary Holmes, Ed.M.’72
Mary Bowes Winslow, Ed.D.’74
Gerald Sullivan, Ed.M.’75
Betty Martin Viereck, M.A.T.’75
Carol Silva, Ed.M.’77
Caroline Robinson, Ed.D.’78
Noeline Purser, Ed.M.’80
Lawrence Zuckerman, Ed.M.’66, Ed.D.’86
Meredith Aldrich, C.A.S.’90
Robyn Moore, Ed.M.’94
Timothy Sloate, Ed.M.’99
 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 much-
needed 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
istockphoto.com
made a copy of the data yet, so I ran after it and started yell-
ing. 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.”
Watch a video
re-enactment.
— Lory Hough
investing

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

B
eth Rabbit, 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,” Rabbit says.
Thanks to the generosity of institutional and individual donors, Rabbit and each
of her 24 classmates in the first Ed.L.D. cohort is attending the Ed School tuition-
free 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 in-
terests 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 relation-
ship 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 im-
pressive [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 Rabbit, getting to know her fellowship donors Don Gant and his
children, Chris and Sarah R. Gant, Ed.M.’94, has been particularly meaningful be-
cause, with backgrounds in business and education, they understand her motiva-
tions in pursuing the Ed.L.D.
Tommie Henderson, Karl Wendt, Jim Rothenberg, Amy Loyd
“We share a multisector view of this problem, believing that problems in educa-
tion are as much management-related as they are programmatic,” says Rabbit.
After meeting Rabbit 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 sup-
porting three fellows — Tommie Henderson, Amy Loyd, and Karl Wendt — agrees,
describing the program as “all about partnership and collaboration.” He invested in
the Ed.L.D. students now because they will invest in others down the road.
“The impact of these students will be felt by generations of learners,” he says.
elena gormley

Sarah B. Gant, Don Gant, Beth Rabbit,

Dean Kathleen McCartney, Chris Gant
— Mark Robertson, Ed.M.’08

Harvard Graduate School of Education 49

 Harvard Graduate School of Education Nonprofit Organization
Office of Communications U.S. Postage PAID
44R Brattle Street Burlington, VT
Cambridge, MA 02138 Permit No. 70

tricia hurley
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.

classnotes@gse.harvard.edu
kathleen mccartney

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, poured 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.