HGSE News: In the Footsteps of Ed Meade--The Edward J. Meade, Jr. Fellowship

Chasms often exist between the ivory tower, Capitol Hill, and the neighborhood elementary school; educational research may not reach education policymakers, and policy may not address the particular needs of school sites.

Susan M. Kardos, an Ed.D. candidate in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy (APSP) and the 2001 recipient of the Edward J. Meade, Jr. Fellowship, sees these divides as the result of competing professional interests. "In order to be a 'successful' or 'accomplished' academician, there is an emphasis on rigorous research, peer-review publishing, and university teaching," obserevs Kardos, "which do not necessarily serve the immediate needs of states, districts, and schools trying to improve public K-12 education."

Knowing One's Audience
Kardos, who spent the summer interviewing the nation's most influential educational policymakers as part the Meade Fellowship, returned from Washington, D.C. with some insight on breaking the divides between research, policy, and practice. It has always been difficult for researchers to effectively communicate their messages to different audiences, remarks Kardos: "Policymakers want one- or two-page policy memos with clear findings and simple recommendations; peer review journals want forty to sixty page scholarly articles with thorough analytic frameworks, evidence of thorough data collection and analysis, and new and complex findings; and teachers want a principal and colleagues who know how to make things better for them and for their students."

With a commitment to reach different audiences, Kardos and Edward Liu, who are co-investigators with Pforzheimer Professor Susan Moore Johnson on the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers, are rewriting some research findings on new New Jersey new teachers for a practitioner audience. The findings, originally written for a scholarly audience, will be reframed and sent to every teacher and principal involved in the single-state study as well as to the New Jersey State Department of Education. They have already shared some findings with national, state, and local union leaders.

In this way, Kardos is following in the footsteps of Edward J. Meade. "As I learned more about him," says Kardos, "I learned that he was really interested in teachers. I was truly proud to get a fellowship that bore his name, because of his commitments to schools and the teachers who teaching in them."

A Serendipitous Road to Washington
Although she had long planned to apply for the fellowship, Kardos' actual opportunity to apply came down to the toss of a coin—literally. "We [at the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers] had decided that it would be great for us to do the Meade Fellowship, and our biggest interest, since we do so much of our work collaboratively, was to have us go to Washington, D.C. as a group." Unfortunately for the project, the fellowship is designed for only one person. "We were hoping that at least one of us could go, so we decided it best if only one of us applied. We flipped a coin. And I won."

Kardos was selected by HGSE's Meade Faculty Selection Committee, and then approved by the Institute for Educational Leadership, which coordinates the fellowship. IEL then-vice president Betty Hale, Ed.M.'75, and her staff created a list of individuals at policy organizations in Washington, with whom Kardos met over the course of the summer.

For Kardos, her experience with the Meade Fellowship instilled an even greater resolve in being a part of the mission to uphold public education. "Doing the Meade Fellowship and meeting these smart and committed people was inspiring," says Kardos. "There was a sense of refusing to let the promise of public education die. The opportunities that public education can give to kids, and the necessity of having a strong public education system for our country and for our democracy—there is just a complete refusal to let that die."

For More Information
An executive summary of an article by Susan Kardos on her research about clandestine schooling and resistance in the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust is available on the Harvard Educational Review web site.

About the Fellowship
The Edward J. Meade, Jr. Fellowship was funded by a group of sponsors organized by Mike Usdan, the former president of the Institute for Educational Leadership, who had been influenced by Ed Meade. The fellowship is awarded annually to a HGSE student whose career interests include public policy as it relates to PK-12 education. Interested applicants should contact the Career Services Office for more information. The application process begins in early February. Application details—as well as links to Kardos's report and that of the 2000 fellowship recipient, Richard Lemons—can be found at www.gse.harvard.edu/careers/Meade_2002.htm; additionally, a profile on Richard Lemons is also available.

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