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Paul Reville is the Francis Keppel Professor of Practice of Educational Policy and Administration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). He is the founding director of HGSE's Education Redesign Lab. In 2013, he completed nearly five years of service as the Secretary of Education for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As Governor Patrick's top education adviser, Reville established a new Executive Office of Education and had oversight of higher education, K-12, and early education in the nation's leading student achievement state. He served in the Governor's Cabinet and played a leading education reform role on matters ranging from the Achievement Gap Act of 2010 and Common Core State Standards to the Commonwealth's highly successful Race to the Top proposal. Prior to joining the Patrick Administration, Reville chaired the Massachusetts State Board of Education, founded the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy, co-founded the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education (MBAE), chaired the Massachusetts Reform Review Commission, chaired the Massachusetts Commission on Time and Learning, and served as executive director of the Pew Forum on Standards-Based Reform, a national think tank which convened the U.S.'s leading researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to set the national standards agenda. Reville played a central role in MBAE's development of and advocacy for Massachusetts historic Education Reform Act of 1993. Reville has been a member of the HGSE faculty since 1997 and has served as director of the Education Policy and Management Program.Reville's career, which combines research, policy, and practice, began with service as a VISTA volunteer/youth worker. He served as a teacher and principal of two urban, alternative high schools. Some years later, he founded a local education foundation which was part of the Public Education Network. He is a board member and adviser to a host of organizations, including BELL, Match Education, Bellwether, City Year Boston, Harvard Medical School's MEDscience and others. He is a frequent writer and speaker on education reform and policy issues. He is also the educator commentator, Boston Public Radio, WGBH. He holds a B.A. from Colorado College, an M.A. from Stanford University and five honorary doctorate degrees.
Click here to see a full list of Paul Reville’s courses.
The central shortcoming of American public education has been its failure to become the great equalizer. The evidence is clear: the dream of educational equity will never be realized without comprehensively addressing the racial and socioeconomic disparities that begin at birth and grow exponentially throughout life. The Education Redesign Lab (EdRedesign) at HGSE is tackling this reality head on through the establishment of an Institute for Success Planning. The Institute will marry two strategies: i) cross-sector collaborative action and ii) the personalization of supports for each child. Through the Institute, we aspire to be the national leader and field catalyst in promoting and propagating the use of Success Planning and personalized supports. Schools have been asked to remedy the lack of a social contract in the US. We know that two-thirds of the variance in educational attainment in the US is explained by out-of-school factors; all the places where kids grow and learn matternot just schools. Strides have been made to fix this. The collaborative action, cradleto-career field has produced glimmers of hope in places like Harlem and in communities across the country. At the same time, we have not been able to resolve the ironclad reality that socioeconomic status and race remain two of the leading determinants of social and economic outcomes in the wealthiest nation on earth. In response to the structural inequalities that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, significant federal resources through the American Rescue Plan (ARP) make bold action possible. Meeting this moment requires that our nation transition from the 20th centurys one-size-fits-all factory model of education to a 21st -century personalized approach. The universality of the pandemic, its disparate impact, and a growing consensus that we need a new vision for child well-being has provided us with the greatest opportunity to reimagine intergenerational mobility in the US since the Great Depression. The ARP has opened opportunities to bring new models to schools and communities. It is more important than ever that communities seize this opportunity in the most effective and impactful way possible. Implementing Success Planning is the avenue to this transformative change. Success Planning is a holistic process that connects students with supports and opportunities related to academics, health, and enrichment activities via a Navigator, a caring adult who compiles a childs diagnostic profile and then leverages the resources (i.e. tutoring, sports programs, health services, music lessons) and monitors the childs progress. Navigators get to know children and families while connecting them to the supports and opportunities they want and need to be successful in their community.
We are at a pivotal moment in the history of our nation. Facing a simultaneous set of criseshealth, economic and racial justicewe must seek innovative approaches to build a new and better America. Even before 2020, too many children in the U.S. were living in poverty, failing in school, and not thriving when they reached adulthood. We must utilize all we have learned about what it will take to break the iron-law correlation between socio-economic status and educational attainment and invest in new systems of education and child developmentsystems that reduce fragmentation and build cradle-to-career support systems in communities across the U.S. The Education Redesign Lab is committed to close education and opportunity gaps for children across the U.S. This grant will enable the Education Redesign Lab to build upon our experience supporting 45 communities across the U.S. to create Childrens Cabinets, set child wellbeing goals, and build integrated child development and education systems. This grant will help EdRedesign chart the next phase of work to research and disseminate best practices in cross-sector collaborations and, also, to enable pioneering communities to personalize those supports and services at the student levelthrough what we call individualized student success planning.
The Education Redesign Lab intends to become an action-research hub for the emerging field of personalized supports and opportunities in order to advance effective practices and accelerate adoption of 1) systems of individualized supports and opportunities and 2) cross-sector collaborations that improve child well-being. Through this project, we intend to conduct research to identify and document best practices in communities implementing systems of individualized supports and opportunities and cross-sector collaborations that improve child well-being; collaborate with By All Means consortium and other communities as well as external partners to establish and learn from proof points; communicate compellingly with key audiences to disseminate and amplify what EdRedesign is learning and why these systems and collaborations are necessary; and advance policy at the local, state and federal level that incentivizes and facilitates the creation of personalized systems of support and opportunity for children.
The Education Redesign Lab has a multi-year track record of working with more than 45 communities to support the development of Childrens Cabinets to provide leadership for advancing childrens well-being. Our mission is to close opportunity gaps and promote the development of comprehensive systems of child development and education that make it possible for every child to come to school ready to learn and to enjoy a full, equal opportunity for success. This planning grant will help EdRedesign chart is next phase of work focused on state (and possibly federal) policy change that enables communities to significantly expand cradle-tocareer support systems through the strengthening of Childrens Cabinets and their associated backbone organizations. As a result of the proposed work, these collaborative action groups will be stronger and more able to effect the policy, program and budgetary changes to build a high functioning cradle-to-career pipeline serving all children. The products of this planning grant will include a strategic plan and a comprehensive proposal to the Carnegie Corporation of New York for supporting states and communities to address the fragmentation of services, supports and resources for children to improve child well-being. The plan will also include strategies for working with the federal government and state governments to address policy and budget changes that will enable local communities to finance and construct more effective child development and education systems
Community-based leaders from around the country gathered at HGSE to share new ideas and guidance around closing the opportunity gap