Reville Named Professor of Practice

Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean Kathleen McCartney today announced that Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville has been named professor of practice and will be joining the HGSE senior faculty at the beginning of the spring 2013 semester. Prior to his service as secretary, Reville had been a senior lecturer and director of the Education Policy and Management Program at HGSE. During his tenure as secretary, he maintained his senior lecturer appointment while teaching a class each year.

“Over the course of his stellar decades-long career in education, Paul Reville has worked tirelessly to improve student opportunity, achievement, and success,” said McCartney. “He is hailed nationally as a deeply-knowledgeable and politically-skilled coalition builder, committed to an inclusive, equity-focused education reform agenda. No one has played a more important role in framing Massachusetts’ education reform agenda and in maintaining support for its successful implementation over the last two decades than Paul Reville. I am thrilled to welcome him back to the HGSE faculty full-time as a professor of practice.”

Reville is a leading education reformer who served as Governor Deval Patrick’s top adviser on education for the past five years, and was chair of the State Board of Education for a year prior to his service as secretary. He was the first secretary named to the new post and is universally credited with the successful integration of the agencies reorganized under him and for fostering the Commonwealth’s world-class results in student achievement. Reville played a primary role in the drafting and passage of the Achievement Gap Act of 2010 – the most sweeping education legislation since the landmark Education Reform Act of 1993 - which included the nation’s first “smart cap” lift on charter schools and created the pathway for more than 44 Innovation Schools that are now up and running across the state. He also led the Commonwealth’s Race to the Top efforts in K–12 and early childhood education that secured $300 million in federal funds to advance the state’s school reform efforts.

Reville played a key role in the Patrick Administration’s efforts to establish the UMass School of Law and in the recent release of the Vision Project in higher education. Over the last year, Reville was central to the design and implementation of Patrick’s plan to create a more integrated, effective community college system that is responsive to both local and statewide employer needs.

“I am honored that the faculty and dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education are welcoming me back, in an important new role, to the nation’s preeminent school of education,” said Reville. “I have loved my public service in creating the Commonwealth’s new education secretariat, but I am thrilled at the prospect of rejoining such a distinguished faculty and embarking on an exciting new chapter in my career.”

Prior to serving as secretary of education, Reville held numerous leadership positions in the education sector. He was the founder and president of the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy, an independent policy organization dedicated to the improvement of PreK-12 public education. Additionally, Reville was the executive director of the Pew Forum on Standards-Based Reform, a Harvard-based, national education policy think tank that convened leading researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to set the national standards agenda.

Reville was founding executive director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, which provided key conceptual and political leadership for the Education Reform Act of 1993 in the early 1990’s. He also served on the Massachusetts State Board of Education, where he chaired the Massachusetts Commission on Time and Learning. From 1996 to 2003, Reville chaired the Massachusetts Education Reform Review Commission, which provided research and oversight for implementation of education reform. Further, Reville was founding executive director of the Alliance for Education, a multiservice educational improvement organization serving Worcester and central Massachusetts.

Reville began his educational career as a practitioner: first as a VISTA volunteer/youth worker, then as a teacher and principal in two urban, alternative high schools. He is a board member and adviser to a host of organizations, and a frequent writer and speaker on school reform and educational policy issues.