SDUSD's Problems Are Harvard Students' Lab

This article originally appeared on KPBS.org.

Twenty–five Harvard doctoral students are in San Diego this week to do more than escape nasty winter weather. They're looking for solutions to some of the tough problems facing San Diego city schools.

They're here with Harvard professor Deborah Jewell-Sherman and are in her class that focuses on putting what they're learning in their doctorate program to work on the ground. In the program's four-year history, Jewell-Sherman's students have worked with public schools in Detroit and Boston, the Children's Defense Fund and others.

While Jewell-Sherman said she was skeptical when she first heard San Diego Unified trustees appointed then-elementary school principal Cindy Marten to be the district’s next superintendent, she now wants her students to see Marten’s approach to improving city schools. She believes it's a possible game changer in public education, where she said ideas for quick fixes to entrenched problems abound. ...

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