HGSE News: All

What the Presidents Read

nschulmeyer — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 18:10:20 +0000

What the Presidents Read nschulmeyer Tue, 08/04/2026 - 14:10 Student and Alumni Stories history books politics civics Lory Hough

August 10, 2026

Ed. Magazine

The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Explore All Articles

Teddy Roosevelt worshipped Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Barack Obama liked “adventurous series” like the Hardy Boys and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. William Howard Taft would sit around the fireplace with his family and read Aesop’s Fables.

"What the Presidents Read" was published by Rowman Littlefield Publishers

These are just a few of the tidbits in the new book, What the Presidents Read, by Elizabeth Goodenough, M.A.T.’71, a lecturer at the University of Michigan, and Marilynn Olson, a professor emerita at Texas State University. The idea for the book started back in 2017, when Goodenough heard a lecture Olson was giving at the Children’s Literature Association conference about Billy Whiskers, the story of a cheeky goat that was a favorite of John Kennedy and his brothers. Impressed by the talk, Goodenough proposed a collaboration, and the two began reading presidential biographies and combed through letters, speeches, and family libraries. The result is this collection of inside stories about the reading habits and favorite books of U.S. presidents, including original essays and commentary from historians, journalists, biographers, and some of the presidents themselves.

“As researchers of childhood studies,” they write, “we found that knowing what U.S. presidents read in youth offers fascinating insights into their personalities, era, and politics.” A childhood book, they add, “is much more than just a story — for the presidents, it may represent a turn in the course of history.”

It’s easy to imagine, for example, that the seed for Bill Clinton’s interest in world matters may have started when his Mammaw read passages to him as an infant from the World Book Encyclopedia. Or that Herbert Hoover’s life trajectory changed when a teacher, Miss Grey, introduced the high school dropout to the local library and books like Ivanhoe.

As Ted Widmer, author of a biography about Lincoln wrote in the introduction to What the Presidents Read, quoting Harry Truman, “readers of good books, particularly books of biography and history, are preparing themselves for leadership. Not all readers become leaders. But leaders must be readers.” He added, “as this book shows, that has largely been the case. If a few of our leaders have been less bookish than others, it is still true that all of them thought deeply about the world around then, as children, and books were a part of that education.”

Goodenough warns, however, about making an automatic link between childhood reading and future presidential leadership.

“As children's literature people, we know that influence comes in many forms, depending upon a reader’s personality, situation, age, interests — there is no one influence from a book for everyone,” she says.

Dwight Eisenhower, she points out, was interested in military history. Lydon B. Johnson in governmental workings. Harry Truman in biographies of leaders. “It feels as though perhaps their reading enlarged their knowledge and ability to carry out something they were born to do,” she says. “For [Abraham] Lincoln, Aesop and the Bible spoke to how people behaved and informed his rhetorical style. In his youth, with less than a year of schooling, he drew crowds of listeners. [Gerald] Ford’s reading of Horatio Alger gave him encouragement to believe that he, too, could rise to honorable and serviceable positions with guidance in how to do it. A kind of blueprint: The books [he read] often featured boys born into positions like his own.” Ronald Reagan's preferred childhood reading, as essayist Claudia Nelson notes in the book, often included heroes who lived by standards of morality and fair play, including the Count of Monte Cristo and Sir Lancelot.

What the Presidents Read doesn’t only cover the more voracious readers like Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. “It also goes deeply into the dark corners and interstices,” writes Widmer. “Our more obscure presidents are here, along with those whose presidencies were doomed by external events or their own shortcomings.” And although the word “presidents” appears in the title, the book also details the reading habits of some first ladies like Eleanor Roosevelt, Abigail Adams, and Hillary Clinton. First children are also highlighted, including one the White House’s most infamous young readers: Amy Carter, who would bring books like Charlie and the Giant Glass Elevator and The Story of the Gettysburg Address to state dinners. As her mother once wrote in a description of her husband Jimmy Carter’s inaugural ball, “Jimmy looked handsome in his tuxedo, Amy, adorable in her blue velveteen gown and cape, with The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler under her arm. She didn’t intend to be bored.”

What the Presidents Read New book by alum looks at childhood favorites of our commanders-in-chief

When Educators Lead, Their Professional Development Works Better

nschulmeyer — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 16:22:02 +0000

When Educators Lead, Their Professional Development Works Better nschulmeyer Tue, 08/04/2026 - 12:22 Student and Alumni Stories school districts district leadership professional education libraries teachers and teaching field engagement collaboration Lory Hough

(L-r): Mark Lonergan, Ed.M.'00; Paul Tritter, Ed.M.'12; and fellow Boston educators at a conference in 2025

Photos courtesy of Mark Lonergan

August 17, 2026

Ed. Magazine

The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Explore All Articles

When Paul Tritter, Ed.M.’12, took on the inaugural role of director of professional learning for the Boston Teacher’s Union, the goal was clear: in collaboration with Boston Public Schools (BPS), figure out how to improve professional learning for educators across the district.

He started, as often happens when someone is new, by holding focus sessions to hear firsthand from educators about their professional learning experiences. A monthly working group followed, allowing teachers and administrators to share ideas and give feedback on district systems and initiatives. One strong and consistent theme emerged: “Educators wanted to be able to meet and share practices with people from other schools who did the same work they did,” he says. The need was especially acute in a city with many smaller schools, where an educator might be the only person in their building teaching a certain grade level or subject.

From this need, the Telescope Network was created. A collaboration of the union and the district, Telescope is a professional development (PD) initiative where educators lead their own professional learning. Instead of top-down training, teachers share what they do best and learn directly with and from their peers.

For the past seven years, Mark Lonergan, Ed.M.’00, a long-time teacher who taught at Boston Arts Academy for 14 years, has co-led the project with a small team, including several Ed School alums: Tritter; Shakera Ford Walker, Ed.M.’02, an assistant superintendent for teacher leadership and development; and Oluwanifemi “Nifemi” Kolayemi, Ed.M.’15, a “networker” and point person for the city’s Wicked Math project.

An important part of Lonergan’s work involves surveying educators every spring about what they want to be learning from their professional development and then diving into the data to figure out which topics “bubble up” as most needed.

“And then we go out looking for the bright spots — who's doing it well,” he says. This past academic year, for example, K–12 librarians said they struggled with creating spaces that were welcoming and inclusive. Telescope, with the help of BPS central office staff, identified who was doing this well — and then they visited their libraries.

“There is an assumption that if educators like a certain professional learning experience it must not have challenged them in any way. We challenge that culture and those assumptions by starting from the premise that educators want to do better for their students."

Paul Tritter, Ed.M.’12

“We used video to capture a tour of their spaces and interview them,” he says. “We then brought all of the K–12 librarians together to do a PD where we toured their spaces, in person or virtually.” More interviews and a debrief followed and each librarian picked one change idea — one thing that they were going to bring back to their own space to try out. The group continued to meet, allowing for check-ins, and then tweaked their change idea based on feedback.

“It’s really a different kind of PD, in part because the topic comes from what people want to be learning, and then also because it’s not just built on one expert telling you what you should do, but a real colleague who’s struggling in the same space as you are and showing you what they’re doing,” Lonergan says. “It’s also giving folks space to re-contextualize those challenges in their spaces and then offering follow-up support.”

Last fall, Telescope joined Wicked Math, an initiative that grew out of Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s push to expand access to higher-level math for BPS students. Since then, Telescope has hosted 11 professional development sessions related to Wicked Math, and participants responded positively: Nearly 97% said they would recommend a Telescope session to a colleague.

Kolayemi, Ed.M.’15, is Telescope’s point person for the initiative. A former BPS teacher for eight years with a decade of experience in instructional design and teacher coaching, she says what excites her the most about Telescope’s participation in Wicked Math is the model of using teacher-to-teacher learning to improve students’ experiences.

Secondary librarians touring a colleague’s space as part of a peer observation

“Every math teacher I’ve met through this work genuinely wants to make math meaningful, empowering, and relevant for all their students,” she says. “As a teacher, I’ve participated in professional learning that didn’t always feel actionable within my own classroom context. Telescope’s Wicked Math learning sites are different because the learning begins by observing colleagues who teach the same student population, in the same district, with similar resource challenges. There’s an incredible sense of empowerment that comes from realizing, ‘This classroom looks like mine, and these students are like mine. I love what I’m seeing, and I can’t wait to try it on Monday.’” There’s also a benefit for the host teacher, she says, when they receive thoughtful feedback and affirmation from peers on their work.

For Tritter, this circles back to an answer he gave in an interview in 2012, when he was named an Intellectual Contribution Award winner at the Ed School. When asked to name something he learned getting his master’s degree that he’d take throughout his career, he said, “I learned that the only thing that needs to be brought to scale is the idea that the people who work and learn in schools can learn to solve their own problems.”

That mindset, he says now, is exactly what led to the Telescope Network being created — and what drives his work and the work of the other Ed School alums involved.

“Most systems operate from the premise that educators don't want to change or improve. This results in a traditional top-down culture around professional learning where the implicit goal is to force teachers to change their practice against their will,” he says. “There is an assumption that if educators like a certain professional learning experience it must not have challenged them in any way. We challenge that culture and those assumptions by starting from the premise that educators want to do better for their students. We design powerful learning with rigor and accountability that educators appreciate because it is deeply relevant and actually helps them help their students.”

When Educators Lead, Their Professional Development Works Better By centering teacher expertise and collaboration, the HGSE alums leading Boston’s Telescope Network are proving that peer-led PD can be relevant, rigorous, and effective

A Common Language for Improvement

nschulmeyer — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:47:42 +0000

A Common Language for Improvement nschulmeyer Thu, 07/30/2026 - 13:47 Data Wise data evidence professional education Professional Education at HGSE Megan Maffucci

Data Wise Workshop at HGSE, 2025

July 31, 2026

News

The latest research, perspectives, and highlights from the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Explore All Articles

When Gustavo Luna, Ed.M.’22, Ed.L.D.’25, first heard about the Data Wise approach, he was intrigued, if a bit cautious. The term “data” conjured images of massive spreadsheets, regression analyses, and, of course, test scores — helpful for researchers but not something educators could use in their everyday practice. But after taking a Data Wise course at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) and working with special education professionals at a school in New York City, he saw how much untapped, useful information was hiding in plain sight.

One teacher he supported, who was working with a young student with behavioral disabilities, kept a log of how many seconds the student was able to hold a pencil each day. She was collecting data to track his progress, Luna realized; she just didn’t call it data. “Teaching is a practice. We never master it. Every school, every student is unique,” he says. “Knowing how to recognize, use, and, importantly, share data is what allows us to improve.”

Today, Luna is one of more than 200 certified coaches who are qualified to teach the Data Wise framework. He mentors other educators to use evidence from a wide variety of sources — from simple classroom logs to observational data — to better understand what is happening with learning and teaching in their classrooms so they feel empowered to make meaningful changes.

Understanding Data

Data Wise first took shape more than 20 years ago, as schools were just beginning to wade through an influx of assessment data required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Professor Richard Murnane convened a working group at the time of educators from Boston Public Schools and researchers from HGSE to discuss what it would take to make use of that data in service of improving instruction. Over the course of two years, the group realized that what schools really needed was step-by-step guidance on how to use all this new information.

Looking back, Senior Lecturer Kathy Boudett, then an HGSE postdoctoral student and current executive director of Data Wise, recalls, “Nothing I had done professionally before then felt so important. I knew we needed to figure this out.”

Not long after, the now-iconic Data Wise “swoosh” was born, outlining the eight steps of the Data Wise Improvement Process, and the core habits that support this work. It may look a bit complicated, but educators like Andrea Kayne, Ed.M.’90, will tell you it works.

The Data Wise Framework

Source: Boudett, K.P., & Bocala, C. (2025). "Data Wise: Educators Collaborating So Each Student Thrives." Harvard Education Press (p. 7).

“Suddenly, data was central to how administrators, teachers, and school counselors were being evaluated, but almost no one had the frameworks to contextualize that data, challenge it, collect their own, or act on it without fear,” says Kayne, who was program director of educational leadership at DePaul University at the time. “Data Wise was the answer I had been looking for — it created real professional learning communities: collaborative rather than competitive, empowering rather than punitive.”

Two decades later, the Data Wise Project has built an international network of certified coaches who have supported schools and systems from Oregon to Maryland and Illinois to Florida, as well as in countries such as Australia, Chile, and Brazil. More than 5,000 educators have attended the Data Wise Leadership Institute on Harvard’s campus or on-site in school districts.

Led by Boudett, the team has released a host of new resources on the Data Wise website and is expanding professional learning opportunities to meet the evolving needs of schools and systems — with an eye to reaching even more educators in the coming years.

From Process to Purpose

As educators become savvier about data, the driving question behind the work has shifted from “How do we help educators make productive use of data?” to “How can we use a wide range of data to realize more equitable outcomes for students?”

And it’s not just about the technical use of data. “It's about getting teams of educators on the same page about what they see, what they want to improve and how, and then committing to doing it,” explains Lecturer Candice Bocala, Ed.D.'14, Data Wise research director.

That kind of collaboration is a rare antidote in a time of deep educator burnout and turnover. “Teaching can be really lonely,” Boudett says. “What we hear is that having this process allows educators to talk about work with colleagues in a way that's fun and exciting. They ask, ‘What can we do to really meet the needs of each of our learners? What are you trying?’ The framework deliberately connects educators to one another and to why they went into teaching in the first place.”

The result, she says, is that educators develop a common language for talking about improvement and decision-making. “Data Wise is meant to be done in teams,” Boudett says. “When you have multiple people looking at the same data, people will see different things, and the conversations about what to do about the evidence will be richer.”

As the network of coaches grows, they have helped the Data Wise framework itself evolve. One visible example is the “equity halo,” a series of reflective questions that now accompany each step of the swoosh, including “Whose stories do we tell/not tell? Are we measuring what matters?”

“Many of my former students, now working as principals and superintendents, speak about how central the Data Wise framework remains to their practice years later. That kind of staying power is not common in professional development. It tells you something real about the methodology."

Andrea Kayne, Ed.M.’90

Coaches saw teams working through the steps, but they often struggled to examine longstanding inequities in schools and, as a result, missed the needs of the most marginalized students. One coach, Darnisa Amante-Jackson, Ed.L.D.’16, provided a critical insight: You can’t have separate lessons about the importance of equity; you need to integrate it at every step. Other coaches echoed that it was time to position equity at the heart of the process.

Those conversations directly influenced the third edition of Data Wise: Educators Collaborating So Each Learner Thrives, which was published last year in time for Data Wise’s 20th anniversary.

A New Chapter

From its earliest days, Data Wise has been guided by this type of practitioner feedback. Its latest focus is creating local hubs of expertise — teams inside districts who can carry the work forward. In one local district, for example, Data Wise recently certified five district-level leaders who are now using data wisely in their own practice, supporting school teams in using the framework in their settings, and bringing school teams together to learn from one another about how improvement happens.

The project is also investing in new ways to reach educators. With the help of a recent philanthropic gift from Kayne, Data Wise is expanding its online offerings, including a free, asynchronous introductory module called Exploring Data Wise, launching later this year.

The new module — which replaces the massive open online course (MOOC) based on an earlier edition of the book — will ensure educators anywhere in the world can access an overview of the updated framework at any time. It gives teams a cost-free way to gauge how deeply their school or system is engaged in collaborative inquiry and to explore how Data Wise could be a resource if they choose to pursue more intensive professional learning.

“I invested in Data Wise because it works, because it is rigorous, and because it treats educators as professionals capable of deep inquiry,” says Kayne, who is now creating an edtech platform for international and independent schools. “Many of my former students, now working as principals and superintendents, speak about how central the Data Wise framework remains to their practice years later. That kind of staying power is not common in professional development. It tells you something real about the methodology. I see a gift to Data Wise as a gift with a very long half-life.”

One constant over 20 years, Boudett points out, has been educators' desire to improve outcomes. Coaches like Luna can attest that they are eager to change schools for the better and hungry for ways to do it well. As it evolves, Data Wise will continue to equip educators at all levels and around the world with a common language for turning data into action — and lasting impact.

“Deciding to use Data Wise doesn’t make the work easy. Working collaboratively to look at evidence of learning is hard, and looking honestly at your own practice is even harder,” Boudett notes. “But educators tell us that the ‘swoosh’ offers a roadmap, so when they hit bumps, they know where to check in and how to keep moving.”

Luna, pictured above, recently ran Data Wise workshops at schools in Arizona and New York City. He credits Data Wise for helping his own team at Kern Tutoring, where he is founder and executive director, embrace a culture of continuous feedback to better serve school districts in California. Photos courtesy of Gustavo Luna.

A Common Language for Improvement Now in its third decade, the Data Wise Project is innovating to help schools use evidence to improve learning, address inequities, and strengthen collaboration

High-quality Preschool Curriculum Exists. It’s Just Not Used Enough

nschulmeyer — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 16:41:15 +0000

High-quality Preschool Curriculum Exists. It’s Just Not Used Enough nschulmeyer Thu, 07/23/2026 - 12:41 early education elementary education preschool curriculum Grace Tatter

July 23, 2026

Usable Knowledge

Connecting education research to practice — with timely insights for educators, families, and communities

Explore All Articles

Public U.S. early education programs are, by and large, safe and emotionally supportive, and enrollment in state-funded programs is at an all-time high. But, says Associate Professor Dana Charles McCoy, participation is not sufficient to ensure students are actually learning: “We also have to make sure that the experiences that kids have in classrooms are high in quality.”

Of course, high-quality curricula — that have a defined scope and sequence, engage children through play, and are backed by real evidence — exist. Unfortunately, they aren’t widely used. So, the question becomes, how can they be scaled to more schools?

McCoy is collaborating with researchers from the University of Michigan’s Education Policy Initiative and Northwestern University to investigate that question via a series of case studies about states and communities across the country.

So far, they’ve released two case studies from Maine and Mississippi. Both states are adapting curricula based on the Focus on Early Learning (Focus) curriculum, which was designed by the Boston Public Schools Department of Early Childhood, and rigorously studied to show lasting benefits in elementary school and beyond. However, the contexts are entirely different. For one, Mississippi mandated programs use the curriculum, while Maine left the choice up to individual schools, and even teachers.

Still, here are some key lessons learned for policymakers — and anyone who cares about early education — from the approaches that Maine and Mississippi have taken to build buy-in and implement high-quality early learning curricula in their states on a larger scale.

Curriculum policy matters. Maine started its search for curricula with a proven track record in large part because the state legislature passed a rule in 2015 that required all state-funded pre-K programs adopt evidence-based curricula. And in Mississippi, where early learning curricula also must be evidence-based under state policy, the Mississippi Department of Education made implementing their version of the Focus curriculum, Mississippi Beginnings, a condition of receiving certain funding. As one Mississippi education official told researchers, “If you can get it in policy, you can make it happen.”
It takes time to adapt curricula to local contexts. Wide-spread implementation doesn’t mean that it’s going to look exactly the same in every state, town, or school. For example, students in Boston might have a lesson about counting stoplights on their way home from school. But, said Christina Weiland, Ed.M.’08, Ed.D.’11, a professor at the University of Michigan who is leading the research, that’s not going to work in a more rural setting. “Being joyful and giving kids agency is important,” she says, “as well as having kids at that age really see themselves and their world in the curriculum.” And it takes time. Both Maine and Mississippi spent years making the Focus curriculum their own. Michelle Bellino, Ed.D.’14, also part of the research team adds, “The cases also suggest that adaptation continues after state-level curriculum design: teachers make day-to-day decisions about pacing, examples and materials, and how to connect lessons to children’s lived experiences.”
Put teachers front-and-center. Teachers are on the frontlines of ensuring that new curricula are adopted in practice, not just in theory. But they need support to make that happen, like coaching and protected planning time that allows them to focus on how to meet the needs of their specific classrooms. In both states, many teachers were skeptical of the new curriculum and concerned that its set scope and sequence of lessons would mean losing control of their classroom. But, Weiland says, having a plan made it easier to “individualize for the kids in front of them.” Once a few teachers were excited about the change, other teachers were more likely to get on board. This is particularly of value in Maine, where individual teachers can decide whether to opt-in to the curriculum.
The work doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Scaling up anything requires big, systemic changes. Mccoy, Weiland, and fellow researchers are currently helping Mississippi expand supports for teachers so that they have the resources to implement the curriculum to its full potential. And a high-quality early education curriculum is most effective when it's in conversation with curricula farther down the education pipeline, so, for example, students aren’t repeating the same material in later grades. Curriculum might be just one component of a quality early education but changing it at scale requires many parts to click into place.

Additional Resources

High-quality Preschool Curriculum Exists. It’s Just Not Used Enough Lessons learned from two states leading the way in changing this reality 

Connecting Research with Classroom Realities

nschulmeyer — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 16:01:46 +0000

Connecting Research with Classroom Realities nschulmeyer Thu, 07/16/2026 - 12:01 Usable Knowledge Live literacy Usable Knowledge

July 17, 2026

Usable Knowledge

Connecting education research to practice — with timely insights for educators, families, and communities

Explore All Articles

In the final episode of the Literacy Insights series, Assistant Professor Phil Capin was joined by Margaret Goldberg, co-founder of The Right to Read Project and a reading coach in California. Together, they reflected on what this year in literacy has revealed, what it takes to translate evidence into practice, and what educators and schools might carry forward into the next school year.

You can catch up on past episodes by watching our Literacy Insights YouTube playlist here.

Key Takeaways

Literacy improvement is not a sequence of one-time initiatives. It is ongoing, layered work.
Literacy improvement is not about moving from one instructional priority to the next as separate projects. Instead, schools need to sustain progress across multiple areas at once, including foundational skills, language, writing, comprehension, and implementation. Strong improvement work requires attention not only to what is being introduced, but also to what must be maintained over time.

Language comprehension needs explicit attention, just like foundational skills.
It is important to teach language in intentional ways, including vocabulary, syntax, oral discussion, listening, and students’ ability to connect ideas. Language development is sometimes treated as something that happens naturally through exposure, but students often need structured opportunities to practice academic language, talk about text, listen carefully to peers, and build on one another’s thinking.

Writing can strengthen students’ language and reading development.
Writing is an important part of literacy instruction and as a way to support students’ language and reading development. Approaches such as Self-Regulated Strategy Development, or SRSD, point to the value of systematic writing instruction. When students write, they consolidate their thinking, deepen their understanding of genre and structure, and make their developing vocabulary and language knowledge visible.

Translating research into practice requires partnership with educators.
There is a need for research-to-practice partnerships that are grounded in the real conditions of classrooms and schools. Evidence-based practices are most useful when they account for the realities teachers navigate, including time, classroom management, competing initiatives, student variability, and the need for support beyond initial training.

Implementation takes time, shared responsibility, and realistic goals.
Instructional leadership, transparent goals, and shared responsibility across teachers, teams, coaches, and leaders are vital. Sustainable change depends not only on choosing strong practices, but also on creating the conditions for those practices to take hold.

Reliable sources matter in a crowded literacy landscape.
As more resources claim to be “evidence-based,” educators should look carefully at who is producing the information, whether it is connected to research, and whether it is designed to help practitioners make informed decisions. Reliable resources can help educators navigate competing claims and stay focused on practices that are both research-informed and usable in real classrooms.

Related Resources

Right to Read Project
Margaret Goldberg’s work with educators, researchers, and advocates to advance literacy, equity, and research-informed practice.

Reading Universe
A free resource with classroom videos, lesson plans, student activities, assessments, and an organized taxonomy of essential reading and writing skills.

What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guides
Practice guides from the Institute of Education Sciences that translate research into recommendations for educators across areas such as foundational skills, reading comprehension, writing, English learners, and adolescent literacy.

Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD)
A research-based approach to writing instruction that helps students learn strategies for planning, drafting, revising, and monitoring their own writing.

Teachers Teach Teachers, Goyen Foundation
A teacher-focused resource that shares examples of reading instruction and creates opportunities for educators to learn from one another’s practice.

Connecting Research with Classroom Realities The seventh episode of the Literacy Insights series explores how to implement evidence-based literacy practices in school

To Redesign Schools, You Need Community

nschulmeyer — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 15:10:17 +0000

To Redesign Schools, You Need Community nschulmeyer Thu, 07/16/2026 - 11:10 education reform school leadership principals deeper learning Jared Scott Tesler

July 20, 2026

News

The latest research, perspectives, and highlights from the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Explore All Articles

Professor Jal Mehta’s work has taken him into many schools where principals, superintendents, and other leaders are looking for ways to remake industrial-era, compliance-driven systems into modern, human-centered learning organizations for both students and adults. Harvard’s Deeper Learning Alliance is helping them make that a reality.

This new initiative is part of Harvard’s Deeper Learning Institute, which was originally co-founded in 2018 by Mehta as a way to support districts engaged in equitable, deeper learning. The institute’s work includes research, convenings, a podcast, and a deeper learning education camp. The Deeper Learning Alliance is the newest initiative and focuses more tightly on supporting school leaders who want to experiment and transform education together. The first cohort will begin meeting in September and will include leaders from public, charter, independent, and international schools.

“We do a lot of deeper learning work in the field with schools, districts, and sometimes even states and provinces. As we talked with school leaders, they reported that they wanted a community of cutting-edge practitioners who were redesigning schools in ways that created purpose, joy, connection, and sustainability for both students and adults,” Mehta explains. “They didn’t want another program, or another set of materials, or even another process. They wanted the chance to work with others to think through how they might redesign their work. This community is our response to that need.”

Deniann Grant, director of global network strategy at the Deeper Learning Institute and an Ed.L.D. candidate, echoes this sentiment. “The Deeper Learning Alliance developed in response to what we were hearing from the field,” Grant says. “Time and again, our work has shown us the importance of community and collective action. We do our best work together, and we know there are common problems and collective strengths we can use to solve them. Why not bring brilliant, dedicated people together?”

Each school or district enrolls with up to two participants who attend nine monthly live virtual sessions throughout the course of the school year. Every session includes small-group peer consultancy, and members gain early access to Harvard’s deeper learning frameworks, a curated resource library, and practical tools they can apply directly in their own context. Participants are guided through the deeper learning ideation process to help them problem-solve and collaborate with others on a real challenge facing their school or district.

“Transforming a school is too important — and too hard — to do alone.”

Alisa Berger, executive director of the Deeper Learning Institute

Additionally, members receive early-bird registration to the 2027 Deeper Learning Conference in San Diego, California; a certificate of completion documenting their continuing education hours; and exclusive material from Mehta’s forthcoming books, A Chance to Solve Their Own Problems: Inside the New Methods Seeking to Remake Public Schools and Leading with Symmetry: How to Transform Systems, Empower Educators, and Reimagine Schools.

“Transforming a school is too important — and too hard — to do alone,” says Alisa Berger, executive director of the Deeper Learning Institute, who has more than 25 years of experience as an educator, principal, and school leadership coach. “When I served as a principal, I intentionally sought out other school leaders who shared a common vision of what school can be and a deep belief in what students are capable of. Over time, we realized that we needed outside support to help us navigate everything on our plates and expert guidance to surface what we didn’t yet know. The Deeper Learning Alliance is what I wish I’d had as a principal: a monthly cohort of like-minded leaders supported by experts and grounded in real problems of practice.”

Real challenges shared by applicants include moving deeper learning from pockets of early adoption into schoolwide practice, shifting Portrait of a Graduate work from a vision document to a lived reality, establishing more holistic measures of student growth and success, building more intentional onboarding and professional development for teachers, and designing new ways to strengthen communication and trust with families.

In classrooms of deeper learning, characterized by purpose-driven, relational, and engaging learning that occurs at the intersection of identity, mastery, and creativity, Mehta says students gain much more than content knowledge. “They also develop durable, lifelong competencies that shape how they learn and engage with the world,” he says.

Rather than simply memorizing and regurgitating course material, deeper learning empowers students to feel more in control of their education, Mehta says, by cultivating a sense of sustained curiosity and a love of learning, identifying and pursuing educational goals that relate to their values and interests, building confidence in their ideas in order to create positive change in their communities, and strengthening their ability to question, analyze, and construct meaning from a wide range of texts.

“Too often, you hear that the test for school reform is whether you’re in it for the kids or the adults. We think this is a false dichotomy and terribly misguided,” Mehta says. “Similarly, too many schools are enthralled with innovation when they should be thinking about transformation. The Deeper Learning Alliance is a place for school leaders who want to design for real human beings, to work with students to find structures that unleash passion and purpose.”

To Redesign Schools, You Need Community New Deeper Learning Alliance helps educators problem-solve, not with another set of materials, but with like-minded educators

EdRedesign Lab Expands Research-Backed Success Planning Network to Six New Communities

nschulmeyer — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 13:42:40 +0000

EdRedesign Lab Expands Research-Backed Success Planning Network to Six New Communities nschulmeyer Thu, 07/16/2026 - 09:42 EdRedesign success success plans field engagement community partnerships News editor

July 16, 2026

News

The latest research, perspectives, and highlights from the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Explore All Articles

The EdRedesign Lab’s Institute for Success Planning at Harvard Graduate School of Education announced six communities joining the fifth cohort of its Success Planning Community of Practice. Selected from a competitive national pool, the cohort will work across school systems, health and human services agencies, community- and faith-based organizations, and local governments to strengthen relationship-based personalized supports for children and families.

"Success Planning provides every child with a dedicated caring adult Navigator who serves as a connector, mentor, champion, and advocate. Navigators ensure children are known, seen, heard, and supported, partner with families, and connect them to supports and enrichments so they can thrive and realize their dreams. The communities joining this cohort are doing the hard work of bringing systems together across sectors to make that happen," said Tauheedah Jackson, deputy director of the EdRedesign Lab and the director of the Institute for Success Planning. “We've seen this strategy take root in urban, suburban, and rural places and serve as a unifying strategy that brings communities together to realize a community-wide shared vision of success for every child. By eliminating barriers and creating opportunities, Success Planning ensures all children can realize their full potential and have agency over their hopes and dreams."

Annually communities are invited to apply. This fifth cohort is being launched as research continues to affirm the model's impact. A landmark Harvard-Cornell study found that relationship-based personalization improves test scores, increases high school graduation rates, boosts college enrollment, and contributes to greater lifetime earnings. Previous Success Planning cohorts have seen similar positive gains in reducing chronic absenteeism and increasing academic achievement, ensuring a more seamless pipeline of opportunities and supports. The Success Planning strategy embraces the essential principles and practices of successful relationship-based personalization to support communities, as local communities design, implement, and scale initiatives. This allows cross-sector partnerships to identify gaps in supports and opportunities available for children and families and to access the data needed to make decisions, determine priorities, allocate resources, and drive policy and systems change.

The six new communities, selected for their commitment to centering youth voice and family engagement and addressing barriers to education, health, and economic stability are:

San Diego, California (Chula Vista Elementary School District)
Tallahassee, Florida (South City Foundation)
Tampa, Florida (Sulphur Springs Neighborhood of Promise)
St. Paul, Minnesota (St. Paul Promise)
Akron, Ohio (Youth Success Summit)
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (RestoreOKC)

The Success Planning Community of Practice is a two-year opportunity that includes a capacity building year focused on principles and practices, design elements, and data and evaluation considerations, followed by a second year dedicated to implementation, scale, and sustainability. The new cohort will join six communities returning for a second year: Flint, Michigan; Rochester, New York; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Union County, South Carolina; Wayne County, New York; and Wilmington, Delaware.

Launched in 2022, EdRedesign’s Institute for Success Planning supports local leaders and cross-sector community teams as they create transformational change in the lives of children and youth through relationship-based personalized Success Planning.

With generous support from the Barr Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Oak Foundation, and The Wallace Foundation, the Institute for Success Planning is accelerating community-driven efforts to advance more personalized systems of support. Through systemic approaches to individualized opportunities and supports, the Institute works to ensure all children and youth have clear and accessible pathways to succeed in school and life.

Cross-sector leaders join a community of practice linked to higher graduation rates, increased college enrollment, and greater lifetime earnings

Explore Dialogue Across Differences

nschulmeyer — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:13:12 +0000

Explore Dialogue Across Differences nschulmeyer Tue, 07/07/2026 - 13:13 dialogue Ryan Nagelhout

Students engage in meaningful conversation at a 3D Dinner hosted by Dean Nonie Lesaux and Senior Lecturer Richard Weissbourd

July 7, 2026

News

The latest research, perspectives, and highlights from the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Explore All Articles

The 2025–26 academic year brought a new initiative to the Harvard Graduate School of Education: Dialogue Across Differences (DxD), which aims to equip the HGSE community with the skills, mindsets, and opportunities to engage constructively across differences in perspective, identity, and lived experience.

Utilizing the 4Es (Equip, Engage, Embed, Expand) strategy, DxD is designed to build an inclusive culture along with the skills to hold disagreement in ways that are intellectually rigorous. The initiative holds trainings, supports student-led projects, and leads community programming, all with an emphasis on building dialogue skills and creating space for respectful and productive conversation.

“[DxD events] are effectively practice spaces wherein people can learn how to engage across differences, and they have been received very well with the students,” says Pratyush Rawal, Dialogue Across Differences lead.

Dialogue Circles, launched during the spring semester, saw small groups of students gather in a safe setting to discuss topics such as school choice, parental rights vs. educator judgment, and other sometimes-controversial topics in education.

Further, longstanding HGSE events were enhanced with added opportunities for conversation. DxD Debriefs, for example, take place after Askwith Education Forum discussions These gatherings of about a dozen HGSE students allow conversation to continue beyond Askwith Hall in a more intimate setting that encourages nuanced, candid, and personal reflections on the Askwith dialogue. The Dialogue Across Differences team creates conversation guides that are shared with participants beforehand, helping establish expectations ahead of DxD events and preparing students with useful language that encourages constructive dialogue.

Rawal says the feedback for Dialogue Circles and DxD Debriefs has been overwhelmingly positive.

“Everyone has been pleasantly surprised about the kind of events and the spaces that were generated. Most of the feedback has been ‘We need more spaces’ and ‘Create more such events,’” says Rawal. “That’s the data that gives me a lot of joy.”

Another effort to encourage open inquiry and respectful dialogue across HGSE included adopting schoolwide the Chatham House Rule, which states that you are free to use information from a discussion, but you are not allowed to reveal who provided the information.

As the DXD Initiative expands programming, Rawal says the team hopes those positive experiences spread the word among the HGSE community.

“How do we create champions out of the people who are already participants in these dialogues? How do we encourage them to encourage other people to join these discussions?” says Rawal. “It’s something that I’m constantly sitting with.”

“We co-created a supportive and open environment that demonstrated how these conversations are both possible and necessary for expanding care and curiosity in our world.”

Ph.D. student Caitlin Dermody on her 3D Dinner experience

HGSE’s annual Double Take, which this semester celebrated its 10th year, invited community members to share stories about the moments and experiences that have shaped how they see the world and our work in education. And HGSE’s longstanding 3D Dinners continued under the DxD umbrella, inviting Ed School faculty and students to share meals together while engaging in important conversations.

“The 3D Dinners, which stands for Dinners, Dilemmas, and Debates, often framed with a case study, modelled disagreement, or other discussion point, help bring topics difficult to discuss in the classroom to a more informal but still intentional dialogue,” says Rawal.

“I appreciated how participants were encouraged to consider questions on both a personal and systemic level,” says Ph.D. student Caitlin Dermody, who participated in a 3D Dinner this semester about the challenges and opportunities of holding difficult conversations. “At the dinners, we co-created a supportive and open environment that demonstrated how these conversations are both possible and necessary for expanding care and curiosity in our world.”

These are important skills for students to develop, says Senior Lecturer Richard Weissbourd.

"We live in a polarized country where people are too quick to demonize others and to retreat into their own corners,” he says. “We need to be able to do the sometimes-tough work of really listening to and caring for each other when it's hard.”

Weissbourd, who directs the Making Caring Common Project at HGSE, hosted a 3D dinner this semester along with Dean Nonie Lesaux. He noted the initiative reflects the school’s mission.

“We need to have these conversations while holding up basic human rights and principles of justice. A school of education is a great place to model how to do that,” he says. “The wonderful students in our 3D Dinners demonstrated beautifully what this looks like in practice."

Rawal notes that as the initiative continues, DxD plans to collect best practices and other resources so other groups can replicate the work — at HGSE and beyond.

“To expand this, it’s all about doing more research, creating a repository of best practices, and then sharing it with the world,” he says. “We’re the Harvard Graduate School of Education. We should not just be doing it for our students but also telling the world the best ways that this can be done.”

Explore Dialogue Across Differences  The HGSE initiative creates safe spaces for students to practice nuanced, respectful dialogue on complex education issues

Gen Z Isn’t Gen Me

nschulmeyer — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 15:38:01 +0000

Gen Z Isn’t Gen Me nschulmeyer Thu, 07/02/2026 - 11:38 Making Caring Common wellness mental health evidence future of work Research Lory Hough

July 2, 2026

Usable Knowledge

Connecting education research to practice — with timely insights for educators, families, and communities

Explore All Articles

They’ve been stereotyped as self-focused and screen obsessed, but according to a new survey from Making Caring Common (MCC), Gen Zers in the United States overwhelmingly want to do good for others in their personal and professional lives.

“There may be kernels of truth in some of these stereotypes, but they miss much of what is promising and exciting about this generation, and sometimes they are wildly unfair,” noted the survey authors. “Our data suggest that these stereotypes obscure, in particular, that today’s teens and young adults often care a great deal about others and improving the world.”

The survey, done by Gallup in partnership with MCC and the Walton Family Foundation, asked more than 2,400 Gen Zers — typically defined as those born between 1997 and 2012 — about their sense of purpose in life, priorities for and barriers to pursuing future “helping” careers, and how parents influence their priorities.

Nearly 80% of those polled said they were interested in jobs focused on helping or positively impacting other people — a desire that cuts across gender, race, ethnicity, and income level. However, there are barriers to taking on these jobs, including the belief, real or perceived, that helping jobs are low pay (49%) and stressful or emotionally draining (46%).

Below are additional key takeaways from the survey and strategies for helping Gen Z navigate barriers and pursue the kinds of jobs they are craving. As MCC’s faculty director Richard Weissbourd says, “If we want more Gen Zers to pursue helping careers, these jobs can’t undermine their financial stability or swamp them with stress.”

Notable Takeaways

Economists suggest that the rise of AI may shift the workforce from a “knowledge” economy to a “care” economy that requires many more workers with strong interpersonal skills who are invested in caring for others.
Gen Z women are more likely to be employed in these kinds of jobs compared with Gen Z men (63% vs. 48%), but gap is closer when it comes to wanting a helping job in the future: 82% women, 76% men.
Gen Zers who want a helping job or want to make a positive difference by race/ethnicity: Black (85%), Asian (82%), Latino (78%), white (77%), multiracial (71%). By household income: struggling on present income (81%), living well on present income (79%).
Feeling needed matters. About 34% of Gen Zers feel they are not needed by others and do not make a positive difference in others’ lives (31%). Adult men are especially likely to feel they are not needed (42%) or that they do not make a difference in others’ lives (35%).
Gen Zers who feel like they are needed by others and make a positive difference in the lives of others are about three to four times as likely to feel like their lives have a sense of meaning or purpose. This sense of meaning or purpose is strongly correlated with better mental health ratings.
Barriers get in the way of finding purpose or meaning: 52% cite wasting too much time on technology and 47% say mental health issues like anxiety or depression interfere.

Parents Matter

Parents are an important influence on their children’s desire to help others. A majority of Gen Zers (53%) say their parents talk to them about the importance of a career that positively impacts others; this percentage is especially high among Black Gen Zers and younger Gen Zers from lower-income families.
Focusing on personally fulfilling work (51%), maintaining work-life balance (49%), and finding a job that pays the bills without being too stressful (49%) are the three priorities Gen Zers say their parents focus on most when giving career advice.
Nearly 65% of employed Gen Z adults whose parents encourage them to help others in their career say they are currently in such a job; among those whose parents do not prioritize helping others, 44% are currently in helping jobs.

Strategies for Helping Gen Zers Pursue Helping Jobs

Increase pay and decrease financial pressure
City and county governments could provide wage supplements or tax credits. Consider loan forgiveness, scholarship programs, rent subsidies, and housing and relocation bonuses for those willing to work in under-resourced communities.

Reduce the emotional toll of helping jobs
Find ways to lower caseloads and class sizes, provide sane work hours, and offer resources and skills to frontline workers so they can be effective in their jobs. Offer mental health support, particularly for those in demanding roles. Create workplace cultures where staff feel connected and part of a common project.

Change the narrative about meaningful work
Create campaigns that change the narratives about these professions; highlight that they are worth the stress and are deeply meaningful. Elevate the perceived “status” of these jobs, including challenging the idea that these “soft” jobs don’t require high-level skills. Focus campaign on the specific, concrete impact of these jobs, avoiding murky calls for “making a difference.”

Show, don’t just tell
Many high school students have little understanding of what makes certain careers meaningful. Well-structured, credit-bearing volunteering, service learning, and internships in high school and college can make these jobs more enticing. So can guest speakers and courses that ask students to reflect on what it means to be of service.

Create new pathways and harness Gen Z’s aspirations
New pathways to these jobs that are rigorous but shorter and less expensive need to be created. That could include alternative forms of certification, online programs that don’t require young people to pay full tuition or to relocate, and paid residencies and internships that count toward licensure. Recognize caring young people who show ethical clarity and can respond — and resist — the rising influence of AI.

Gen Z Isn’t Gen Me New survey by Making Caring Common reveals that this generation really wants to do good and help others

Science of Reading Comprehension

nschulmeyer — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 20:01:31 +0000

Science of Reading Comprehension nschulmeyer Tue, 06/30/2026 - 16:01 literacy vocabulary science of reading reading Usable Knowledge

June 30, 2026

Usable Knowledge

Connecting education research to practice — with timely insights for educators, families, and communities

Explore All Articles

Reading comprehension is often described as a skill, but as Professor James Kim said in last week’s Literacy Insights conversation, students never just “read.” They always read something. What children understand depends not only on whether they can read the words on the page, but also on what they know about the topic, the vocabulary they can access, and how well they can connect ideas across sentences, texts, and experiences.

Kim’s discussion with Assistant Professor Phil Capin highlighted the importance of background knowledge, vocabulary, language comprehension, motivation, and aligned systems of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

You can catch up on past episodes by watching our Literacy Insights YouTube playlist here.

Key Takeaways

Reading comprehension depends on what students are reading and what they already know.
Comprehension is not a single, isolated skill. Students are always reading something, and their ability to understand a text depends on the topic, vocabulary, background knowledge, and ideas they bring to it. A student may read the words accurately but still struggle to make meaning if the content is unfamiliar.

Word reading and language comprehension are essential for making meaning.
While students need to be able to decode words accurately and fluently, they also need vocabulary, background knowledge, verbal reasoning, syntax, and an understanding of how ideas connect across sentences and texts.

Vocabulary grows through connections, not isolated word lists.
Educators should think about vocabulary as networks of meaning rather than individual words to memorize. Students deepen their understanding when they learn how words relate to other words, concepts, and contexts. As Kim put it, students need to know “words by the company they keep.”

Students comprehend more deeply when they have a meaningful purpose for reading.
Developing student motivation can help students engage more fully with texts and ideas. It is important students have “missions” for learning, whether through debate, discussion, problem-solving, or questions that invite them to take a position and use evidence to support their thinking.

Strong comprehension instruction requires aligned systems, not just individual strategies.
Improving reading comprehension at scale requires alignment between curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional learning. Schools need to consider not only what they intend to teach, but what is actually taught, and what is ultimately assessed. High-quality curriculum, paired with coaching and shared goals, can help create more consistent and meaningful support for students.

Related Resources

Science of Reading Comprehension  The sixth episode in the Literary Insights series focused on what matters most in developing reading comprehension 

Why Education Research Matters: Children Across Borders

nschulmeyer — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 18:55:46 +0000

Why Education Research Matters: Children Across Borders nschulmeyer Fri, 06/26/2026 - 14:55 immigration Why Education Research Matters Carolina Ruggero

June 29, 2026

News

The latest research, perspectives, and highlights from the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Explore All Articles

An estimated 40 million children are living outside of the country where they were born. These children bring their own unique stories to the teachers and classrooms that welcome them. Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Gabrielle Oliveira leads research across the Americas to understand how immigrant children learn, adapt, and thrive.

Why Education Research Matters: Children Across Borders Associate Professor Gabrielle Oliveira on helping children — especially those who immigrate — adapt and feel supported in new environments

How Can We Talk to Kids About Patriotism?

nschulmeyer — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 19:04:16 +0000

How Can We Talk to Kids About Patriotism? nschulmeyer Thu, 06/25/2026 - 15:04 civics dialogue politics Democratic Knowledge Project democratic education Lory Hough

June 26, 2026

Usable Knowledge

Connecting education research to practice — with timely insights for educators, families, and communities

Explore All Articles

With the Fourth of July and America’s 250th birthday just around the corner, how should we talk to children about patriotism at a time when many adults feel conflicted about it? Recently, Professor Danielle Allen, author of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, which was reissued this year, and founding director of the Ed School’s Democratic Knowledge Project, shared her thoughts on kids asking questions, what she calls reflective patriotism, and how she’s been talking about the country’s 250th for the past five years.

To start, what does it mean to you to be patriotic?
Let me talk a little bit about the Educating for American Democracy Initiative, which I'm co-author on the Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy. We put at the center of that roadmap a concept called reflective patriotism. It was funded by both the first Trump and the first Biden administrations. So, it was a genuine cross-partisan effort. The idea that it's possible to blend love of country with clear-eyed reflection on both its strengths and its shortcomings and with a view to identifying opportunities for improvement. There is always a tension between love of country and then the kinds of emotions that come with recognizing your country's wrongs. And so, educators have the hard job of helping students pull those tensions into an experience of what we call reflective patriotism, where you can both be honest and appreciative of all the good the country has achieved and also be equally honest about, as I said, the shortcomings.

What are some ways that adults, especially those not feeling particularly patriotic, can have these honest talks with kids?
There are many different ways educators approach doing that. I would open up space for conversation. What are you excited about? What do you love about your country and what are some ways where we think our country maybe could be better? Just having those two kinds of basic questions — what do you love about your country and how do you think your country maybe could do better — is a start.

Does age matter? Are the questions different for first graders versus high schoolers?
Our roadmap goes from K through 12 and we think it could be used in pre-K. There are questions at every grade level and the whole thing is structured as questions. That's our basic mode of operating: Excellent civic education is inquiry-driven civic education. What you're really doing is inviting kids into the same kind of hard, deliberative experience that citizenship consists of. The point is that educating for American democracy is really bringing kids into that kind of practice of asking questions and deliberating with others who may have different answers, too.

But, for younger kids, we don't start with country. We say, what do you love about your neighborhood, your town, your city? The younger they are, the closer you start. When you look at the Educating curriculum, the trajectory from K to 12 is like concentric circles to help kids bring their attention to ever wider sphere of application. Honestly, I think a lot of young people haven't ever been given the opportunity to ask the question, "What do you love about your state, about your country?" I think, especially for kids who haven't had that opportunity, even for kids who aren't young, starting local is better because love of country starts from love of your own immediate community.

"It's learned art to be a democratic citizen, and it requires elements of head, heart, and hand — all three of those things."

Danielle Allen

Why is it important to have these conversations?
We have had such a negative discourse at the national level that reminding people to pull back and consider what are you getting is valuable. I mean, democracy is not a practice that people exactly come by naturally; you have to learn it. Just think about kids on a playground. It's not as if they start out as democratic citizens willing to deliberate together without using their fists and so forth. It's learned art to be a democratic citizen, and it requires elements of head, heart, and hand — all three of those things.

Explain those three things.
The head: You have to understand how institutions work. You have to understand the constitution, the rule of law, your state constitution, and how your municipal government is organized. The patriotism conversation is the heart part of the conversation. You have a connection to your community, a connection to your country, a desire to get through hard times together, not split up. And then the hand is just the actual doing of it. Citizenship isn't something you know. It's a thing you do. You go vote, you serve on a jury, you talk to your neighbors, and you identify a shared problem in your community and take that issue to your city council, for example.

What should parents and educators avoid saying to kids about being patriotic?
You should avoid saying that it was all to be condemned and you should equally avoid saying the founding of America was all nothing but a perfect human triumph. It's also important to look away from the politicians and look to the people. And that's what it means to consider, what do I love about my neighborhood, about my community, about my city? It reminds you that it's not really about politicians. At the end of the day, it's about us. And we are pretty awesome people, actually, and we have done great things. Our institutions of self-government have enabled that, and that’s worth understanding. … There's this very famous saying by a German-American statesman journalist and Civil War general: “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.” And that's sort of the attitude we're trying to cultivate with the reflective patriotism concept.

How are you feeling going into the 250th?
Well, it's funny. I wrote my book on the Declaration of Independence 12 years ago and I’ve been writing so many pieces over the past few years. I was joking to somebody that I've been doing 250th stuff for five years at this point already. So everybody else is just getting going, but I'm done. I don't mean that in a negative way. I mean, I'm excited. I'm going to be at Independence Hall in Philadelphia as a speaker for the Museum of the American Revolution and I'm looking forward to that. But I did the 250th already. I'm done.

Questions to ask young people about civic participation from Roadmap for Educating for American Democracy:

Driving questions (broad):
•    How have I helped my class or family? (K–2 grades)
•    How have people made our community better? (K–2)
•    How has civic participation changed throughout American history? How has it stayed the same? (6–8)
•    What matters to me and why? How can I make what matters to me be about more than myself? (6–8)
•    How have changes in the media affected American civic experience? (9–12)
•    What is “civil society”? (9–12)

Guiding questions (targeted):
•    If I disagree with a decision, how do I help change it? (K–2)
•    Who has the power to make changes in my community? (K–2)
•    What is the virtue or value of civil disagreement? (6–8)
•    How can I investigate my issue and find high-quality information? What are the root causes of the problem I am investigating? (6–8)
•    How can people in the United States be civic friends across divergent views of principles and values? (9–12)
•    How can we be reflective patriots, seeking reform while still loving America, its complex forms of politics and civic life, and its still-unrealized ideals? (9–12)

Learn more:

Educating For American Democracy: This national project was created back in 2021 to reinvigorate civics education in the United States by offering toolkits and curated resources for educators to use. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education, the project is led by a diverse group of scholars and educators, including Danielle Allen.
Roadmap for Educating for American Democracy: At the heart of the project is a roadmap, co-authored by Allen. The roadmap introduced a term called “reflective patriotism,” which Allen discusses in the Q+A.
Danielle Allen’s book, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, includes a deep, line-by-line reading of the document, as well as Allen’s initial personal experience teaching it to a group of low-income adult students at night at the University of Chicago — students who were in the middle of trying to change their lives. Her motivation in writing the book, she said in an interview, “was to recapture the conversations we had with each other as we opened this text up together.” The book is being reissued this year to mark the nation’s 250th.
60-Second Civics: A podcast put out by the Center for Civic Education and used by educators as a quick way to “warm up” students before starting a civics or social studies class.

How Can We Talk to Kids About Patriotism? A conversation with Declaration of Independence expert Danielle Allen

New Report Shows that Gen Zers Want to Help Others, Which May Be Key to Their Mental Health

nschulmeyer — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 15:36:53 +0000

New Report Shows that Gen Zers Want to Help Others, Which May Be Key to Their Mental Health nschulmeyer Wed, 06/24/2026 - 11:36 Research Making Caring Common wellness mental health future of work News editor

June 24, 2026

News

The latest research, perspectives, and highlights from the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Explore All Articles

Harvard’s Making Caring Common Project, in collaboration with Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation, today released the report, Gen Z Wants to Do Good: How Helping Others Supports Meaning and Wellbeing. The study explores what Gen Zers prioritize in work, where they find meaning and purpose, and factors influencing their mental health.

“Gen Z adults (ages 18–29 years old) report alarmingly high rates of anxiety and depression and 51% of these adults report lacking meaning or purpose, or both,” says Senior Lecturer Richard Weissbourd, faculty director of Making Caring Common, a program of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “Yet high percentages of Gen Zers want to do good in the world, and Gen Zers who feel like they are needed by others and make a positive difference in others’ lives — through their work or otherwise — are about three to four times more likely to experience meaning or purpose, which are strongly correlated with better mental health.”

In the study, 79% of respondents report wanting a job in the future that is “mainly focused” on helping others or making a positive difference in others’ lives. This desire to help others may not only be key to mental health but is “vital for our country’s moral and civic life,” Weissbourd says, and may be critical to earning a living: Economists suggest that the rapid rise of AI may shift the workforce from a “knowledge” economy to a “care” economy that requires many more workers who are invested in caring for others and have strong interpersonal skills.

Yet there are significant barriers to Gen Z pursuing helping jobs, the survey finds. While Gen Z aspires to do good in their careers, other factors appear to be more important, including financial security and work-life balance. “There’s good reason for Gen Z to prioritize financial security and work-life balance,” says Weissbourd. “If we want more Gen Zers to pursue helping careers, these jobs can’t undermine their financial stability or swamp them with stress.”

"Young people overwhelmingly want work that helps others, but only about half of those who want such jobs are in them," said Stephanie Marken, senior partner at Gallup. "Many assume these careers won't pay enough or will be too emotionally draining, and those perceptions are holding them back before they ever step into the fi eld. Helping young people see that meaningful work can also be sustainable is a real opportunity for employers and educators."

“We should think hard about who Gen Z are and what they value,” Weissbourd concludes. “We should consider how we can develop their interpersonal and ethical capacities, and how their aspirations might be fulfilled in jobs that create a better world.”

The free report is available today at both Gallup.com and MakingCaringCommon.org.

About Making Caring Common

Making Caring Common, a program of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, supports educators, parents, and caregivers in cultivating in children and young adults the capacities to care for others, to act with decency and integrity, and to pursue justice and the common good. Combining research, theory, the wisdom of practitioners, and strategic communications, Making Caring Common provides evidence-based resources and activities to schools and parents that develop in children empathy, self-awareness, a commitment to justice, and other key moral and emotional capacities.

About Gallup

Gallup delivers analytics and advice to help leaders and organizations solve their most pressing problems. Combining more than 90 years of experience with its global reach, Gallup knows more about the attitudes and behaviors of the world’s constituents than any other organization.

About the Walton Family Foundation

The Walton Family Foundation is, at its core, a family-led foundation. Three generations of the descendants of our founders, Sam and Helen Walton, and their spouses work together to lead the foundation and create access to opportunity for people and communities. We work in three areas: improving education, protecting rivers and oceans and the communities they support, and investing in our home region of Northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas-Mississippi Delta.

New Report Shows that Gen Zers Want to Help Others, Which May Be Key to Their Mental Health Survey data from Making Caring Common suggests teens and young adults desire jobs that make a positive difference in others’ lives, but barriers stand in the way

10 Books That Help Tell the Story of Education in America

nschulmeyer — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 16:55:03 +0000

10 Books That Help Tell the Story of Education in America nschulmeyer Tue, 06/23/2026 - 12:55 history history of American education books civics Gutman Library staff

June 25, 2026

Usable Knowledge

Connecting education research to practice — with timely insights for educators, families, and communities

Explore All Articles

The New England Primer, or, An easy and pleasant guide to the art of reading: adorned with cuts: to which is added the Catechism (1836)

Location: Gutman Special Collections, digitized
Reason: Published in Boston by the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, The New England Primer is one of the earliest examples of reading books published in the United States. Primers were often printed by religious organizations and churches with a goal of “uniting alphabet and creed.” During the early 19th century, primers served to teach citizens and students the alphabet, reading, and writing, but also to share uniform religious doctrine.

The Freedman’s Spelling Book (1866)

Location: Gutman Special Collections, digitized
Reason: The most important historical text in Gutman’s collection, this rare textbook has been included in many exhibitions, including the soon-to-be Obama Presidential Center Museum celebration. The cover of The Freedman's Spelling-Book, supplied by the American Tract Society in Boston, depicts a newly emancipated African American student writing the word “freedom” on a blackboard. The society produced a series of educational books for use in the South with the following stated purpose: “This is designed to be the first of a series of books for the use of the Freedmen in their schools, families, &c. While it teaches to read and write, the series will aim to communicate also religious and moral truth, and such instruction in civil and social duties as is needed by them in the new circumstances in which they are placed.”

Helen Keller: Souvenir of the First Summer Meeting of the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf (1891)

Location: Gutman Special Collections, digitized
Reason: This publication details how 11-year-old Helen Keller, who was blind and deaf, learned to speak and write. Helen Keller would go on to graduate cum laude from Radcliffe College, now Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, in 1904. The short booklet was published by the Volta Bureau, which was founded just a few years earlier by Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C., to serve as a library for deaf people and those researching deafness.

How We Think, John Dewey (1910)

Location: Gutman General Collections
Reason: Likely the most cited and influential book/treatise in the domain of education, How We Think introduced the term “critical thinking” as the name of an educational goal. John Dewey describes his book as written for two purposes. The first was to help people to appreciate the kinship of children’s natural curiosity, fertile imagination, and love of experimental inquiry to the scientific attitude. The second was to help people to consider how recognizing this kinship in educational practice “would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste.”

My City (1965)

Location: Gutman General Collections
Reason: My City, published 1965, is one title in the Bank Street Readers series, considered one of the first multiethnic urban basal readers that revolutionized early childhood literacy. The series was a collaboration between reading specialists at Bank Street College of Education in New York City and various children’s writers to ensure that books used to teach reading in urban school systems reflected city living and featured racial diversity. Books in the series include short stories, poetry, fables, and plays.

A Day with Debbie (1965)

Location: digitized
Reason: A Day with Debbie is one title in a series created by the Writing Committee of the Detroit Public Schools as part of their Great Cities Schools Improvement Program. A district effort, the series broke new ground for reading books by featuring city landscapes and diverse families instead of the traditional suburban, white family-focused readers of the era. The series was designed to address the “vital need for reading materials and instructional methods devised for children who live in multi-cultural, urban areas.”

Learning to Read: The Great Debate, Jeanne Chall (1965)

Location: Gutman General Collections
Reason: This landmark book analyzed the long-standing controversy between phonics-based and whole-language reading instruction methods. Professor Jeanne Chall included research from classroom visits and an analysis of studies, and concluded that explicit, systematic phonics (teaching letter-sound relationships) is crucial for initial decoding, while whole-language methods alone often fail struggling readers, leading to future difficulties. The book also introduced Chall's highly influential stages of reading development, which map a child's progression from decoding to becoming a sophisticated reader.

Children and Television: Lessons from Sesame Street, Gerald Lesser (1974)

Location: Gutman General Collections
Reason: In 1967, Professor Gerald Lesser was asked to help develop and lead the research department of the newly formed Children's Television Workshop (later known as the Sesame Workshop), the organization responsible for producing Sesame Street and other educational television programs. Lesser, an educator and psychologist, was also one of the first scholars to study the effect of television on young children. Children and Television chronicled how Sesame Street developed and included cartoons drawn by children's author Maurice Sendak.

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks (1994)

Location: Gutman General Collections (physical copy missing, digital version available)
Reason: This book is so influential in this contemporary era in which we strive to teach cultural responsiveness that Gutman’s copy was stolen because of desired ownership, need for use, or perhaps fear of its content, thus censorship. In this seminal book, bell hooks revolutionized critical pedagogy. She argued that education should be a liberatory act — one that actively challenges intersecting systems of oppression (racism, sexism, and classism) rather than simply reinforcing the status quo. Her work emphasizes engaged pedagogy, mutual vulnerability, and holistic student empowerment.

Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, Jarvis Givens (2021)

Location: Gutman General Collections and digitized
Reason: As Professor Jarvis Givens makes clear in Fugitive Pedagogy, Carter G. Woodson had a profound influence on Black education, and the legacy of his work is evident in the pages of the Colored Teachers Associations journals. Woodson was the second Black person to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard and a life member of the American Teachers Association. One of Woodson's most significant contributions, as Given notes, was his development of Negro History Week, which later became Black History Month.

10 Books That Help Tell the Story of Education in America A curated look at books from the Gutman Library collection at the Ed School, chosen and explained by the library staff

Black Teacher Archive Launches Revamped Website

nschulmeyer — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 18:09:39 +0000

Black Teacher Archive Launches Revamped Website nschulmeyer Thu, 06/18/2026 - 14:09 Black Teacher Archive teachers and teaching history of American education Ryan Nagelhout

June 19, 2026

News

The latest research, perspectives, and highlights from the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Explore All Articles

The Black Teacher Archive (BTA) announced the launch of a new website featuring a number of new ways to share and highlight its growing collection in the classroom and beyond.

The Juneteenth launch of BTA 2.0 marks a new chapter in the archive’s efforts to preserve the intellectual and political work of Black teachers in the 19th and 20th centuries by better curating and showcasing the collection’s vast resources for visitors to explore. Including new exhibits and curated features, a more robust search function, and a personalized profile option for users to save and collect research for future use, the archive’s creators hope the launch better puts the collection in the hands of a new era of scholars and learners.

“The Black Teacher Archive 2.0 is more user friendly for teachers, students, and researchers,” says Professor Jarvis Givens, co-founding director of the Black Teacher Archive. “It invites deeper engagement by all members of the public who are curious to learn more about the lives and legacy of African American educators during the 20th century Black freedom struggle.”

First announced in 2020 on the strength of a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Black Teacher Archive was unveiled publicly in 2023 as a collaboration between the BTA team and the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s (HGSE) Gutman Library. Two additional grants allowed the archive to expand its reach in 2024, including the site redesign and new scholarship and preservation efforts by archivists and scholars around the country.

The new site was created in partnership with Harvard’s Digital Arts + Humanities team (DARTH). Since launching formally in 2023, Givens said the BTA team took note of how people were using the digital archive in research and their classrooms and decided a new website could be more “responsive” for users while making it easier to use the vast collection the archive contains. Materials from the collection have been used in college and university courses, and the BTA hopes the expanded website could extend its use to K12 classrooms and beyond.

The personalized profile feature on the new site is a major addition, as users can now create a profile and save, organize, and share resources they collect as they explore the digitized resources. For example, users can search the more than 60,000 pages of materials from the records of Colored Teacher Associations within the BTA collection for information about “Negro History Week” or “literacy.” They can then save pages of research in personal folders, write notes on and about these files, and organize the search results for their own study. Users can even create links to share with classmates, students, or other researchers that Givens likened to a “personalized mixtape of archival sources.”

“It’s really exciting. My own experience searching through the materials has been elevated because of these changes,” said Givens. “I find myself getting lost in the materials while using the new portal because it allows you to ask different kinds of questions and to search the materials in a more systematic way. Comparing trends across and within states, keyword searching, organizing results, seeing highlighted text results, and downloading pages with detailed cover sheets that include information about the historical objects are small details that make a big difference on the learning experience for students and for analyzing the historical material.”

“I hope that scholars, educators, and students experience the BTA as a source of both knowledge and inspiration. These materials are both rich and robust. You experience the resilience and passion of a people with great aspirations in the face of terrible adversity."

Professor Imani Perry

The new website includes an updated Black education timeline, which was a popular feature on the site’s previous iteration, and a new feature, “Faces of the Archive.” Created by BTA researcher and incoming HGSE Ph.D. student Erica Buddington, it highlights stories of both widely known and lesser-known historical figures who appear in the archive. Also included in the revamped website are digital exhibits curated by past graduate students of the BTA’s Summer Research Institute.

“I hope that scholars, educators, and students experience the BTA as a source of both knowledge and inspiration. These materials are both rich and robust. You experience the resilience and passion of a people with great aspirations in the face of terrible adversity,” says Harvard Professor Imani Perry, co-founding faculty director of the archive. “I think they offer the possibility of new ways of understanding 20th century African American life precisely because school is such a common ground for communities, and I believe many people will be surprised at how central schools were to the fabric of Black communities.”

Perry noted a common thread throughout the project: many of the most famous figures of Black history have important educational threads to their own stories, which the archive helps bring to life in new detail.

“I also hope that people realize how many of the historic figures they admire were deeply embedded within these school communities, as students, educators or simply as engaged citizens,” says Perry. “Because then it becomes clear that the greatest among us emerge from ecosystems that have nurtured their development and imaginations.”

Givens credits BTA senior project manager Micha Broadnax, whose technical work behind the scenes on the archive helped the project “really come to life.” Also “central to the BTA’s origin story” is Theresa Perry, Ed.D.’82, who helped Givens and Imani Perry explore the idea that became the archive..

He also noted more than 90 institutions and historical repositories — including a number of state college archival collections — now have archived material searchable in the BTA's collection.

“We are grateful that so many people recognized the importance of collaborating to help elevate such a critical legacy in our nation’s history and in the story of African American education,” says Givens.

Givens said the BTA is working on a book, tentatively titled The Black Teacher Archive: An Anthology, which highlights “gems” from the collection along with new scholarship about Black teachers and tells the BTA’s creation story. The Black Teacher Archive also announced a virtual open house for September 10, which will share more of the archive and model new ways of effectively using its new features and exhibits for teaching and research.

Black Teacher Archive Launches Revamped Website The BTA 2.0 website features new exhibits, curated features, and resources for teachers and researchers

Schools, Colleges, and Parents Can Help Students Mend Fractures That Divide the Country

nschulmeyer — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 14:42:22 +0000

Schools, Colleges, and Parents Can Help Students Mend Fractures That Divide the Country nschulmeyer Wed, 06/17/2026 - 10:42 Making Caring Common civics News editor

June 17, 2026

News

The latest research, perspectives, and highlights from the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Explore All Articles

Harvard’s Making Caring Common project, in collaboration with the Center for Innovation in College Admission at the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), released Turning the Tide in 2026: Preparing Students for Lives of Caring and Purpose, a report outlining the critical role of college admissions leaders, high schools, and parents in preparing teens to be ethical community members and citizens. Drawing on conversations with dozens of college admissions deans, the report also makes the case that colleges, parents, and high schools shouldn’t expect teens to have a single purpose or passion but should instead help teens clarify what they ﬁnd meaningful and how their values are connected to their college choices.

“We are in a moral free fall in this country,” says Richard Weissbourd, faculty director of Making Caring Common and senior lecturer at HGSE. “Americans struggle to engage constructively across differences, often retreating into division and demonization. There’s too much hostility in our public life and unchecked self-interest is too common. And our research shows ‘34% of teens and 51% of young people ages 19-25 report lacking meaning or purpose or both.’ That’s a huge problem, but one we believe college admissions leaders, schools, and parents can do a lot to address.”

The report, Making Caring Common’s fourth in the Turning the Tide series, describes the urgent need to help young people develop six moral and civic capacities: caring across differences, humility, curiosity, valuing the truth, upholding principles of human rights, and a sense of collective responsibility.

The report also provides college admissions leaders with action steps they can incorporate into their admissions process in order to better assess and weigh these capacities when considering prospective students.

“A student’s academic journey should do more than just prepare them for careers,” said Angel B. Pérez, NACAC CEO. “It should also prepare them to be engaged community members, critical thinkers, and compassionate leaders. That’s why we are excited to collaborate with Making Caring Common on this important report.”

Making Caring Common released its first Turning the Tide report in 2016, with hundreds of college deans and admissions leaders endorsing the report, affirming the need to value students’ genuine love of learning alongside qualities like caring, honesty, and fairness. This new report builds on that work, also expanding the role schools and parents play.

“We’ve seen some encouraging progress over the past ten years,” says Trisha Ross Anderson, Making Caring Common’s senior director of Higher Education and College Admission Initiatives. “But there’s so much more to do — both for college admissions leaders, high schools, and parents of college-bound students — and the work is more urgent than ever.”

Says Weissbourd, “Together with NACAC’s Center for Innovation in College Admission, we’re renewing the call. We’re asking college admissions leaders, schools, and parents to help cultivate students’ capacity to contribute to their communities and the common good and to find meaningful purposes and goals. We're also suggesting ways to reduce toxic achievement pressure.”

The free report is available today at MakingCaringCommon.org.

The National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), founded in 1937, is an organization of more than 28,000 professionals from around the world dedicated to serving students as they make choices about pursuing postsecondary education.

Schools, Colleges, and Parents Can Help Students Mend Fractures That Divide the Country  A new report from Making Caring Common makes the case that college admissions leaders, high schools, and parents need to help teens prepare to be ethical community members and citizens — and find meaning

Practical Insights for Families on Supporting Language and Literacy

nschulmeyer — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 18:20:33 +0000

Practical Insights for Families on Supporting Language and Literacy nschulmeyer Tue, 06/16/2026 - 14:20 language development literacy Ryan Nagelhout

June 16, 2026

Usable Knowledge

Connecting education research to practice — with timely insights for educators, families, and communities

Explore All Articles

The fifth episode of Usable Knowledge Live: Literacy Insights brought literacy experts together to discuss why oral language matters so much for later literacy development in children.

Assistant Professor and host Phil Capin spoke with Professor Meredith Rowe for “Practical Insights for Families on Supporting Language and Literacy,” which focused on language development, building vocabulary, and how building routines is key to literacy growth.

“Practical Insights for Families on Supporting Language and Literacy,” will be followed by the next episode of Usable Knowledge Live on Wednesday, June 17 at 5 p.m. “The Science of Reading Comprehension” will feature Capin in conversation with Professor James Kim exploring what research tells us about supporting reading comprehension across the elementary years.

You can catch up on past episodes by watching our Literacy Insights YouTube playlist here.

Key Takeaways

Early language development lays the foundation for later reading and writing
Children’s vocabulary and oral language skills help set the stage for reading comprehension. Even when children can decode words accurately, they need to know what those words mean and how ideas connect to understand what they read.

The quality of talk matters, not just the quantity
The conversation emphasized that supporting language development is not simply about talking more. It is about creating back-and-forth exchanges where children are being talked with, not just talked to. These interactions give children opportunities to respond, extend their thinking, and practice using language in increasingly complex ways.

“Decontextualized talk” helps children build vocabulary, critical thinking, and academic language
Conversations that move beyond the here and now are important in development. Talking about past experiences, future plans, predictions, explanations, pretend scenarios, and abstract ideas can help children build vocabulary, use more complex sentences, and develop the kinds of language they will encounter in school.

Everyday routines are powerful opportunities for language growth
Families do not need a special curriculum or separate activity to support children’s language development. Mealtime, bath time, car rides, errands, and other daily routines can all become moments for rich conversation. The goal is to build on what families are already doing and stretch those interactions in small, meaningful ways.

Shared reading is most powerful when it becomes interactive
Books introduce children to new words, ideas, places, and experiences they may not encounter in everyday life. Families and educators can deepen the reading experience by asking open-ended questions, connecting the story to a child’s life, inviting predictions, talking about how characters feel, and encouraging children to retell stories in their own words.

Related Resources

Smart Talk
How to lay the groundwork for child vocabulary growth from Usable Knowledge.
The Brain-Changing Power of Conversation
A resource from Usable Knowledge that highlights how back-and-forth interactions between children and caregivers impact language and brain development along with later literacy skills.
Deepening the Conversation
A Usable Knowledge piece highlighting how media can help enrich language and literacy development in early childhood.
Serve and Return
An explanation from HGSE’s Center on the Developing Child detailing how parents can support healthy development in children through back-and-forth exchanges between children and adults.
Raising Strong Readers
A Usable Knowledge piece offering strategies for parents and educators to encourage children to read.

Practical Insights for Families on Supporting Language and Literacy The fifth episode of our Literary Insights series focuses on building vocabulary and learning routines 

History as Power

nschulmeyer — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 18:57:17 +0000

History as Power nschulmeyer Mon, 06/15/2026 - 14:57 Student and Alumni Stories history civics museums Ed.L.D. Stories Lory Hough

Riley Jones IV, Ed.L.D.'26

Photo: Jason Morency

June 22, 2026

Ed. Magazine

The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Explore All Articles

Riley Jones IV, Ed.L.D.’26, sees the nation’s upcoming 250th anniversary as an opportunity — a generational opportunity to “envision a United States that our young people, present and future, can be proud of,” he wrote in his capstone dissertation, “in spite of the tenor of our national discourse.”

But how can we do this?

Jones' answer for the past year was to work with high school students who were training as museum tour guides at the Paul Robeson House and Museum in Philadelphia, the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. As part of his Ed.L.D. residency with the museum and the Netter Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania, Jones wanted to investigate how young people were processing the current discourse. As guides, the students were learning about history and educating the public on the life, art, and civil rights legacy of Paul Robeson, a blacklisted Broadway actor and activist during the 1940s and 50s who refused to perform for segregated audiences.

The goal, Jones says, was to help students take what they were learning and use that narrative history to “build power” with their peers while also making connections to their own lives. This summer, Jones will expand the work by launching the People’s 250 Youth Docents Program to train five students to give community walks in West Philadelphia, highlighting cultural institutions. He says helping young people connect with social change and how history shapes the present, while encouraging them to help others make that same connection, is especially critical during America’s semi quincentennial year.

“This is important at the country's 250th anniversary because it’s an inflection point to evaluate whether or not the systems that have gotten us to this point are the systems we want to carry us forward,” he says. “Honing young people's agency and decision-making power is not decorative, but fundamental to the design of a functioning democratic society.”

The reopening ceremony of the Robeson House, 2025

Photo: William Bradley

During his residency, Jones also developed a second, related project: planning, financing, and producing an event called the People’s 250 Assembly that will take place in Philadelphia later this summer. The event will use music, dance, and art to frame a conversation on how people envision the divided country's future at this milestone. “Participants will be responding to and designing around the questions: How do we think about narrative infrastructure in a local context?” he says, “and what can we build to make it easier for place-based collaboration to produce change?”

Initially, Jones wasn’t sure how the assembly would go over. At two information-gathering dinners he hosted, he asked students and local leaders if they wanted to take part in 250th celebrations.

“At first, people were like, we don’t want to participate. We feel that we're so divided in this moment. I don’t want to engage with it,” Jones says. But by the end of the dinners, people started offering ideas on who could give a talk or who might donate. “And when everybody does that together, that’s when the magic happens.”

As Jones was doing this work and moving through the Ed.L.D. Program, he started to wonder if history was simply his passion or a vocation, and the answer ended up being both. He has traced his own family’s history, including to his paternal granddad who was a sharecropper through his teen years in Covington, Tennessee, before attending Lane College and then moving to the south side of Chicago, where Jones grew up and where his grandparents still live.

“And on my maternal side, my great, great, great-grandfather Samuel Wynn fought in the Civil War until 1866 in Mississippi. He was 17 years old when he started and mustered out at about 21 or 22,” he says. Wynn used his Civil War earnings to purchase more than a hundred acres in Mississippi, allowing his family to bypass sharecropping. His descendants still own the land.

For Jones, who will begin a tenure track role as assistant professor of interdisciplinary leadership at Governors State University in Chicago teaching social entrepreneurship to doctoral students, it’s not enough to just know history — your own or the nation’s.

“For me, getting people to use history as a tool of social change really means helping them engage with the past through museums, archives, materials, rare books, those kinds of things where people can actually put their hands on things to understand what happened in the past so that in the present moment they can say, ‘Oh, this is how we've survived attacks on democracy before,’” he says. “We can look to the past for solutions that we can transpose into the current moment. I think a lot of people focus on the history part of it without focusing on the action part of it. For me, the action part is the more important part. What do we do now? And how does history tell us what is the morally, ethically, and values-aligned way to move forward?”

History as Power Riley Jones IV, Ed.L.D.’26, helps young people connect struggles of the past with today’s democracy in his work in Philadelphia

New Evidence Shows Personalized Student Supports Pays Off — for Life

nschulmeyer — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:48:33 +0000

New Evidence Shows Personalized Student Supports Pays Off — for Life nschulmeyer Fri, 06/12/2026 - 14:48 EdRedesign Research community engagement Sarah Grucza

June 22, 2026

Usable Knowledge

Connecting education research to practice — with timely insights for educators, families, and communities

Explore All Articles

For decades, policymakers and education reformers have chased the same question: How do we help students succeed? The answers have often focused on classrooms — improved curriculum, smaller class sizes, and better teachers. But a growing body of evidence suggests that learning, and the opportunity that it can unlock, doesn’t begin or end with instruction alone.

New research authored by economists Benjamin Goldman and Jamie Gracie, co-sponsored by The EdRedesign Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Opportunity Insights at Harvard University, offers concrete evidence proving the power of relationships and personalized student supports. The study, When Resources Meet Relationships: The Returns to Personalized Supports for Low-Income Students, finds that when schools pair concrete resources with personalized relationships, students’ outcomes improve — not only in the classroom, but well into adulthood.

At the center of the study is Communities In Schools (CIS), the largest integrated student supports provider in the United States, which embeds trained site coordinators in high-poverty schools. CIS serves more than two million students across more than 3,500 schools in 29 states and the District of Columbia each year, nearly three times the number served by the federal Head Start program.

These site coordinators aren’t charged with teaching classes or developing lesson plans. Instead, they help students navigate both academic and non-academic needs that often derail learning — including housing instability, health and mental health issues, family crises, and food insecurity — all while building trust-based relationships that anchor students to school.

The results were significant: Students who received three years of CIS support saw meaningful gains in test scores, higher graduation rates, and increased college enrollment. More striking still, the researchers project that these short-term gains translate into a 4.3 percent increase in annual earnings by age 27, adding up to more than $75,000 in additional lifetime income ($36,000 in present day value).

“It’s important to note that the academic gains we observe from CIS programs are only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to explaining improvements in graduation rates and earnings,” notes study co-author Gracie, a postdoctoral fellow at EdRedesign. “CIS helps keep students engaged in school and reduces adverse outcomes such as suspensions. These non-cognitive improvements nearly equally contribute to the program’s long-run impact.”

Why relationships make the difference

What makes personalized supports unique isn’t only the outcomes — it’s how they’re provided. The study shows that resources alone are not enough. What matters even more is how students access them, namely through building relationships with a trusted adult. Progressing that work is a cornerstone of EdRedesign’s Institute for Success Planning.

Led by EdRedesign Deputy Director Tauheedah Jackson, the Institute for Success Planning partners with teams of local leaders in urban, suburban, and rural communities to build, scale, and sustain place-based collaborations between neighborhood partners that center relationship-based personalized supports to create greater access and opportunity.

“At the core of Success Planning is an adult navigator, a caring adult who fosters a positive individual relationship with a child and their family, ensuring they are known, seen, heard and supported,” says Jackson. “Navigators serve as champions, mentors, advocates, and connectors. They eliminate barriers and create access to opportunities by co-creating an individualized plan for action that captures a youth’s strength’s, needs, interests, and goals.”

In practical terms, a navigator might help a student get glasses so they can see the board in a classroom, connect a family to stable housing, or intervene early when attendance begins to slip. Individually, these actions may seem modest, but collectively, the research shows, they fundamentally change students’ educational and life trajectories.

A practical policy matter

The implications of this research extend beyond one program or organization. The study estimates that a $3,000 per-student CIS investment over three years yields substantial returns per student — raising individual adult earnings and, in turn, boosting tax revenue.

“We’ve seen personalized supports be effectively implemented in red, blue, and purple communities and in rural and urban settings,” says Jackson. “While personalized supports can be implemented anywhere, we often find they are most effective when paired with local cross-sector collaboration, which ensures that public, private, and other resources are efficiently channeled towards reaching students and helping them succeed.”

At a time when policymakers are debating how best to allocate limited dollars, EdRedesign says the study’s findings offer a promising strategy to amplify the impact of existing initiatives. From college access programs to rent assistance and job training, personalized supports boost the impact of local, state, or federal programs, ensuring that they reach the students and families who need them most.

While inequality and declining opportunity can feel intractable, Goldman and Gracie’s latest research points to a proven approach leaders across sectors can adopt. Providing relationship-based personalized supports can improve outcomes for struggling students, both in the classroom and over the long run, and has the potential to scale in nearly any setting.

New Evidence Shows Personalized Student Supports Pays Off — for Life  Research sponsored by EdRedesign and Opportunity Insights highlights how relationships and individualized assistance improve academic performance and increase lifetime earnings 

Elizabeth Bonawitz Named Professor of Education

nschulmeyer — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:35:46 +0000

Elizabeth Bonawitz Named Professor of Education nschulmeyer Thu, 06/11/2026 - 13:35 tenure appointments Ryan Nagelhout

Elizabeth Bonawitz

Photo: Rose Lincoln

June 11, 2026

News

The latest research, perspectives, and highlights from the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Explore All Articles

Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean Nonie Lesaux has announced the promotion of Elizabeth Bonawitz, a leading developmental cognitive scientist and psychologist whose work explores the complex way students learn.

Bonawitz, previously the David J. Vitale Associate Professor of Learning Sciences, has been promoted to Professor of Education.

“There is so much privilege and responsibility that comes with being a senior faculty member here, and I’m excited to continue my research, mentorship, teaching, and service in this new role,” said Bonawitz.

Bonawitz’s research at HGSE focuses on the basic science theories of learning with the broader goal of informing educational practice. Using cognitive development and computational modeling, her research focuses on the structure of children’s early causal beliefs, how evidence and prior beliefs interact to affect children’s learning, and the role of social factors in guided learning.

“Elizabeth’s well-deserved promotion to Professor of Education is a milestone for HGSE and for the learning sciences more broadly,” said Lesaux. “Since coming to HGSE in 2020, Elizabeth has brought rigorous experimental methods, sophisticated computational modeling, and expertise in developmental cognitive science to her work on STEM learning. Working in labs, museums, homes, and schools, she addresses important questions designed to uncover how children learn and reason about science concepts.”

Through her work, Bonawitz has improved the understanding of factors that impact the development of children’s mental models about their world and how children learn from others, enabling the field to build better theory about when and why learner outcomes vary.

While her research has expanded the learning sciences at HGSE, her mentorship and work in the classroom helps create a vibrant learning environment on Appian Way.

“In addition to her extraordinary scholarship, Elizabeth is a thoughtful teacher and mentor, and her leadership on the foundational How People Learn course has enriched the learning experience for all HGSE students,” noted Lesaux. “I’m thrilled that she is being recognized not only for her outstanding research, but also the many ways she strengthens our community and advances the field of learning science.”

Bonawitz was sure to thank the community she’s helped build at the Ed School, noting it as a significant force in her teaching and work.

“I feel especially lucky for the in-between moments: walking to a café with colleagues, grabbing tea, splitting a biscuit, and spending an hour talking science and laughing until our sides hurt,” said Bonawitz. “Those small moments create a sense of belonging that has made Harvard feel like an intellectual home, and I’m profoundly grateful to spend this next chapter among people who value them too.”

Bonawitz joined the Ed School in 2020 as the inaugural David J. Vitale Associate Professor of Learning Sciences, a newly endowed chair at HGSE to support an assistant or associate professor whose work focuses on the use of learning sciences to study education. Previously, she served for seven years as an assistant and associate professor of psychology at Rutgers University. Bonawitz earned her Ph.D. in brain and cognitive sciences from MIT in 2009, then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley from 2009 to 2013.

Elizabeth Bonawitz Named Professor of Education Bonawitz, a developmental cognitive scientist, joined the Ed School in 2020