“We are fortunate to have a person of Deborah’s great talent and commitment among our faculty. Following a lengthy and distinguished career as a public school leader, Deborah’s standing as a national and international education leader has only grown since she came to HGSE,” McCartney said in an email to the HGSE community. ”Deborah is shepherding the final cohorts of the Urban Superintendents Program through to completion and has made significant contributions to the development, launch, and implementation of the Ed.L.D. Program, teaching its central, required course in the first-year core curriculum. In addition, she frequently advises school leaders, districts, and education organizations across the country, and has served as the principal investigator of the partnership between HGSE and the Johannesburg University Education Leadership Institute.”

A former public school leader and educator with 32 years of experience, Jewell-Sherman becomes the first woman to hold the title of professor of practice at the Ed School.

“I very much appreciate this acknowledgement of my work by the illustrious faculty of our beloved HGSE and I intend to continue to empower with knowledge, to support through relationship, and to promote through networks the phenomenal students who yearly travel to Appian Way,” Jewell-Sherman said. “ In concert with colleagues and pivotal players in the education sector, I plan to continue the critical work of insuring our school’s relevance and impact in addressing the seminal educational issues and challenges of our day, for ‘to whom much is given, much is required’.”

Over her career in public education, Jewell-Sherman worked as a classroom teacher, principal, and central office administrator. Following her time as an elementary school principal in Hampton City (Va.) Public Schools, she rose up the administrative ladder as an assistant, associate, and acting superintendent, before becoming superintendent in the Richmond City (Va.) Public Schools (RPS). During her seven-year tenure, she gained a national reputation as one of the most effective urban district superintendents in the country for her successful implementation of “Excellence For All,” a comprehensive strategic plan aimed at improving teaching and learning and promoting community engagement. When she left the superintendency in 2008, 95 percent of Richmond’s low-performing schools had achieved full accreditation under Virginia’s Standards of Learning reform legislation, compared with an 18 percent accreditation rate before she arrived. Her outstanding work earned her national recognition and numerous honors including being named 2009 Virginia Superintendent of the Year.

At the Ed School, where Jewell-Sherman started as a senior lecturer in 2008, she has continued to work on leadership development as both the director of the Urban Superintendents Program and a key faculty member in the Doctor of Education Leadership Program.

In 2012, Jewell-Sherman received the Dr. Effie H. Jones Humanitarian Award from the American Association of School Administrators, which recognizes leaders who exemplify the qualities modeled by the late Dr. Effie Hall Jones, a veteran educator and AASA associate executive director.

They came just for the afternoon, to see civil rights activist James Meredith speak at the HGSE 2013 Convocation ceremony, and they were given the opportunity to meet with him privately before his convocation speech. We caught up with them after the speech to hear their reflections on the day.

In 2010, leaders on Beacon Hill crafted the Achievement Gap Act of 2010, the most ambitious school reform legislation since the historic Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993. In addition to this bill’s path-breaking provisions on school turnarounds, the Act launched a bold new strategy for addressing the twin challenges of fostering greater school choice and stimulating more innovation.

Policy-makers executed a highly effective two-pronged maneuver: lift the cap on charter schools in communities with the biggest achievement gaps, but only for proven charter providers, while simultaneously creating a new breed of “innovation schools,” an evolved species of in-district charters, which would allow mainstream educators to compete with charters by embracing charter-like autonomies on matters of budget, staffing, schedule and curriculum. In addition, a new breed of Horace Mann schools were added to the mix. The result: the floodgates were opened.

Currently, there are 47 innovation schools operating in the Commonwealth, in 25 districts, enrolling more than 12,000 students. Meanwhile, we have already added 14 new charter schools during this period (with four more scheduled to open next fall), 25 new charters (including 5 Horace Mann charters) have been awarded (17 of these have involved “proven provider” status). Charter enrollment is projected to increase to more than 35,000 by next fall, a jump of nearly seven thousand students since 2010. Early indications are that the “cap lift” charters are doing a better job of serving ELL students and students with disabilities.

By every indication, including early indications of academic performance, we’ve made a strong start with these policies on choice and innovation. Now is the time to accelerate our progress by further lifting of the charter cap, where sufficient demand and proven providers exist, while at the same time making the financial investment in growing and deepening the innovation school movement.

However, we should be cautious and thoughtful in moving ahead. The details need close attention. For example, we must see to it that charter schools continue to receive unimpeded access to district mailing lists so that these schools can recruit the students who very much need attention, especially those in chronically under-served categories. Where school systems have attempted to impede access to these lists, the state should remove the barriers. Likewise, charters should be allowed to give preferences in the admissions process to students in chronically under-served groups so that charters can prove their efficacy with these students.

On innovation schools, we must insist that educators make bolder use of the available autonomies. Finally, we should continue to provide incentives for and encouragement to charters and educational management organizations to join the state and districts in the kind of novel forms of school turnaround work and governance now being pioneered in Lawrence. New forms of schooling should continue to evolve to meet the needs of those students caught in achievement gaps. Innovation is imperative.

We are justifiably proud, in Massachusetts, of our first-in-the-nation status on K-12 academic achievement, but we should also be painfully conscious that the reform work launched in 1993 is far from complete. We still have deep, persistent achievement gaps, and our progress in closing these is just too slow. After 20 years of reform in education, we need to move beyond the “charter wars” and concentrate on closing these gaps by providing a high quality education for all of our students. Where we have strong charter schools which have found a way to serve many of the children we have failed in our mainstream system, shame on us if we don’t embrace these proven providers and give them the chance to scale up their success. At the same time, we know that mainstream schools can be every bit as innovative, customer-responsive and flexible as charters if the professionals in those schools choose and are allowed to make decisions on school policy and operations. Innovation schools make this possible, but educators and school systems and unions must be willing to take the risk of embracing autonomy and being held accountable for the results. At the same time, these schools need financial support for planning and conversion costs.

Building an education system that makes good on the 1993 promise of “all means all” should be our top priority in the Commonwealth. It’s a moral as well as economic imperative. Our work with standards-based reform has been necessary but not sufficient to achieving the goal of all students at proficiency. We need to construct a 21st sentury learning system that provides all the support necessary to achieve our goals. The Achievement Gap Act was important step in the right direction. This progress should be accelerated.

The Act’s two pronged challenge means that the Commonwealth grows the strongest charters to serve where needs are greatest, while urging mainstream educators to embrace the autonomies that will enable them to better meet the needs of their particular students. In this fashion, mainstream schools can no longer justifiably complain about charter competition if they are unwilling to embrace the innovation school autonomies which are comparable to those enjoyed by charter schools. At the same time, charter providers are clearly enlisted in meeting the state’s greatest needs and held accountable for doing so. As a result of these policies, students and families get more choice and innovation both inside the mainstream system and out.

Since the Achievement Gap Act strategy has shown early success, Beacon Hill leaders should accelerate its progress by increasing the targeted cap lift while making an investment in a new cadre of innovation schools.

Paul Reville is a professor of practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is the former secretary of education and coauthor of the Achievement Gap Act of 2010.

Ryan talked with the Harvard Gazette about his passion for education and his new role at HGSE:

GAZETTE: What drew you to education as the focus of your scholarly work?

RYAN: My interest in education stems from personal experience. I grew up in a blue-collar suburb in northern New Jersey, and neither of my parents went to college. My dad barely made it through high school. My mom finished near the top of her class. But her family didn’t have any money, and her parents didn’t think at the time that women needed to go to college. But both my parents during the entirety of my childhood stressed the importance of education. I attended the public schools in my hometown and was lucky enough to go to a great university. That experience literally changed my life and got me thinking as early as college about how lucky I was that the system worked for me, and wondering why it has failed so many others. And that really was the impetus for the questions that I’ve been asking in almost all of my scholarly work since. I’ve been trying to figure out, basically, how law and policy might expand educational opportunities and also strengthen supports outside of school, so that more students have an honest chance to fulfill their potential.

Education is really the driving force behind social mobility and living a fulfilling life. Schools can’t do everything on their own, obviously, but education remains the key mechanism by which the American dream of reaching your full potential can be realized. For many students, the education system isn’t working as well as it ought to, and figuring out ways to improve it is what I’m most passionate about, and why I’m so eager — and honored — to take on the role of dean at HGSE.

For more, visit the Harvard Gazette.

Ryan, an award-winning teacher who has served on the University of Virginia faculty since 1998, succeeds Kathleen McCartney, who will leave Harvard to become president of Smith College on July 1.

Ryan will officially assume his new role on Sept. 1, near the start of the 2013-14 academic year. Richard Murnane, the Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Professor of Education and Society at HGSE, will serve as acting dean from July 1 until Ryan begins his tenure.

“Jim Ryan is an outstanding scholar, teacher, and academic leader with a deep passion for improving education and for enhancing the interplay of scholarship, practice, and policy,” Faust said. “Throughout the search, I have been impressed by his seamless integration of the intellectual and the practical, his warm and open personal style, and his evident talent for drawing together people from different backgrounds, disciplines, and points of view.

“He has a keen interest in how diverse modes of academic research can benefit education practice and policy,” Faust added, “and how the concrete challenges facing educational leaders and policymakers, as well as teachers and students, can helpfully inform the scholarship and teaching we do here. He is also an astute and empathetic listener, and I know he looks forward to connecting with people across HGSE in the coming weeks and months as he prepares to take up his new role.”

“I am honored and excited by this opportunity, and grateful to Drew Faust for inviting me to take on this role at such a critical time in education and in the life of the school,” said Ryan. “Kathy McCartney’s extraordinary leadership has generated great momentum, and I’m eager to build on that progress in close collaboration with remarkably talented faculty, staff, and students within the Ed School and across the university. Understanding how students learn, enhancing educational achievement, and expanding educational opportunity are among the defining challenges of our time, and HGSE has an essential leadership role to play in meeting them. I look forward to serving a school with the intellectual vitality and commitment not simply to contribute to the field but to continue transforming it.”

A highly influential scholar at the crossroads of education, law, and policy, Ryan is currently the William L. Matheson and Robert M. Morgenthau Distinguished Professor of Law and the F. Palmer Weber Research Professor of Civil Liberties and Human Rights at the University of Virginia. He is also co-founder and director of the Program in Law and Public Service at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served for five years as the academic associate dean. He was a member of the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission, which was charged with examining disparities in meaningful educational opportunities that give rise to the achievement gap, and with recommending ways that federal policies could address such disparities.

Educational opportunity has been the predominant focus of Ryan’s most recent scholarship and teaching. His book, Five Miles Away, A World Apart: One City, Two Schools, and the Story of Educational Opportunity in Modern America, explores questions of school segregation and inequality in the context of an urban school in Richmond, Va., and a nearby suburban school. He has written numerous articles for academic journals and other publications on such topics as school finance, school desegregation, school choice, school governance, a right to preschool, teacher compensation reform, and the federal No Child Left Behind Act. He is also coauthor of the casebook, Educational Policy and the Law.

Ryan has been honored with both the University of Virginia’s All-University Teaching Award (2010) and with the Outstanding Faculty Award presented by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (2011). His courses have included offerings on law and education, comparative education law and policy, and schools, race, and law. He has lectured widely on a range of education policy matters.

Ryan served on the board of the Maya Angelou Public Charter School in Washington, D.C. Previously, he served on the Century Foundation’s Task Force on the Common School and as vice chair of the American Bar Association’s Committee on Public Schools. He has also served as a pro bono consultant on numerous education-related legal and policy issues.

He has received the U.Va. Law School’s McFarland Prize for Outstanding Scholarship, the Education Law Association’s Award for Distinguished Scholarship, and the U.Va. Black Law Students Association’s Outstanding Service Award.

In addition to his scholarship and teaching on education law and policy, Ryan has taught and written about constitutional law, local government law, and Supreme Court litigation. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from Yale in 1988, graduated first in his class from U.Va. Law School in 1992, and clerked for the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist of the U.S. Supreme Court. A former visiting professor of law at both Harvard and Yale, he was the inaugural Cameron Fellow at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Ryan is married to Karoline (Katie) Homer Ryan, a clinical instructor at U.Va. who specializes in child advocacy and special education law. The couple has four children.

In announcing the appointment, Faust expressed appreciation to “the many members of the HGSE community who have been so generous and thoughtful with advice on the dean search at a pivotal moment for the school. I especially thank the members of the faculty advisory committee for the search, whose lively discussions and candid counsel have done so much to shed light on the HGSE’s recent trajectory and future opportunities and to bring the search to an excellent conclusion.”

Read more: Q&A with New HGSE Dean (Harvard Gazette, 6/10/13)

Watch: Incoming HGSE Dean on His Passion for Education (Harvard Gazette, 6/10/13)

She was joined for the announcement by Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA17), American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel, New York State United Teachers President Dick Iannuzzi, and filmmaker and activist Lee Hirsch, whose award-winning documentary, BULLY, has surpassed its goal of screening to more than 1 million students.  The announcement immediately followed a United States House of Representatives briefing on the re-launch of the Congressional Anti-Bullying Caucus, hosted by Representative Honda, during which the group testified on new approaches to prevention.

“Bullying is a human rights issue, indeed it’s often the first human rights issue young people experience first-hand,” said Kerry Kennedy, president of the RFK Center. “In the world of human rights defenders, the rarest of all are leaders who stand up not only to tyrants, but to family, friends, and colleagues within their own communities on behalf of the rights of others. However, in our schools, that’s the type of courage we ask our children to show every day, to prevent bullying when they see peers being targeted. RFK Project SEATBELT inspires young people to find that courage and gives teachers, administrators, and parents tools they can use to help.”

RFK Project SEATBELT (Safe Environments Achieved Through Bullying prevention, Engagement, Leadership and Teaching respect; projectseatbelt.org) was designed by  Deborah Temkin, who previously led the White House bullying prevention efforts at the U.S. Department of Education. The initiative takes the research of the Making Caring Common Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and turns those findings into accessible, evidence-based resources to prevent bullying. And the name SEATBELT, along with being an acronym, is a response to those who say bullying is an ingrained behavior that is unlikely to change, and a reference to the profound shift in social mores over the last few decades that has made putting on a seat belt in a car an automatic behavior, where once it was considered optional.

The initiative launched online this month at projectseatbelt.org and will be featured in an upcoming national television advertising campaign by the Chrysler Group, LLC., which was screened during the June 5 launch event.

“This initiative speaks to the power of what we can accomplish when we stand together to help educate and prevent bullying,” said Olivier Francois, chief marketing officer, Chrysler Group LLC.  “Chrysler Group, as the minivan leader in America, champions family health and safety. We support the RFK Center’s anti-bullying efforts and the mission to help bring awareness of this important issue to our communities.”

RFK Project SEATBELT promotes the use of the RFK Center’s human rights education program, RFK Speak Truth To Power, which is currently taught to more than 1 million students a year from Cambodia to California and empowers youth to become the agents of change in their environments and beyond.

Just prior to the press conference, Representative Mike Honda announced the relaunch of the Congressional Anti-Bullying Caucus at a briefing of the 113th Congress.

“Since launching last session, the Anti-Bullying Caucus has helped shine a light on bullying in the United States and the long-term impacts it has on young people who experience, witness, or perpetrate it,” said Representative Honda, “To truly make a difference, we need to explore ways to prevent bullying before it takes hold of a school or community, and we are delighted to highlight the groundbreaking steps being taken by the RFK Center and the Bully Project to achieve these goals.”

“We have to put ‘prevention’ back in ‘bullying prevention,’” said Temkin. “RFK Project SEATBELT is unique in that its primary aim is to help parents, educators, and communities create environments where bullying is less likely to occur. With more than 1 in 3 students bullied each year, and 3 in 4 students witnessing bullying on a regular basis, we must recognize that being bullied, bullying others, and witnessing bullying are all linked to negative outcomes.”

Kennedy was joined by Lee Hirsch who announced his film’s 1 Million Kids campaign successfully having surpassed its goal of reaching one million students globally.  BULLY and accompanying educational programs has now been screened or committed to be screened for approximately 1,800,000 students — a dream many thought was impossible just year ago. Footage documenting The Bully Project movement was screened during the event, with Hirsch highlighting the Bully Project’s new Educator’s Toolkit to assist schools in meaningful and effective bullying prevention.

“We are thrilled to have surpassed one million students in our efforts to start conversations about the need for bullying prevention,” said BULLY director and producer Lee Hirsch. “But, simply talking about bullying is not enough. After thousands of BULLY screenings and trainings across the country we know that tools like our Educator’s Toolkit and RFK Project SEATBELT are keys to creating safer environments for all students.”

For more information, visit RFK Project Seatbelt.

In this edition of the EdCast, Shonkoff, director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard and chair of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child — a multi-university collaboration comprising leading scholars in neuroscience, psychology, pediatrics, and economics, whose mission is to bring credible science to bear on public policy affecting young children — discusses President Obama’s plan for early childhood education.

About the Harvard EdCast

The Harvard EdCast is a weekly series of podcasts, available on the Harvard University iTunes U page, that features a 15-20 minute conversation with thought leaders in the field of education from across the country and around the world. Hosted by Matt Weber, the Harvard EdCast is a space for educational discourse and openness, focusing on the myriad issues and current events related to the field.

The Harvard Education Letter was named the best education “Newsletter or E-newsletter” for adults in the category of “Whole Publication.”

“Course Credits on the Quick: Controversial online recovery programs speed the path to graduation” by Andrew Brownstein was also a finalist in the category of “Adult News Story.”

The Distinguished Achievement Awards are the largest branch of the AEP awards program and recognize the year’s best products according to subject area and grade level in the categories of Curriculum, Periodicals, Professional Development, and Supplemental Resources.

Nancy Walser is editor of the Harvard Education Letter and author of The Essential School Board Book (Harvard Education Press, 2009).  She received her Ed.M. in the Education Policy and Management Program from the Harvard Graduate School Education in 2010.

Click here for the full list of winners.

Learn more about the Harvard Education Letter.

Features in the summer 2013 issue include a celebration of Dean Kathleen McCartney’s tenure at the Ed School; a discussion on turnaround schools and what many of our alumni are doing to ensure that the progress of their schools continues; and a look at a special school in Maine founded by Edith Aronson, Ed.M.’97, that helps teenage girls love science.

And, as usual, you will also find numerous articles both fun and fascinating about Ed School alumni, students, faculty, and friends that devote their considerable talents and energies to the field of education.

However, doing well isn’t good enough. While we in Massachusetts appreciate the outstanding performance achieved by our students and educators, we have been sharply focused on the sad story our outstanding averages conceal. We have deep, persistent achievement gaps, larger than in most other states. Even though we are gradually closing these gaps and have raised achievement levels so that our lowest performers now surpass low performers elsewhere, the progress is far too slow. Too many students in Massachusetts, in spite of our high averages, are unable to enjoy the advantages of a high-quality education. Caught in that achievement gap are low-income students, English-language learners, students with disabilities, and students of color.

To read more, please visit Education Week (subscription required).