Education Week - September 12, 2018 - 10

Looking Outside Schools to Improve What Happens Inside
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Photos by Gretchen Ertl for Education Week

ended earlier this year.)
The program, now in its second
phase, encourages city and district
teams to craft customized education plans for students, focus on
students' health and social-emotional well-being, and create a governance structure-a "children's
cabinet"-comprised of officials
from K-12, government, philanthropy, higher education, business,
and nonprofits to work on a kind of
social compact for children.
Each community chose different
priorities for the first phase.
Providence, for example, emphasized summer learning and summer
youth employment among its many
initiatives, while Louisville pulled
together already existing programs,
including a goal of adding 55,000
graduates with bachelors and associates degrees by 2020, into one
cohesive "cradle to career" initiative.
In the second phase, the Redesign Lab expects the cities to double
down on the individual education
plans for students, similar to what
Salem is rolling out through City
Connects.

A Citywide Approach
Paul Reville, the director of Harvard's Education Redesign Lab and
a former Massachusetts education
secretary who is spearheading the
program, said that for too long education reform has focused nearly
exclusively on what happens inside the school building, without an
equal amount of attention on the
children.
"You look at the three ingredients
in education-it's the child, it's curriculum, and it's instruction," Reville
said. "It's the transaction between
the child, the teacher, and the curriculum that's really the core business of education."
But, Reville continued, "We treat
the child as a given in the equation.
They are just there, and we have
to educate them. Instead of saying,
'How do they show up? What's going
on in the lives of children that influences them and, in some cases, impedes them from taking advantage
of the optimized curriculum and
instruction?' "
As important as improving schooling for all students is, Reville argues
that civic and education leaders
need to also prioritize equal access
for poor and rural students outside
of school-opportunities such as
after-school sports and activities,
summer camps, and summer jobs
for high school students, he said.
"We are not saying that school
isn't important," said Reville. "It's
important."
The concept of weaving together
city and school services is not exactly novel.
New York City's Harlem Children's Zone and Say Yes to Education are just two examples of
initiatives that take a holistic approach to student success. NBA
superstar LeBron James generated a lot of buzz last month when
he opened his I Promise School

FROM TOP: Silvyraida
Mustafa, 9, blindfolded, is
guided by Nicole Jimenez, 9,
as they work together in a
summer learning program in
Providence, R.I.
Tomas Castro, 6, tosses a
ring onto a hat worn by
Angelys Rivas Arias, 6, during
a summer learning program
in Providence. Math and
reading scores have
improved among the
students who attended the
program offered for free by
the nonprofit group known
as BELL.

It's always been our
intention that we
touch every single
public school
student in our
entire city. ...
We are tired of
nibbling around
the edges."
LIBBY SCHAAF
Mayor, Oakland, Calif.

10 | EDUCATION WEEK | September 12, 2018 | www.edweek.org

in Akron, Ohio, that will provide
a robust array of services including a food pantry for families and
General Educational Development
test and employment assistance
for parents.
And a handful of states, including Virginia, Rhode Island, and
Louisiana have children's cabinets,
which are tasked with collaborating on a range of issues that affect
children and families.
What's different here is the citywide approach to children's wellbeing that extends beyond school
walls, with the mayors using their
bully pulpit and resources of the
cities to play a leading role. A key
part of the mission is challenging
longstanding inequities and leveling the playing field, reducing
achievement gaps, and improving
outcomes for low-income children.
Julia Freeland Fisher, the director of education research at the
Clayton Christensen Institute,
which studies disruptive innovation, agrees with the premise that
education reform predicated solely
on reworking the academic model
was incomplete. There's "plentiful"
evidence that nonacademic variables also shape students' learning
outcomes, she said.
But for those integrated studentsupport systems to work, particularly in closing achievement gaps,
teachers must be an integral part
of the program, Fisher said.
In the successful models that she
has studied, Fisher said, teachers,
by virtue of "knowing more about
what's happening in their students'
lives and having these additional
resources to address potential barriers to learning, their academic
decisions can actually be sensitive

to the nonacademic factors present
in student's lives."
Without deep teacher involvement, such programs run the risk
of layering services upon services,
with no connection to what teachers are doing in the classroom.
"I think the wisdom of these integrated student support models is
that we are trying to break down
silos between school, community,
home, after-school, social services,"
Fisher said. "If teachers are not part
of that loop, I think you risk putting
dollars and a lot of energy into all
sorts of services that are great for
students but that don't translate
into better test scores necessarily
or higher graduation rates."

Community Support
Reville and the mayors involved
in the Harvard experiment known
as By All Means say their citywide
approach to supporting students
and families is critical, particularly at a time when the federal
education department has scaled
back its local footprint and the
absence of "education governors"
in the mold of former South Carolina Gov. Richard Riley and former
President Bill Clinton when he was
governor of Arkansas.
And many of the cities involved
in the By All Means program already had the backbone of such
initiatives in place before Reville
came calling.
For superintendents, having
backing from the mayor and key
local players affords them more leverage and credibility when seeking community support, including
funding, for programs.
"It's easier to secure funding

from investors when they see that
this is not just a pet project of the
superintendent," said Margarita
Ruiz, the schools chief in Salem.
For Libby Schaaf, the Oakland
mayor, the school-city partnership
is an equity issue.
The city's big project through By
All Means is known as The Oakland Promise, made up of several
smaller initiatives to support children from birth through college.
One effort, Brilliant Baby, provides up to $500 toward a college fund for babies born to lowincome families as well and up
to $500 in financial incentives to
their parents.
Another initiative, Future Centers, provides college-assistance
offices at select middle and high
schools that help students with
such tasks as filling out financialaid applications, going on college
visits, preparing for interviews
with admissions officials, and seeking scholarships.
A third is a college fund, the East
Bay College Fund, which provides
scholarships, peer mentors, and
counseling to students during their
college careers.
Nearly $8.5 million in scholarships had been awarded to Oakland students through the East
Bay College Fund, with a goal of
increasing the awards to $25 million and impacting 10,000 students
by 2025. The city has similarly ambitious plans to expand the initiatives in Oakland Promise.
"It's always been our intention
that we touch every single public school student in our entire
city, and that's a lot," said Schaaf,
whose city hired a "sustainability
consultant" to help figure out how

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - September 12, 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - September 12, 2018