As states take lead in fixing U.S. schools, Harvard will serve as a hub
Grad School of Education will partner with nine states — from Rhode Island to Texas — to look for practical solutions to low test scores, chronic absenteeism
When it comes to American public education, states wield a lot of power over policy — lately, more than they have in decades.
But that influence isn’t always accompanied by insight.
Sometimes, despite valiant efforts, superintendents and commissioners enact sweeping new policies affecting millions of students with little immediate feedback about whether and how they’re working.
Christina Grant knows that struggle: From 2021 to 2024, she served as state superintendent of schools in Washington, D.C. And now she’s part of a University initiative designed to help fill the knowledge gap in partnership with a first cohort of states announced this week.
“It’s very different to be able to look under the hood with a particular policy — where you’re getting answers not in five years, but in a year or a year and a half,” Grant said. “You want to go from hearing about what worked with a particular program to knowing.”
Grant was named executive director of the Center for Education Policy Research at the Harvard Graduate School of Education last June, at a troubled time for American schools. Four years after COVID-19 closed classrooms, test scores and attendance still haven’t returned to their pre-pandemic highs.
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