Strategies for Closing the Achievement Gap

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New Leadership Development Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education



Programs in Professional Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in collaboration with the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University today announced a new leadership development program titled: Closing the Achievement Gap: Strategies for Excellence with Equity. The program, designed for educators from settings at the fourth-grade level through high school, takes place on the HGSE campus in Cambridge, MA, from July 8–12, 2010. Leading achievement gap researcher and Harvard University professor, Ronald Ferguson, is the faculty chair for the program.

Closing the Gap

U.S. schools have made considerable strides in narrowing academic achievement gaps between different racial, ethnic and socio-economic groups over the past few decades; however the gaps are still significant. President Obama, through the American Recovery and Investment Act, recognizes that a high-quality education is critical to our nation's future and has allotted over $77 billion dollars towards education reform that will strengthen elementary and secondary education.

As one of the most pressing education-policy challenges today, the issue is multi-faceted and complex. Education leaders must be able to fit all of the pieces of the puzzle together -- engaged and supportive schools, classrooms that support learning for all students, strong district level support and family engagement -- in order to create a strategy for raising achievement and closing the gaps. And it is critical that educators not only raise the achievement floor -- but also the ceiling -- to achieve excellence with equity for all students.

"This is where the Harvard institute will make an impact," said Ron Ferguson, Senior Lecturer in Education and Public Policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Harvard Kennedy School. "We will be talking about ways to understand -- in a coherent way -- how all the various issues fit together and to create an overarching strategy for raising achievement and closing the gaps. So when our participants go back to their schools and districts they will be able to organize people around a vision that is manageable and makes sense."

Closing the Achievement Gap: Strategies for Excellence with Equity

The five-day program will focus on contemporary frameworks used to understand instructional quality, student engagement, youth development, parenting and leadership in diverse communities. Challenges of responding effectively to racial, ethnic and socio-economic differences will receive special attention. Using a socio-ecological approach, participants will consider the interdependence of each stakeholder's role in raising student achievement and closing gaps. At the close of the institute, they will have a firm understanding of how their school community can strategically and effectively work together with a shared goal for improved student outcomes.

"The idea is that we want to bring every student up," Ferguson went on to say. "But we want achieve the most rapid progress in the groups that are furthest behind, so we all meet at the front of the line internationally, having achieved excellence and with equity in the U.S."

U.S. educators from settings at the fourth-grade level through high school are invited to attend. In addition to interested individuals, teams composed of a school leader -- principal or assistant principal -- and one or several educators in leadership roles are also encouraged to attend. Teams could also include school administrators and individuals responsible for instructional leadership, supervising student organizations and out-of-school programming, as well as key parent leaders or school board members.

Program Details

Applications for Closing the Achievement Gap: Strategies for Excellence with Equity are now being accepted online. The application deadline is May 14, 2010. For additional program information or to apply, visit www.gse.harvard.edu/ppe/cag. The institute will be held on the Harvard Graduate School of Education campus; hotel accommodations are available at a reduced rate.

About Faculty Chair Ronald Ferguson

Ronald Ferguson is Senior Lecturer in Education and Public Policy with a joint appointment between the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Harvard Kennedy School. He is also creator and director of the Tripod Project for School Improvement, which aims to raise achievement for all children while narrowing achievement gaps. Additionally, Ferguson is the Faculty Co-Chair and Director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard, a university-wide initiative to help close the nation's achievement gaps by supporting new research and connecting research to policy and practice.

Dr. Ferguson's publications cover education policy, youth development programming, community development, economic consequences of skill disparities and state and local economic development. For the past decade, his research has focused on racial achievement gaps, appearing in publications of the National Research Council, the Brookings Institution and the U.S. Department of Education. In addition to teaching and research, Ferguson has been a consult and policy advisor to such organizations as the National Research Council Committee on Community-level Youth Programming, the National Urban League's Campaign for African-American Achievement and the Research Advisory Group on Closing the Achievement Gap of the Council of Great City Schools.

About the Harvard Graduate School of Education

For more than 40 years, the Harvard Graduate School of Education has offered professional education programs for educational leaders. We are committed to offering programs that make a difference -- in the lives of students, in the work of institutions, and in the practice of educators. The Harvard Graduate School of Education's Programs in Professional Education achieves its mission via three principal formats: professional education programs, capacity-building projects and services and research-based initiatives.