Education Redesign Lab launches ‘By All Means’

The Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) announced the selection of six cities for a new multiyear initiative – By All Means: Redesigning Education to Restore Opportunity – aimed at developing comprehensive child well-being and education systems that help eliminate the link between children’s socioeconomic status and achievement. By All Means will be operated by HGSE’s Education Redesign Lab. Participating cities in the initiative are Oakland, California; Louisville, Kentucky; Providence, Rhode Island; and Salem, Somerville, and Newton, Massachusetts.

“While our recent efforts at education reform have yielded some great successes in certain places, overall, we have failed to achieve equity, we have failed to eliminate persistent achievement and success gaps,” said Professor Paul Reville, founding director of the Education Redesign Lab and former Massachusetts secretary of education. “Schools alone, as currently conceived, can’t do the job of educating all children for success. We can do better. By All Means will help light the way.

“Education reformers across the country set out decades ago to eliminate the correlation between zip code and educational success,” Reville continued.  “We’ve failed at that so far. These courageous mayors and superintendents are now re-embracing the challenge and are willing to rethink their child well-being and education systems to achieve the goal of equity.”