Broader, Bolder, Better: How Schools and Communities Help Students Overcome the Disadvantages of Poverty

In Broader, Bolder, Better, authors Elaine Weiss, of the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education campaign, and Paul Reville, former Massachusetts secretary of education, make a compelling case for a fundamental change in the way we view education. The authors argue for a large-scale expansion of community-school partnerships in order to provide holistic, integrated student supports (ISS) from cradle to career, including traditional wraparound services like health, mental health, nutrition, and family supports, as well as expanded access to opportunities such as early childhood education, afterschool activities, and summer enrichment programs.

The book builds on nearly a decade of research by the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education, a national initiative endorsed by more than sixty policy experts and leaders from across the country, and draws on the work of Harvard's Education Redesign Lab. It pulls from case studies of effective ISS efforts in twelve diverse communities to illustrate the variety of strategies that can be adopted locally.

A call to action that also provides examples of communities that are successfully leveling the playing field for poor children, this book offers a detailed vision for building--through field work, mobilization, and financing--comprehensive systems to prepare all children for success.

Author: Elaine Weiss, Paul Reville
Publisher: Harvard Education PR
Published: 06/04/2019
Pages: 312
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781682533482


Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2019

About the Author
Elaine Weiss has been the lead policy analyst, income security, for the National Academy of Social Insurance since January 2019. She was the national coordinator for the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education (BBA) from 2011 to 2017. There she worked with four cochairs, a high-level advisory board, and multiple coalition partners to promote a comprehensive, evidence-based set of policies to allow all children to thrive in school and in life. Major publications for BBA include case studies of diverse communities that employ comprehensive, whole-child approaches to education across the country. She has coauthored two studies with Economic Policy Institute economist Emma Garcia on early achievement gaps and strategies to reduce them. With Don Long, she wrote a 2013 report, "Market-Oriented Education Reforms' Rhetoric Trumps Reality," and she wrote a 2013 Economic Policy Institute paper, "Mismatches in Race to the Top Limit Educational Improvement." In 2014, Elaine worked with multiple educators to write a series of commentaries for Bill Moyers & Company on the many links between poverty and education. She has also written dozens of blogs for the Huffington Post, the Washington Post Answer Sheet, Talk Poverty, the Nation, and other publications. Prior to her work with BBA, Weiss served as project manager for the Pew Charitable Trusts' Partnership for America's Economic Success campaign. Weiss has also served as a member of a Centers for Disease Control task force on child abuse and as volunteer counsel for clients at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless.

Paul Reville is the Francis Keppel Professor of Practice of Educational Policy and Administration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), where he has been a faculty member since 1997. He is the founding director of HGSE's Education Redesign Lab. Reville served as secretary of education for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 2008 to 2013. His career, spanning more than four decades, has combined research, policy, and practice focused on educational equity and reform in Massachusetts and the nation. He has been a top policy-maker, a teacher, a principal, and the founder of a research center and several other organizations devoted to education equity and reform.

During his service as the secretary of education for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and as Governor Patrick's top education adviser, Reville established a new Executive Office of Education and had oversight of higher education, K-12, and early education in the nation's leading student achievement state. He served in the governor's cabinet and played a leading role on matters ranging from the Achievement Gap Act of 2010 and Common Core State Standards to the commonwealth's highly successful Race to the Top proposal. Before joining the Patrick administration, Reville had chaired the Massachusetts State Board of Education, founded the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy, cofounded the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education (MBAE), chaired the Massachusetts Reform Review Commission, chaired the Massachusetts Commission on Time and Learning, and served as executive director of the Pew Forum on Standards-Based Reform, a national think tank that convened leading US researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers to set the national standards agenda. Reville played a central role in MBAE's development of, and advocacy for, the Massachusetts historic Education Reform Act of 1993.

Reville began his career with service as a VISTA volunteer and youth worker. He worked as a teacher and principal of two urban alternative high schools. He founded a local education foundation, which was part of the Public Education Network, where he also served as a member of the national board. He has recently served as cochair of the national Broader, Bolder Approach to Education initiative. He is currently a board member of, and adviser to, a host of organizations such as City Year Boston, BELL, Bellwether, Boston After School and Beyond, and Harvard Medical School's MEDscience program. He is a frequent writer and speaker on education reform and policy issues. He holds a bachelor's degree from Colorado College, a master's degree from Stanford University, and five honorary doctorate degrees.

Additionally, Reville is the education commentator for WGBH's Boston Public Radio. He frequently contributes to Education Week and has recently written for Times Education Supplement, Nature Human Behaviour, and the publication of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He edited the book A Decade of Urban School Reform: Persistence and Progress in the Boston Public Schools.


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