Nancy Hill, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, will use this Distinguished Fellows award to immerse herself in the operations of Massachusetts’s Executive Office of Education and the Child and Youth Readiness Cabinet. Hill has devoted her career to studying how families interact with schools. While she conducts research relevant to education, she has little direct experience with the state and local settings charged with developing and implementing educational policies. Thus, the primary goal of her Fellowship is to gain a clearer understanding of the resources and negotiations policymakers face as they consider, develop, and launch educational policies to support youth and their families. She will be mentored by Paul Reville, the Massachusetts Secretary of Education, and Abby Weiss, the manager of the Child and Youth Readiness Cabinet. Over the course of one year, Hill will spend approximately two to three days per week shadowing Weiss at the Cabinet. She will accompany Weiss to four high-poverty school districts in Massachusetts that are in the process of forming state and local agency partnerships to facilitate supportive services for students and families. Through this immersion experience, Hill hopes to inform her research on families’ and teens’ academic adjustment and mental health and eventually share her insights about bridging research and policy.
Nancy Hill, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, will use this Distinguished Fellows award to immerse herself in the operations of Massachusetts’s Executive Office of Education and the Child and Youth Readiness Cabinet.
