Sessions
Powering Up Community Schools: The National Guidelines for Integrated Student Support
3:15 PM - 4:45 PM Tue
Joan Wasser Gish works to embed what we are learning from education research and implementation into policy and practice at scale. At Boston College, Joan focuses on the effective integration of comprehensive “wraparound” services and opportunities to transform child outcomes. Working with policymakers at the federal and state levels, Joan translates lessons from research and implementation into a roadmap for action. She has helped to shape federal guidance on $190b stimulus funds for education, worked with states – red and blue – to invest about $2b in student wellbeing FY20-22, and co-developed a statewide district learning network in Massachusetts in partnership with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy that reaches ~86,000 students. Most recently, she led the co-development of the National Guidelines for Integrated Student Support by expert researchers and practitioners from across the country.
Joan serves on numerous national and state-level advisory boards including the Sciences of Learning and Development (SoLD) Alliance, Design; the Massachusetts Safe and Supportive Schools Commission; and was twice appointed by the Governor to the Massachusetts Board of Early Education and Care. During her 11 year tenure on the Board, Joan helped to build systems that improved implementation quality and benefited children, expanded high-value investments in quality early education and care, expanded access to early education for low-income preschoolers via an approach that produced significant positive child outcomes, and improved alignment of the early education system which a third-party study found to increase program quality across the Commonwealth particularly in communities of greatest need.
Joan has extensive experience related to educational and social domestic policies focused on low-income children and families. She grew up in a low-income community and worked on these issues as an attorney, in a Presidential campaign, and in the United States Senate. She has been published by the Washington Post, Brookings Institute, Education Week, Boston Herald, and Commonwealth Magazine; and frequently lectures at Harvard and BC. She holds a JD from Columbia University’s School of Law, an MA in Education Policy from Columbia’s Teachers’ College, and a BA from Brown University.