Massachusetts Secretary of Education to Give Talk at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Paul Reville, recently appointed secretary of education for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, will give a lecture on Monday, Sept. 29, at 5 p.m. in the Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross. The talk, titled “The Readiness Project: The Massachusetts Initiative to Prepare Students for the Twenty-First Century,” is free and open to the public. The event is sponsored by the Holy Cross education department.

In his talk, Reville will describe the ambitious agenda set out in the Commonwealth’s plan to improve education from preschool through the postsecondary years, as well as the challenges this plan raises for various constituencies.

Shortly after his acceptance of the position of secretary of education in July 2008, Reville stepped down from his role as the director of the Education Policy and Management Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is currently still a senior lecturer on educational policy and politics at Harvard University.

Reville has a long history in education, beginning his career as a VISTA volunteer youth worker, a national service program through AmeriCorps that is designed specifically to fight poverty. He also worked as a teacher and a principal in two urban, alternative high schools. He received his Ed.M. from Stanford University.

He has played an important role in the Massachusetts political scene for the sake of education. Reville was founding executive director for the Alliance for Education, an educational improvement system that targeted Worcester and central Massachusetts. He was also one of the founding executive directors of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education (MBAE), which provided important leadership for the Education Reform Act in 1993. From 1996-2003, Reville served as chair for the Massachusetts Education Reform Review committee. Most recently, he served as the chair of the Massachusetts State Board of Education from 2007-08.

Additionally, Reville served as president of the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy, which is dedicated to the improvement of PreK-12 public education. He was also the executive director of the Pew Forum on Standards-Based Reform. Throughout his time as an educator, he has served on many additional task forces and committees seeking to improve the quality of education in Massachusetts, which he continues to do through work as board member or advisor to numerous organizations, including the Nativity School of Worcester. He also frequently writes and speaks about school reform and educational policy issues.