“At a time when half of the children in New York City schools come from immigrant-headed households, global and international issues are much more powerfully felt today than in any other time in history,” he says.

With increased outreach, Lagemann says she hopes to identify several issues on which GSE—as an institution—can be an expert source.

“We should be known as the place where you can find superb thinking about important education problems,” she wrote to the faculty. “I believe that identifying one or several topics of school-wide concern would not only give us more standing with our external publics, but also make us a stronger intellectual community.”

Back to Basics

Though Lagemann has gotten the ball rolling on several major changes at GSE since her arrival, no concrete changes have been made at GSE to increase emphasis on K-12 education—which Summers stressed when he selected Lagemann.

Pagett says that while the school can “rhetorically” focus on K-12 education, “it takes time to translate that into real changes.”

Senior Lecturer on Education Katherine K. Merseth, who sat on one of the committees this year, says that Lagemann has maintained a focus on areas other than K-12.

“She’s also very deeply committed to research,” she says. “She comes from a research tradition.”

Lagemann says faculty needs to “think about children before kindergarten and young adults after [grade] 12” in order to improve K-12 education.

“You can’t empower K-12 education by just thinking about K-12 education,” she says.

Some faculty members say that K-12 education has always been a focus of GSE and that Summers’ comments have merely brought already existing work into the spotlight.

“What he’s done is he’s lit a fire under the possibility for really having an impact as a school in K-12 education,” Luttrell says. “Insofar as the school has always focused on K-12 the people who have been doing that kind of work for a while are getting more encouragement.”

Seeking Space

As Lagemann’s committees hammer out more precise details, they will need to find more than financial support for programming changes.

Crowded into three buildings on Appian Way and pushed into rental space, GSE has little room to grow.