“The hurricane whips up twenty-foot high waves, agitating the surface of the ocean, yet fathoms below the surface fish and plant life go undisturbed by the uproar on the ocean’s surface.”
(School Reform Metaphors: The Pendulum and Hurricane
Larry Cuban (2020)
In my previous blog, I described the reasons why curricular reform in schools has failed to dislodge the college-bound curricula adopted at the turn of the century. In this blog, I will describe the reasons why comprehensive school reform (CSR) has failed to gain traction in our nation’s schools. The opening quote to this blog is an apt metaphor for the comings and goings of school reform mandates. Each year, a new CSR agitates main office inboxes, but, rarely, if ever, do these yearly reform hurricanes disturb the organizational systems and classroom routines that surround school offices. What follows is a summary of why the deep structure of schooling goes undisturbed by the reform uproar in main offices.
No Implementing Agents:
Although all of the proposed comprehensive school reform initiatives have been well researched and do offer sounder methods for teaching and learning, all of these initiatives are composed of theories, ideas, practices, and vocabularies that are foreign to administrators and teachers. For a school reform initiative to disturb established classroom teaching routines, administrators must make sense of, interpret, and provide the organizational infrastructure to accommodate the theories, ideas, practices, and vocabularies of a new school reform mandate. Most administrators, however, view the implementation of a school reform mandate as merely a managerial task—the distribution of materials, scheduling workshops, and recording outcomes of accountability benchmarks. Even if an administrator understands the worth of new approaches to teaching and learning, most lack the prior knowledge and teaching ability to effectively convey the theories, ideas, practices, and vocabularies to their faculty.
All Reforms are Local
All comprehensive school reform initiatives take a one-size-fits-all approach. In reality, all districts come from somewhere, with distinct histories and cultures. From the outside looking in, all schools appear to same. Inside faculty lodges, main offices, and classrooms, however, there exist local contexts and unique circumstances that local agents—administrators—must first notice, then frame, interpret, and construct meaning for policy messages. What this process looks like in practice is administrators adopting parts of the policy message, adapting other parts of the policy message, and discarding other parts of the policy message. The outcome of this reauthoring process is a policy message that leaves theories largely intact but has reauthored practices to accommodate the diverse demographics, resources, and challenges of different districts.
Teacher Prior Beliefs
For most teachers, schools have worked well for them. They sat quietly, listened to lectures, took notes, completed worksheets, completed daily homework assignments, did well on Friday’s test, and earned top scores. This solid academic track record translated into continued success in college. Governmental or board mandates that run counter to how teachers were taught will interfere with their ability to interpret and implement the reform in ways consistent with the designer’s intent. Fundamental conceptual change requiring restructuring of existing knowledge is extremely difficult. Dramatic changes are rare. Teachers will adapt knowledge or practices to what they already believe or do in the classroom. They will not explore a full understanding of theory or practice, but instead will adopt those parts that make sense to them. The result of this reauthoring process is the misrepresentation of theories and practices in the classroom.
The Lack of Expertise
While teachers and administrators often see themselves as experts in their field, many fall short of meeting the three essential criteria that define a true expert:
- Experts build a knowledge structure that encompasses more diverse cases and is organized around deeper principles.
- Experts see deeper patterns in problem situations.
- Experts are less likely to be distracted by similarities that are only superficial—to lose the forest in the trees.
It should be noted that most administrators are experts at managing a school: buses arrive on time; classrooms are fully staffed with certified teachers; curricular materials have been distributed; budgets are balanced. Most school administrators, however, fail to develop the expertise to achieve the following educational goals written into most school mission statements: Moving beyond test preparation to deep, transferable learning.
- Creating a culture of curiosity rather than compliance;
- Modeling adult learning.
- Training staff to integrate social-emotional learning intentionally;
- Connecting global issues to local contexts in a practical way;
- Moving beyond scripted curricula to project-based and inquiry learning;
- Integrating technology meaningfully rather than as add-ons.
The Organizational Context of Schooling
The “egg carton” structure of schools creates an organizational structure that prevents teachers from interacting with their colleagues and undermines opportunities for teachers to test or be exposed to alternative understandings of policy. A true learning organization creates spaces and time for interdisciplinary learning and collaboration. To be sure, schools organized around separate, distinct subjects divided into fixed periods are easy to manage, but serve as a firewall to the very goals schools claim in their mission statements.
The Educational Deep State
The world of educational consultants, textbook manufacturers, and professional organizations often claims they are advancing the goals in school mission statements. In practice, however, this deep state of consultants, publishers, and professional organizations reinforces the existing structure of schooling and the “deep state of teaching” rather than challenging the centuries old grammar of schooling.
Substantive Change is Difficult
It is one thing to ask a teacher to make minor changes to their classroom teaching practices: swapping one textbook for another, adding tech integration, sending teachers to workshops. It is quite another to ask a teacher to rethink the design of learning itself. Asking a teacher to unlearn the practices associated with teaching isolated subject instruction and master the practices of inquiry-based learning is a cognitive shift that most teachers would be unwilling or unable to make.
The Fundamental Questions of School Reform
Although the list of barriers to school reform is formidable, they are not insurmountable. Many of my blogs provide a road map for challenging structures and beliefs, and begin the journey to align daily practice with the values and aspirations written into their mission statements. Before beginning that journey, however, administrators should personally answer for themselves the following fundamental questions of school reform:
- Why would I do it?
- What does “it” look like, and which elements, practices, and processes are necessary and sufficient ingredients for “it?”
- What are the necessary conditions, both inside and outside the schools and in the broader education systems, for “it” to happen?
- If you did “it”, would it “work?”
- How do you sustain and continuously improve “it?”
Alan C. Jones 