This week, IEN reposts a blog from Larry Cuban that captures the challenges of clearly articulating the difficulty of reforming schools on a large scale while still fostering hope for the future. Cuban is a Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University, a former high school social studies teacher and district superintendent, and one of the foremost authorities on educational reform in the US. Previous IEN posts from Cuban or focused on Cuban’s work include Schooling around the World; The arc of Progressivism and “Grammar of Schooling”; and (Not) Reforming again and again and again The original post appeared on Larry Cuban’s Blog on July 9th.
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Many years ago, I had met with a group of Stanford University graduate students then working on their joint Masters in Business Administration (MBA) and education. Some had taught for a few years through Teach for America and were eager to graduate and then apply their knowledge and skills learned in their MBA program to largely minority, low-performing schools.
Here is the post I wrote about that discussion I had with these wannabe reformers eager to engage in changing schools.
Many of the 18 MBA students sitting around a seminar table had taught a few years in urban schools through Teach for America (TFA). Those who had no direct experience in schools had worked for consulting firms with contracts in major urban districts. Smart, savvy about organizations and passionate about reforming schools, the students wanted to hear my thoughts about reform that I had extracted from nearly a half-century of experience as teacher, superintendent, and researcher.
I offered four lessons. Since I have written about each of these lessons in earlier posts I will compress the lessons and cite the earlier posts for those readers who want more information.
I learned that:
*It is essential to distinguish between reform talk, adoption of reform-driven policies, and putting reforms into classroom practice. (See https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/the-inexorable-cycles-of-school-reform/)
* Reform talk and policy action in the purposes of tax-supported schooling, curriculum, instruction and organization of schools often occur in cycles but putting reforms into practice is slow, requires steady work, incremental, and often zig-zag. (See https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/the-inexorable-cycles-of-school-reform/)
* Turning to public schools as a solution for larger economic, social, and political problems has become a national tic, a peculiar habit, that U.S. reformers have had for decades (See https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2011/01/15/does- reforming-u-s-schools-soften-or-harden-inequalities-in-wealth-and-health/
* Both stability and change mark the path of public schools over the past two centuries (See https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/how-do-teachers-teach-2/ )
I spent about 30 minutes going over these lessons and then I opened the floor to students’ questions.
After a few questions asking me to clarify the lessons I had learned, a visibly agitated young woman recounted her experience as a TFAer in an urban district and her journey to Stanford for conceptual and organizational skills (and credentials). She wanted to return to a similar system to make organizational and instructional changes.
Then she asked her question: “Larry, look around this room. It is filled with people who want to reform failing schools. We will have the knowledge and skills and we will work hard. But your message to us is that reform talk occurs in cycles, adopted reforms come back again and again, reformers stumble a lot and when changes do occur they are small ones. Well, how can I put it: you don’t give me and my colleagues here too much hope. I am depressed from the lessons you have learned over so many decades. What advice would you give to all of us?”
I was neither surprised nor put off by the question. David Tyack and I had taught a course on the history of school reform for over a decade from which we wrote our book, Tinkering toward Utopia. Moreover, I had heard variations of this question often as a conference keynoter and in many prior discussions with students, colleagues, and conferees.
The upside of the student’s comment is recognizing that emotions and passions buried in heart-felt values of equity and helping urban low-income and minority students drive much school reform. That is a plus often overlooked by policymakers who too often prize values of effectiveness and efficiency and cite cost-benefit trade-offs and return on investment (ROI) rather than openly acknowledging the emotions involved in reform.
Emotions fuel practitioners, policymakers, and parents to move past the inevitable potholes on the road to reform success. Whether a reform is scientifically proven, logical, or even efficient surely matters but high-octane self-confidence and righteous belief in doing something worthwhile count also.
Unfortunately, emotions too often skip over inspection of assumptions. And there is one quiet assumption hidden in that student’s question.
Wanting to do good for urban youth, willing to put in hard work, and having a Stanford degree were somehow enough to turn around a failing classroom and an under-performing school. And here in this seminar I was claiming that any wannabe reformer needed knowledge of previous well-intentioned designs and prior reformers who had also worked hard but experienced a few small victories while often tasted the salt of many failures. That I may have triggered the blues in some of these wannabe reformers seemed both unfair and unrealistic to my questioner.
Even though nearly all these students accepted the accuracy of what I said-–many had read similar accounts of previous reforms–- I sensed that the questioner wanted reassurance that her time, energy, and commitment would pay off later in successful reforms.
Since I could neither reassure her nor give her unvarnished hope, what advice did I give this room filled with Reformers-R-Us?
What I did was talk about the importance of knowing realistically what faces anyone undertaking an adventure that contains the possibility, nay, probability of failure. I compared the launching of a reform in a school or district to climbing a difficult mountain. Responsible people want a guide. Someone who can tell the adventurers where the crevices are, what false turns to avoid, where the icy spots are and to be honest about the possibility that they may have to turn back before reaching the summit.
Accurate knowledge of forthcoming difficulties, honesty, and humility are crucial to reaching the summit of a mountain or implementing a school reform. Hope for success rests in expertise, problem solving, and courage but–and this is an especially important “but”–climbing that mountain (implementing that reform in an actual classroom or school) is still worth the effort even if success (however defined) is not achieved.
That is what I told those MBA students.
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