“OECD data shows that Austria is comparatively well-positioned in terms of teacher supply. The proportion of unfilled teaching positions in primary and secondary education is around one percent. Austria also has a lower teacher attrition rate of 5.8 percent, below the OECD average of 6.4 percent and the EU average of 6.9 percent. At the same time, the report shows that Austria needs to focus more on retaining young teachers“
“Colombian teachers teach 955 hours of class per year, while the OECD average is 770. In lower secondary school, the workload reaches 840 hours annually, compared to 710 hours...Colombian spending reached $3,526 per student in primary school and $3,594 in lower secondary school. In OECD countries, the figures were $12,893 and $14,291, respectively.“
“Women make up a clear majority of teachers at lower levels of education, but they remain underrepresented in education leadership positions in almost all OECD countries.” In Finland, women account for 97% of teachers in early childhood education and 53% in tertiary education.”
“Iceland devotes a larger share of its economy to public education than the OECD average. However, the system continues to face teacher shortages and uneven educational attainment.”
“Despite recent talk of teacher shortages, Ireland outperforms most countries in recruiting and retaining qualified staff. Only 0.3 per cent of teachers are not fully qualified, compared with 9.1 per cent across the OECD, and just 2.1 per cent left the profession in 2024/25, a third of the international rate.”
“In Israel, the share of 18- to 24-year-olds who are neither studying nor working rose from 17% in 2015 to 20% in 2025 … Across OECD countries with available data, the average fell from 16% to 13% over the same period.”
“‘lateral entrants’ [second career teachers] represent 8 percent of the teaching staff in primary and secondary education worldwide. That share is more than twice as high in countries such as the Netherlands (16,9 percent), Iceland, Australia, and New Zealand. That is a huge difference compared to Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, countries with a lateral entry rate of less than 1 percent.”
“The data showed that 71.1% of South Koreans ages 25 to 34 had completed higher education in 2025, the highest rate among OECD members and 23.6 percentage points above the OECD average of 47.5%…The employment rate for South Korean university graduates ages 25 to 64 was 80.1%, 5.9 percentage points below the OECD average of 86%.”
“Around 70% of women aged 25 to 34 who have not completed upper secondary education are outside the labour force, one of the highest rates among OECD and partner countries. By contrast, the inactivity rate among women in the same age group who have completed tertiary education is significantly lower, at around 10%.”
In the final installment of this three-part interview, Roselyn Baronia shares her students’ reactions and her reflections after she introduced an oral defense into a coding lab in herAP Computer Science A (CSA)course.In part one, Baronia described her background and the problems she encountered with the students that made her realize that something had to change. Baronia has been teaching at the Tsinglan School, a private international school in Dongguan, China, since 2020. She’s also the Head of the Computer Science department, the Technology Coordinator, and the chair of the school’s AI committee. This interview has been edited for length and clarity and formatted by Adelaida Kim.
As a resource for teachers interested in adapting an oral defense into their work, a publicwebsiteprovides access to some of Baronia’s materials from the virtual pet project, including a timeline, a lesson overview, student examples, and a rubric.
Thomas Hatch (TH): You’ve described for us why you created the oral defense for your students’ coding lab and how the oral defense worked; can you tell us about the students’ reaction? Once they had completed their presentations and participated as panelists — what were their reflections?
Roselyn Baronia (RB): Generally, their reflections showed the students found the oral defense helpful in terms of preparing them for their external exam and understanding the coding process. That’s really a big thing for me, because that’s what I want. I want them not to just submit a project, but to understand how they were able to come up with that project. The reality is that in the future, they will really be using AI when they’re working. But making choices — why are you creating this kind of collection instead of just a simple variable, for instance — it’s important that they understand why, justify their choices, and consider what alternatives there might be. That’s what they were saying in the feedback. They were also saying they found it very helpful and want to do it again, but there are also some students who felt that some of the questions — coming from their peers — were not technical enough. Some of them said they hoped the audience could ask questions. But overall, they are looking forward to doing it again.
“I want them not to just submit a project, but to understand how they were able to come up with that project.”
YouTube Video of Group 2 answering questions during their oral defense
TH: What about your experience? You told us a little about the different kinds of presentations, but as you were watching the presentations and then as you reflected on the whole process — what did you notice? What stood out to you?
RB: I was so proud of my students. I can’t tell you how proud I am to see them like that. I could see how excited they were; they were beaming with excitement. And even the teachers were very happy, saying, ‘Wow, I didn’t know that it would be this fulfilling to hear the students explain the reasons why they chose this or that functionality.” That was really good, because for instance, some students would add a feature and say, “I did this because I also have cats at home” — they could relate it to real life. They’d say, “I added this feature because when my cat keeps playing with other cats, they’ll be happy, but they’ll also get tired. So in my program, I created this variable that keeps track of the happiness of the pet, and then I had to create a formula so that it would impact the level of energy and the level of thirst of the pet.” It’s amazing when you hear this from the kids — how creative they can be. You can’t help but laugh while they’re sharing. I’m really, really proud of what they did.
Slides from Group 2’s presentation (YouTube Video) showing how each code decides what happens when the virtual pet eats. Each food item has its own effect: it can boost energy, happiness, or add weight
A slide from Group 2’s presentation to help explain how they used a problem-solving approach to create codes
Takeaways from the oral defense and implications for the future
TH: We’re conducting this interview only a few weeks since you held the oral defense. What are you taking away? Are you planning to make changes in the future?
RB: Next year I think I’ll have mini oral defenses throughout the year. I might do this in pairs — giving each pair 5–10 minutes for small projects or small coding activities where they’ll have a defense among each other. That way they’ll practice how to ask questions, feel more confident doing this kind of activity, and see the value of understanding algorithms and problem decomposition. Problem decomposition is actually one of the key issues I see in computer science. Students get too excited and immediately open the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and start coding without even knowing what the problem is. I think this is not just a computer science issue; it’s connected to math as well. I spoke to the math teachers and told them maybe we can look at strengthening the skill of decomposing a problem by giving students more structure. For instance, I tell them to find all nouns and put them in a rectangle and find all verbs and put them in circles — verbs and nouns connected to programming. I think this is a very, very important skill that students should master if we want them to be better in computing.
TH: Where in your schedule — in your labs or your PBLs — would you put these mini oral defenses?
RB: Probably during the coding activities. For example, in every unit, we have coding activities to develop students’ skills followed by a coding challenge. I have two 40-minute blocks. In the first 40-minute block, 25 minutes is for coding activities intended to build student skills. In the second 40-minute block, I usually give a programming challenge — the students now have the skills, so I level up the coding activity. There’s less structure for this challenge, and the students really have to think about how to solve the problem. That’s probably when they can do the mini oral defense. I’m thinking they would have these mini-defenses maybe twice per topic, because I don’t have too much time. Or perhaps I could have them record their work and put it on a SharePoint site where classmates can comment or ask questions and interact through the platform, so as not to take time from the class.
TH: Any other takeaways or ways that this experience is affecting your thinking or planning for the rest of this year or next year?
RB: I think I can say that if we involve students in the process and are honest with them about what we’re seeing, they will also see the value of what we want to achieve. This is what I experienced. I told them I was really concerned, and I stated some facts with them. Because of that, students felt the sincerity that there really is a need for modifying how we do things in the class.
The students were very helpful, and they were the ones who actually came up with many of the ideas. They would say: “Miss, I think it’s going to be better if we do it this way.” So, my key takeaway is: be honest, grow with your students. It’s okay to make mistakes, and you can admit it with your students and laugh about it. I know a lot of teachers are very much afraid of using technology in class or of pointing out problems when using technology, because they themselves are not confident about making mistakes in front of their students. But I think the more we become honest with our students, the more we become reachable, relatable, and more human. And that makes the class more exciting and more colorful.
“[T]he more we become honest with our students, the more we become reachable, relatable, the more human we become for them. And that makes the class more exciting and more colorful.”
TH: Wonderful. What were some of the other ideas that came from the students that you might implement?
RB: As I said, one of the things is the students said they should be able to ask more questions, which is a really good idea. They also suggested inviting teachers from other departments. This virtual pet lab is similar to creating a Tamagotchi, and they were thinking of what it would be like to sell their apps. One student said, “What if we could invite a business teacher to listen to this?” I said, “Yeah, that’s a good idea; maybe we can do that.” Those ideas are helpful because I can see that they also want to connect what we’re doing in the classroom with other disciplines, and I think that’s what we also aim for. It’s good to be hearing it from the students themselves.
Screenshots of Group 2’s virtual pets
The limits of time for co-designing activities with students and implementing new assessments
TH: Are you going to include more opportunities in your classes for students to share their ideas about assessment or other things?
RB: To be honest with you, I don’t think I can do that too often because we have so many interruptions, and so many things to do to prepare them for the external exam. But, whenever possible, I already involve my students in designing activities or assessments because I want them to own their learning. Aside from what I’ve shared during the interview, I use the time that I walk around to informally gather their thoughts about the activities and assessments. I also ask them to reflect every time they do coding activities. They write these in their notebooks – writing errors, how did they correct it, key takeaways, etc. and then how they think they can best showcase their learning on this matter. I also reach out to students during the summer and ask them then, because I already know who my students will be. We have a course selection platform that students use, so I know who’s going to be in my class. I usually reach out to them before the holiday, and I assign them some homework or readings on certain topics, so I can save time and have more time for other things. I need to identify what topics I think students can actually do themselves.
TH: Talking about the limited time, a lot of teachers are concerned that they can’t add anything like an oral defense because there’s no time. How did you make the time to add in the oral defense? What did you drop?
RB: I actually did not drop anything. I just used a flipped approach and recorded things. For differentiation, I have different ways for my students to learn a topic. Some students who are already skilled don’t need to listen to my lecture — they can immediately jump into programming activities. But some students will watch my lecture at home so that when they come to school, they can do the activity. So I did not drop anything, but I would say I tried to speed things up.
But also, before the holidays, I will explain to my students: “We have this laboratory coming up, and I know that you like doing this, and I want you to have fun. But for this to happen, I’m sorry, but there are things you have to do during the holiday. Is that fine with you?” And they will say “yes.” Again, I try to be as honest as possible with them instead of dictating. The more they know the reasoning behind something, the more they cooperate.
Oral assessment, differentiation and support for language learners
TH: You mentioned differentiation, so I wanted to go back to that student you mentioned in the second part of our interview who you said was struggling with English. I think one of the biggest concerns about oral defenses and oral assessments is that whether it’s a home language or a second language, students’ communication or language abilities can get in the way of their ability to show their technical skills or content knowledge. How did you deal with that with the oral defense?
RB: That was a real issue for us. For the oral defense, I explained to the teachers who served as panelists and who could only speak English that I allow the student panelists to ask questions in Chinese, since they know this student is struggling in English. Then the student panelists would also relay the question to us in English so we could understand. The other teachers and I gave our questions in English, and I asked the student, “Do you need someone to translate this for you?” Sometimes he would say “yes,” but most of the time he would say, “No, Miss Rose, I know, I understand.” I could really see how much he was trying. He would bring a dictionary with him all the time. He was really working very hard to remember vocabulary words. When I speak to him, I try to repeat those words so he gets used to them — and those vocabulary words are the ones used in the external exam as well. When he tried to respond, he couldn’t always come up with a full sentence, but I told him, “That’s fine. If you want to answer in Chinese, I’ll ask your classmates to translate.”
In the end, I don’t think assessing him was more difficult than assessing other students — his coding abilities came through. Every time I wanted to emphasize something, I would ask his classmates to say it in Chinese. But before doing that, I would ask him first if he needed a translation. Because of a good connection with him — I would say we have a very good teacher-student relationship — he would honestly tell me whether he needed translation or not. I don’t see that as a problem at all.
Implications for AI and assessment across classes
TH: In your role as technology coordinator — not just in your coding class, but in the school — what else have you noticed about the use of AI and assessment? What are you learning and what will you be changing as a result?
RB: Reflecting on our various efforts to improve AI integration, I have come to realize the need for more explicit and structured guidance. Previously, for faculty, I shared sample tasks with simple tables indicating where AI use was permitted or restricted, or adjustments to assessment guidelines. However, I now see that this level of guidance is not sufficient—teachers require more concrete support. Similar to how we scaffold learning and make thinking visible for students, I believe we need to apply the same approach for teachers. Recently, I have been developing step-by-step guidance, such as:
how to initiate conversations with students about AI,
which tools to recommend,
how to guide students in crafting effective and appropriate prompts, and
how to support student reflection on their use of AI.
I am also applying this structured approach to develop resources for teacher-related tasks. With the help of the AI Committee, I’ve created a presentation and some support for lesson planning. Rather than simply advising teachers to “think before using AI,” we are explicitly outlining what prior thinking is expected and what data or inputs need to be prepared before engaging with AI tools.
A slide from Baronia’s presentation to her colleagues about uses of AI
In a draft policy I submitted to the principal, I also wrote that when teachers are using AI in the classroom, at the very least, they have to have students reflect on the kind of results AI has generated, because this is aligned to the different research studies I’ve read. That’s also part of the reason I created the summative assessment guideline and the oral defense — to show teachers that there should be another way of using AI without negatively impacting the critical thinking skills of students. And I can prove that. In the unit test connected to the Virtual Pet Lab with the oral defense, there was only one student who got less than 15 out of 18 — that’s really good.
[T]hat’s the reason I created the summative assessment guideline and the oral defense — to show teachers that there should be another way of using AI without negatively impacting the critical thinking skills of students.
TH: What you mentioned about the teachers in the school is fascinating. One of the things I’m struggling with as a teacher is just keeping up with which assignments can now be done by AI and what I should do instead. Do you have a sense of which activities we should no longer assign because students are just using AI to do them?
RB: There is a framework from Common Sense — I’m also a Common Sense Education Ambassador – and the framework is more about breaking down the task. For example, if a student is creating an essay, what are the stages? The first stage is brainstorming, the second stage is writing the first draft, and so on. The teacher has to break down the task, and then there’s a column that says ‘AI is allowed’ and ‘AI is not allowed,’ so the teacher marks it so students know exactly when AI can be used. And when AI is allowed — for example, in the first draft column — the teacher has to provide structure. I showed this in my training to teachers: I will have a table where on the left side you paste your draft, and the second part of the table shows how AI changed or modified the student’s draft. That document also includes what prompts were used, what parts of the AI-generated output the student accepted, what parts they didn’t, and why.
With concerns that AI was undermining her students’ critical thinking, Roselyn Baronia didn’t ban it — she redesigned her assessment around it. In the second installment of this three-part interview, Baronia discusses the oral defense she created for a coding lab to produce a “virtual pet” and the rationale behind it. In part one, Baronia described her background and the problems she encountered with students that led her to realize something had to change in her teaching ofAP Computer Science A (CSA). Part three will share some of Barnonia’s reflections on what she’s learned as she’s made these changes and on the implications for her future teaching. Baronia has been teaching at the Tsinglan School, a private international school in Dongguan, China, since 2020. Baronia’s also the Head of the Computer Science department, Technology Coordinator, and chair of the school’s AI committee. This interview has been edited for length and clarity and formatted by Adelaida Kim.
As a resource for teachers interested in adapting an oral defense into their work, a publicwebsiteprovides access to some of Baronia’s materials from the virtual pet project, including a timeline, a lesson overview, student examples, and a rubric.part
Thomas Hatch (TH): You’ve already talked about how, as you walked around your classroom, you could see that students were relying too much on AI when they were coding. When did you realize you had a problem? Can you pick up the story from there?
Roselyn Baronia (RB): This was in November and December of 2025. I had already done the first two units, which are the foundation units of AP Computer Science A (CSA). In Unit 3, students are asked to apply what they learned in Units 1 and 2 in a project-based learning activity. In that activity, I’m not teaching in the traditional sense. The students will be building something, and I will guide them, but I won’t be delivering lessons. That was the time I realized my students were heavily depending on AI, because there were so many times I could see it. I would know because the students would try to hide it. They would try to close a window on their computer, or they’d look surprised when I walked by. I would just tell them, “Why does it feel like you’re cheating? Why do you think you’re cheating?” I’d ask them, “Why don’t you want to admit to me that you’re using AI?” They felt ashamed about using AI. That was the turning point. I was like, this has to change. Somebody has to make these kids understand that they are losing a very, very important aspect of learning if they totally depend on AI.
“Somebody has to make these kids understand that they are losing a very, very important aspect of learning if they totally depend on AI.”
I told them, AI is a tool that should help us, but not something we can solely depend on. There are some kids that really need AI. For instance, I have a student who is struggling with English, and some teachers are concerned he might not graduate. But in my class, this student is really doing his best. It’s difficult for him because it’s in English and his English level is low — but that’s why he needed AI. For that particular instance, I think that’s fine. But for other students, AI is just an easy way to get the answers, and this is not right — that’s why I needed to change the assessment.
TH: What steps did you take once you realized you needed to do something?
RB: I had a conversation with my students. I told them about recent MIT research in an article called “Your brain on ChatGPT” that suggested that AI can be helpful. However, if you just use it to do the work for you, it can undermine your learning. I also shared some statistics from McKinsey, the World Economic Forum, and related research from MIT about the problems with relying too much on AI. I told my students: you are taking computer science, and you are at the front line of the technology used in the classroom, so you have to do it right and influence your peers. That’s why I need you to really think about why there’s a need for using AI. Surprisingly, they acknowledged the problem. They said they rely too much on AI, and I was happy that they understood there is an impact from using AI — it’s a double-edged sword.
A slide from Baronia’s presentation to the students about AI usage
“They said they rely too much on AI, and I was happy that they understood there is an impact from using AI — it’s a double-edged sword.“
After that, I asked them: How do you think we should modify our assessments to make sure you are not relying too much on AI and are actually learning? I tried to involve them in the process, because I have teenagers myself, and I know this is a sensitive matter. That’s why I realized maybe I should involve them — ask them how they feel about changing the assessment, how they feel about giving lower weights to final products and instead focusing on the process. Then, when I suggested doing an oral defense, they said, ‘Yes, we’re fine, we’re excited, we want to do the oral defense.’
Another reason they agreed to the defense was because, as they were doing their first lab, some of them were already using AI, and when they took the unit test and progress check afterward, there was a gap between what they were able to show in their final product and their performance on the free-response questions. That means some of them really relied on AI — maybe the students couldn’t admit it to me, but they admitted it to themselves — because the test results didn’t match the quality of the product they submitted.
“The test results didn’t match the quality of the product they submitted. Thestudentscouldn’t admit it to me, but they admitted it to themselves.”
The Oral Defense
TH: So you realized you had to do something last November while they were doing one of the project-based learning in Unit 3, and then you had the discussion with them in December, in preparation for their second Lab. After you had the discussion and got them on board, what did you do?
RB: When they said it was fine to change our assessments, I presented them with a plan for an oral defense to come at the end of their 2nd lab, and they were okay with it. They told me they were excited and looking forward to the oral defense. We brainstormed how they would be assessed and who would be part of a panel of judges who would assess them. Then they continued working on their projects. For this lab, all the students chose to create, and they worked on it between December and February. There actually wasn’t that much class time, because in January we had our final exam for the first semester, so there was an interruption; and then one week after their exam, we stopped again because of the Chinese New Year holiday — that was a three-week holiday. So we held the oral defense about two or three weeks after the Chinese New Year.
One of the student groups discusses their coding in the oral defense
TH: Can you describe for us how the oral defense went?
RB: The panel was composed of two adults — I was one of them, and the second was one of the other computer science teachers. I also invited the head of curriculum, teaching and assessment, and the division directors, because in my mind I also wanted to offer this learning opportunity that might help change assessments in other subjects. Unfortunately, the administrators were not able to come because of their busy schedules.
TH: Just so I’m clear: you and one other computer science teacher were on the panel. Was there anyone else?
RB: There were two students. One suggestion from the students was to allow everyone in the audience to ask questions, but that would take too long, but instead I was able to include two students on every panel.
TH: Did every student have a chance to be a panelist?
RB: Yes. Because I wanted them to also experience what it’s like to ask questions.
TH: Did you do any preparation for them in terms of being a panelist, or did you just assign them and let it go?
RB: That’s a very good question. I shared with them some of my experiences as a panelist, but I did not have a formal session to practice asking questions — and that’s something I have to reflect on. I experienced one or two students who, when they were supposed to ask questions, either didn’t want to ask questions or asked questions that were more connected to emotions and not very technical, like, “Did you enjoy it?” or “Did you have fun?”
TH: Can you describe for me your experience with the oral defense? How long did it take to do all of them? How did it work?
RB: The students worked in groups to create their virtual pets, and every group had 15 minutes for the defense — it was actually quite short. So basically, each group had 3 minutes for the presentation, and they could do it in any way they wanted.
A lot of students in the first class did a traditional presentation — they demonstrated their app and what it could do. But in the second class, it was more video-based. They created a video, and one of them did something like a podcast, as a way to share what their project was about. After the 3-minute presentation, the panelists started asking questions. Every panelist could ask up to 2 questions, for a total of eight questions. I designed for about 1 to 1 and 1/2 minutes per question, plus the presentation, so it took about 15 to 20 minutes per group. But that meant I could only have two groups do the defense in one 40-minute class block. In my first class, it took me 2 days — or 4 blocks — to finish the oral defense. The second class was smaller so it only took 1 day. Then they did a reflection the following day.
The teachers and students on the panel get a copy of the manuscript before the day of the defense so they can go over their answers and base their questions on what the group has written. It also comes with a link showing a demo video of how the code works. Due to limited time, review of students’ work happens before the defense, so what we focus on during the 20-minute activity is more on students proving their work, justifying their choices, sharing rationale behind, understanding how AI is used or influenced in their choices, and checking if the work is originally done by them with AI assistance.
The Assessment
TH: That’s really helpful. You created a Summative Coding sheet for the Virtual Pet Lab, which has a set of questions in the different sections. What was your rationale for this — why did you structure it that way?
RB: I created it because I want to focus on the process. If you look at the summative assessment guidelines, it focuses more on brainstorming — what is the algorithm, how did they come up with it? I was looking at the debugging ability of the students, and I wanted to see what bugs they encountered and how they fixed them. I was looking at the revisions they made — what are the changes, what are the new features they added? So if you look at the rubric, you’ll see the weighting is more on the process itself.
Click here to download the panelist scoring sheet)
I created the sections so that students also know where the questions will come from during the oral defense — so they don’t feel blindsided. They also know from the rubric how much each section weighs, which tells them what’s more important.
TH: And these criteria are connected to your learning goals and also to the expectations for the AP exam?
RB: Yes, I make sure this is aligned to what is being asked in the external exam as well. It’s like hitting two birds with one stone. I want them to have fun, I want them to be responsible in using AI, but at the same time I want to make sure they are prepared for the external exam. And true enough, when they reflected on this, that’s actually what I saw in the reflection.
“I want them to have fun, I want them to be responsible in using AI, but at the same time I want to make sure they are prepared for the external exam. It’s like hitting two birds with one stone.”
Next week:“Be Honest, Grow With Your Students”: An Interview with Rose Baronia on her experiences with AI, Assessment, and a New Oral Defense (Part 3)
What do you do when virtually every activity you ask students to complete can be carried out almost entirely by AI? That’s the challenge Roselyn Baronia faces as she tries to help her students learn to code in AP Computer Science A (CSA). In the first installment of our three-part interview about her efforts to integrate AI into her teaching and transform her assessment process in the 2025-26 school year, Baronia describes her background, how AI crept into her classroom, and the moment she knew something had to change. Part 2 will describe a key change Baronia made in the course: the development and implementation of an oral defense that students are now expected to complete along with one of their coding projects. Part 3 shares some of Baronia’s reflections on what she’s learned as she’s made these changes, as well as the implications for her future teaching. Baronia has been teaching at Tsinglan School, a private international school in Dongguan, China, since 2020. She is also the Head of the Computer Science Department, Technology Coordinator, and chair of the school’s AI committee. This interview has been edited for length and clarity and formatted by Adelaida Kim.For previous posts related to AI, see:Could concerns about the academic pressure on students in China lead to real changes in conventional schooling? Stability & change in the education system in China (Part 4);Scanning the global headlines for recent news on AI, schools, and education: Rapid growth in uses, users, and concerns.
As a resource for teachers interested in adapting an oral defense into their work, a publicwebsiteprovides access to some of Baronia’s materials from the virtual pet project, including a timeline, a lesson overview, student examples, and a rubric.
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Thomas Hatch (TH): Could you give us a little bit of background about how long you’ve been teaching and what courses you’ve taught, and then a little bit about the AP Computer Science A course and how long you’ve been teaching that?
Roselyn Baronia (RB): I’m actually a computer engineer by profession, and I used to work in an IT company in the Philippines. But then I was invited to serve as one of the panelists in an oral defense — in the undergraduate thesis defense at the university where I graduated. That actually started my career in teaching because, after that experience, I became a university instructor. Before I knew it, I fell in love with teaching.
I’ve been teaching for 18 years in total, and in K-12 for the last 13 years. I used to be a teacher in an International Baccalaureate (IB) school, so all the schools I’d worked at were IB schools, except Tsinglan, which I joined six years ago. I’ve been teaching AP Computer Science A (CSA) for 5 years.
TH: How many sections have you been teaching each year?
RB: It started with one class, and I only had 5 students in that very first class. Then it started to grow every year, and currently I have 29 students in two sections. I meet them for eight blocks of 40 minutes in every six-day cycle.
A full teaching load at Tsinglan is 24 blocks, and I handle 16 blocks a cycle. This is reduced because I’m the Head.of the Computer Science Department and the Technology Coordinator for the whole school. At one point, the school asked me if I wanted to just concentrate on being the Technology Coordinator and stop teaching, but I said no; I still want to teach. I love teaching — I just really cannot let it go. I feel that my students need me, even if I have other whole-school work.
TH: And as the Technology Coordinator, you’re working with faculty to help them integrate new technologies and deal with all of their technology issues as well?
RB: Yes, and I’m also the Head of the Computer Science department for the whole school, so I wear multiple hats. In addition, I’m helping the school in data analysis, and I also chair the AI committee — that’s also a whole-school responsibility. There are so many things that I do, but somehow, they overlap. There’s a connection between all of it. It actually puts me in a very good position to understand why assessments should change or be modified, because I can see what is happening and how other teachers are thinking. If I were just a classroom teacher, maybe I wouldn’t have that insight.
TH: Can you describe the basic structure of Computer Science A?
RB: There are actually four units. This is the first year the College Board changed the syllabus. In the past, it was always 10 units, but this year was the first time they reduced it to just four units, and there are four recommended laboratories that we have to do so that students will be more prepared for the external exam.
*There is a holiday from September 27 – October 8, 2025. ** There is a Winter Holiday from December 20, 2025 – January 3, 2026, followed by a Semester 1 Final Exam until January 8, 2026. *** These labs are assigned after the mock exam that occurred during April as enrichment activities. Instant feedback is provided; students can mark their own work from the College Board website.
I’m using a book created by RuneStone Academy called CS Awesome. It’s free, and it’s very helpful because it’s very much aligned to how the College Board expects us to deliver the lesson. That book also comes along with an IDE, or Integrated Development Environment; it’s like the platform where students can actually create code. But the students also have access to other IDE’s, and this is where I realized the need to modify the assessment, because the moment students leave the College Board platform or the CS Awesome platform, they begin to use an IDE that has AI embedded in it. This was a turning point for me when I kept seeing that.
TH: Just so I’m clear, can you describe what an IDE is for those of us who don’t know anything about coding?
RB: In the old days, if you used Windows, you had a text pad, and this is where you actually coded, and we coded a lot of HTML or CSS to build a web page. The IDE is similar to that text pad, but it’s much more sophisticated because AI is already built into it. So if you type the first line, AI will already predict what you’re going to do and provide some parts of your code and suggest what you should do next.
However, inside the College Board platform, there is no IDE at all. So, if students are going to answer something or take a test, they don’t have an IDE — they really just have to write code without indentation, without anything that shows it’s code. But for the labs, because they have to create a real project that actually runs, you cannot use the College Board platform. You really need to go outside of that, and that is when we begin having a problem, because they will be using an IDE like GitHub or Visual Studio. When they start using these IDEs, AI is already built in. When they start to write a line of code, AI will automatically suggest the rest. That got me thinking: how will I know that my students are actually thinking critically if they keep on using an IDE that has AI built in?
AI and the Challenges and Opportunities for Assessment and Learning
TH: When did you realize you needed to make a change in your teaching and assessment because of AI?
RB: It started this past year, in our spring semester of 2025. It all happened after the Chinese New Year. The principal spoke about AI and that we have to use AI, so everything became about AI. The teachers were excited about it because they were thinking it was going to save their time — that was the initial feeling.
But then, as Technology Coordinator, I observe classes, and even when I walk through the hallway, I can hear teachers saying, ‘Okay, you can use AI.’ But the students don’t know how to use it effectively. That started the conversation among teachers, and because I’m also chair of the AI committee and also connected to our Continuous Improvement Group, I was a part of a number of conversations where teachers started talking about their concerns about the use of AI. That started me rethinking what I was doing in the classroom.
Before that, I would just kind of ignore AI or try not to recognize that my students were using it. Maybe I was in the denial stage at the beginning, but I was thinking, ‘Oh, my students probably won’t do that,’ or I would remind them, ‘Please don’t use AI.’ I was like that. But then this past fall when I saw that AI was getting more sophisticated, I realized I had to make a change.
TH: Bring me back to the moment last fall — what led you to the realization that you had to change your practice because of AI?
RB: What I usually do in the classroom is spend maybe 5–10 minutes in the beginning to set the tone — to tell the students what the learning objective is, how we’re going to achieve it, point out the vocabulary words, have a little discussion, and then have them do an activity. While they are coding, I walk around, and I usually see errors—there are bugs—and I check if they need my help. If they do, I’ll help them, or I’ll ask them about their reasons. Why is your algorithm like this? Why are you using conditional statements, for example, or why are you using a “while loop” instead of a “for loop”?
In the past, maybe two or three years ago, when AI was not yet very well known to my students, I noticed they could articulate their decisions much better than now. Just as I said, a lot of my students now say, ‘This is what AI told me, I have to do this.’ That was frightening — there would come a point where students would no longer be thinking because they would just follow what AI tells them to do. AI here in China is also embedded in the browser — they have something called Doubao. I don’t know if you’re familiar, but it’s the most popular AI assistant in China; it’s like Gemini in Google Chrome. It’s very accessible to the students, and some of the students even use DeepSeek because their parents told them they can use it for their homework. So, I felt like I was losing my role in the classroom — like I was competing with AI.
“A lot of my students now say, ‘This is what AI told me, I have to do this.’ That was frightening — there would come a point where students would no longer be thinking because they would just follow what AI tells them to do… I felt like I was losing my role in the classroom.”
TH: What do you mean when you say “I feel like I’m losing my role in the classroom”?
RB: I feel like I’m competing with AI. If I say something, and a student says, ‘But Miss, AI said it like this,’ then I feel like I need to justify what I’m doing. And then there’s tension, because I might tell them they’re not supposed to use AI. So I realized maybe what I’m doing is wrong. Maybe I should acknowledge that AI really exists, and that they can use it and do their projects with AI. But then the focus of my marking and scoring should no longer be about the final project, because I can no longer trust that it is fully their work.
What I really want is for my students to be very prepared for the external exam, because the parents are expecting their kids to get a good mark. I was thinking, how can I do that if I allow them to use AI but then mark the final product, which I know they can do so easily because of AI’s suggestions? That’s why I thought there has to be a change in how I conduct my assessment.
TH: That’s really helpful, but let me make sure I understand: The final product you’re talking about — is that the AP exam itself, or is it a project or culmination of your class?
RB: The final product I meant is the projects created based on the AP’s laboratory requirements. The College Board does not require projects for AP Computer Science A, but students have to do laboratory activities because that will help them retain the concepts and skills that are being assessed in the free-response questions, or FRQs, on the AP exam. For the exam, AP uses an app called Blue Book. It’s a kind of software with an embedded secure browser where students cannot leave that window. So when they take the test, they stay only in that environment, and they can’t use AI.
TH: So was part of the problem that, on the one hand, you wanted them to be able to use AI, but on the other hand, you worried that they would then not be able to do well on the exam when they didn’t have AI?
RB: I want them to be prepared for the test — that’s a given. And when they take the test, there’s no AI; that’s for sure. But when they do the laboratory activity — which is very engaging for them because it prepares them for the exam — they’re being very playful, creative, and thinking of other things to add. But for them to be able to do that, they have to go beyond the curriculum, and so they need AI to help them.
It’s kind of tricky, because they are pushing themselves very much to come up with something. For instance, one of the students created a rhythm game. For her to be able to do that, she had to know how to create an interface in Java — and that is not part of the syllabus. She said, ‘Miss, it won’t feel good if I can’t finish this.’ That’s why she needed AI. But at the same time, I was also afraid that if she kept on using AI, maybe she wouldn’t be thinking deeply, and maybe she wouldn’t score high on the exam.
“Plunged,” “plummeted,” and cratered are among the terms that media sources, particularly in Europe and the America’s, used to describe the results of the latest reading, math and science scores from OECD’s 2025 PISA tests. The negative headlines reflect the fact that the average performance of OECD countries was the lowest recorded to date in science, reading, and mathematics. At the same time, the depressing headlines mask some more positive findings. In particular, Türkiye and Thailand’s students improved in all three subjects; England and the UK jumped into the top ten for the rankings in all three subjects by maintaining its performance in reading and math and improving in science; and many of the usual high performers like China, Singapore, Japan and South Korea maintained their high scores, though with some small decreases here and there. Slight decreases in Singapore in particular were sufficient for China’s four participating regions — Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang — to take the top spot in math and science. Notably, although the decline in test scores was the steepest ever in OECD countries, the average score decline in reading and math in non-OECD countries was almost half as much as in OECD countries, and non-OECD countries average science scores remained about the same as 2022.
Headlines around the world also highlighted concerns that the drops in scores might be related to the emergence of AI and increases in screen time, cellphone use and other “digital distractions.”As always, assigning blame (or occasionally credit) for changes in average performance is not easy, and there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of any quick conclusions about the factors that may be affecting the changes in scores this time around. At first glance, some correlations seem to support the concerns. For instance, the UK’s strong performance goes along with survey results showing only 19% of UK students in the UK reported that their peers are often distracted by digital devices during science lessons in 2025, compared to the OECD average of 28%. Furthermore, 80% of UK students attend schools where cellphones are banned compared to the OECD average of 49%. However, even the results within the UK are not consistent, with the performance of students in England largely driving the UK’s improvements. In contrast, students performance declined substantially in reading and math in Wales and Scotland even without substantial differences in screen time or cellphone use from their peers in England.
In addition Iceland reported the largest decline in performance in reading and science and nearly the largest in math over the last 10 years; yet, for the most part, Iceland has lower than average reports of “digital distraction” and the OECD report finds that in Iceland digital distraction is not associated with significant differences in student performance. Iceland also serves as an important reminder that the PISA tests are only one way to measure the effectiveness of education systems. Despite low PISA scores, Iceland ranks near the top on many other measures of happiness, health and quality of life. That includes taking the top spot on the Human Development Index, a statistical composite of average income per person, life expectancy, and education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system). (For more on Iceland’s education system and the efforts to support immigrant students in particular see Developing national support for immigrants and multilingual learners in Iceland(Part 1 & Part 2) and an upcoming post will discuss why, as a former Education Minister said, it’s still good to be a child in Iceland.)
“Even as they fall further behind in reading and math, the world’s students are turning to artificial intelligence for help with schoolwork. PISA results released this week show average performance in core subjects at the lowest levels ever recorded, with U.S. reading scores plummeting just since 2022. Meanwhile, students across dozens of countries are increasingly using chatbots to research, write and solve problems at school. ‘I see that problem on a micro level and think, ‘My God,’ one researcher said”
All mean-performance estimates are statistically significantly different from the PISA 2025 estimates, except for science in PISA 2022. Source: OECD (2026), PISA 2025 Results (Volume I)
Minister of Education Joseph Nsengimana speaks at the launch of the PISA assessment results at the Kigali Convention Centre on Tuesday, Sep 8, 2026, The News Times Rwanda
“Three percent of Rwandan students who took part in the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reached the baseline proficiency level across reading, mathematics and science, according to results released in Kigali on Tuesday, September 8.The results show that 12.7 per cent of students reached the baseline level in science, compared with 7.7 per cent in mathematics and 3.9 per cent in reading.”
“PISA tests are not the problem; they are the mirror. Instead of arguing with the mirror, it is time to deal with what it reflects,” Israel’s National Parents Association said
“Seventeen percent of participating Palestinian students reached Level 2 or above in mathematics, compared with an OECD average of 65%; the corresponding shares were 22% in reading, compared with 69%, and 24% in science, compared with 74%.”
“In Armenia, the assessment was carried out in March-May 2025, in which about 7,000 learners from 295 schools participated. Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports Zhanna Andreasyan, during the presentation of the main results of the PISA-2025 international research, said that Armenia’s participation in the research has for many years been one of the important goals of the state policy in the field of education.”
“‘We can certainly say that we have improved,’ two Philippine education scholars wrote. ‘What we cannot reasonably say is that we are already doing well.’ They noted that 21% of Filipino students reached baseline Level 2 proficiency in mathematics, compared with 31% in reading and 32% in science.”
“Thailand was among eight countries and economies to record statistically significant increases across all three core areas compared with 2022.” Thai students’ science score rose 23 points to 432, while mathematics and reading each rose 13 points, to 407 and 392 respectively.
Mean scores adjusted for socio-economic status are predicted science scores obtained from separate regressions of science performance on the frequency of each type of AI use, after accounting for students’ socio-economic status. Source: OECD (2026), PISA 2025 Results (Volume I)
“The Ministry of Education and Training said this was the first time Vietnamese students had switched from paper-based to computer-based testing. As the two formats differ significantly, the score gap is not sufficient to conclude that education quality has improved or declined, it said.”
“In Armenia, the assessment was carried out in March-May 2025, in which about 7,000 learners from 295 schools participated. Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports Zhanna Andreasyan, during the presentation of the main results of the PISA-2025 international research, said that Armenia’s participation in the research has for many years been one of the important goals of the state policy in the field of education.”
“We have growth compared not only to 2022, but also in the region, where Albania has the highest results. Specifically in mathematics and science, Albania has the highest level in the Western Balkans region. These indicators reflect the progress that Albania has made in a field such as education and it is not simply historical pride, but especially ambition and intention to move forward. It is not important which country we have surpassed, but to understand how PISA helps us increase the performance of our teachers and how students increase their skills,”
“Socioeconomic status accounted for 7% of the variation in science performance in North Macedonia, compared with 12% on average across OECD countries.”
French Education Minister Édouard Geffray called France’s ranking“concerning, but sadly, it comes as no surprise…[H]e suggested giving schools greater autonomy ‘to strengthen support for struggling students, diversify the curriculum and open up more opportunities for all students’”.
“Icelandic 15-year-olds are performing below both the OECD average and their Nordic peers in reading, mathematics and science, according to the newly released PISA 2025 results. Only 56% of Icelandic pupils reached basic proficiency in reading, down from 78% in 2015. Only 50% of boys reached the basic reading threshold, compared with 62% of girls”
“The deterioration since the previous assessment in 2022 is substantial: Spain lost 23 points in reading, 16 in mathematics and eight in science. Looking further back to 2015, the cumulative decline amounts to 45 points in reading, 30 in mathematics and 16 in science.”
“Catalonia’s PISA 2025 results cannot be compared with other territories or previous cycles because the sample was not representative of the 15-year-old student population. The reported exemption rate reached 23.2%, compared with the OECD guideline of 5%.”
Simple average of science, reading and mathematics scores. Source: OECD, PISA 2025. OECD averages are 482 in science, 461 in reading and 463 in mathematics.
This data shows scores on Computational Problem Solving *Countries shown in gray did not participate in PISA 2025 and have no data available. Source: OECD PISA 2025 Results
Questions about funding, supplies, safety, numerous policy changes, and the growing backlash leading to bans on AI and cellphones are among the many local and national issues in the news as students go back to school in the US. Last week, Part 1 of IEN’s annual back-to-school scan highlighted the stark differences in the headlines in developed and developing countries (Safety and shortages or banning technology? Going back to school in a divided world in 2026 (Part 1).
“Federal policy turbulence and enrollment declines have magnified the precarity of the state and local funds school districts depend on for the lion’s share of their budgets. Educators think a backlash to technology use in classrooms that’s intensified over the past year will continue to grow. And struggles to boost students’ achievement in reading and math persist, with the “math wars” restarting and schools working to implement still-new laws reforming literacy instruction.”
“Families are entering an education landscape that has changed dramatically. Parents have more power and more options than they did even five years ago. States are expanding education savings accounts, scholarships and other ways for families to direct their children’s education. New federal scholarship opportunities are approaching. At the same time, educators and entrepreneurs are creating microschools, hybrid schools, classical academies, outdoor programs and learning models that did not fit neatly into yesterday’s system.”
“A basic school supply bundle now costs around $173.45 — up 7.7% from last year. That, plus the soaring cost of popular school lunch items, like berries and juice boxes, means families are looking at a $4,000 annual price tag for meals and supplies. The 74’s video team breaks down the data sourced from 50,000 retailers, originally reported by The 19th.”
“Funding Portability and Provider Expansion: Letting public education dollars follow students across settings, making it easier for new kinds of schools to open, and expanding choice options for students and families. Credentialing and Postsecondary Pathway Flexibility: Redefining what counts as learning and widening the routes students can take through school. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Governance and System Modernization: Setting the rules for how schools use AI and student data.”
“District officials say asbestos remediation should be complete by the end of 2026. Philadelphia schools have had asbestos problems for years, and in 2025 they led to federal criminal charges.”
“Welcome back, families! There have been some changes to the pick-up and drop-off procedures, so make sure you familiarize yourselves before the first day. Remember, when in doubt, simply CIRCLE THE BLOCK. DROP-OFF This year, we will be dropping off by grade. Please drop off only at your student’s grade level’s time. If you have multiple children, please simply CIRCLE THE BLOCK until their designated drop-off time. This ensures a smooth process for all…”
Going back to school looks very different for students in developing countries and those in developed countries in Europe, Canada and elsewhere. Although the issues in Europe focus on limits on screens, cellphones, and AI, concerns about repairing facilities, dealing with shortages, and recovering from disasters dominate the headlines in the Caribbean and some parts of Africa. This year’s scan of the back-to-schoolheadlines around the world also highlights the dangers students face in countries under attack like Ukraine and those experiencing disease outbreaks like the Democratic Republic of Congo. Schools in several parts of the world are adjusting to new curricula and policies, but the UAE stands out with initiatives to expand project-based learning.Next week, Part 2 of the back-to-school scan will focus on the national and local headlines in the US.
“Millions of students returned to school across the Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday, but the new term began amid an Ebola outbreak affecting six provinces, a teachers’ strike call and continuing conflict in the east. In AFC/M23-controlled territories, the movement organised the return to classrooms even as Kinshasa continued to pay primary and secondary school teachers.”
“Barely days into the third term, secondary school administrators are already sounding the alarm over unpaid government capitation, a gap they say could throw learning programmes into disarray.“
A student experiences VR equipment during a new semester activity; students attend the opening ceremony for the new semester; and students walk toward a campus of Dengshikou Primary School in Beijing in Beijing, People’s Daily Online via Xinhua/Ren Chao
“Balanced class assignment and fairness are emphasized in the first lesson of the new semester…In April of this year, the General Office of the Ministry of Education issued the “Notice on Launching the Special Action for Sunshine Enrollment in Primary and Secondary Schools (2026).” The notice clearly stipulates that compulsory education schools should maintain balanced class assignments, strictly prohibiting the establishment or disguised establishment of key classes, experimental classes, or fast/slow classes. It promotes balanced allocation of teachers and random student class assignments, requiring schools to disclose their class assignment plans, processes, and results to parents.”
“The start of the term also brings changes to everyday school life. Education providers in pre-primary and comprehensive education now have a legal duty to promote physical activity alongside teaching. The measure follows restrictions on mobile devices introduced at the start of the previous school year.”
“The French government will press ahead with a ban on mobile phone use in high schools as classes reconvene in September. But opinion varies on the likelihood of its success, with some citing freedom of speech concerns and others around speed of implementation.”
“When students return to their classrooms after the summer, they are faced with a new everyday life. Starting in the fall semester, a national and mandatory mobile phone ban will apply in primary school, preschool classes and after-school care. It’s no longer enough to put your phone face down in your bag and promise not to sneakily check Tiktok during math class, but now it’s a ban. Many schools have previously banned cell phones, but now it will be mandatory and not optional in schools.”
IEN will be taking a summer hiatus for the next two weeks. We will return on September 9th with our annual series scanning the headlines of the “back to school” news from around the world. This fall, we also expect to have more posts looking at the latest innovations related to AI, assessment and issues like chronic absence and reflections on visits to Iceland, Vietnam, and China.
In the meantime, please revisit the posts from our 5-part series “Stability and Change in the Education System in China.” That series from Thomas Hatch was published earlier this spring with reflections on visits to Beijing, Dongguan, Ningbo, Shanghai, Suzhou and Shenzhen over the past few years:
This week, IEN introduces a podcast series from Jordan Corson, a former Managing Editor at IEN. This coming year, IEN will be sharing excerpts of some of the episodes from the podcast’s third season.
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In grad school, I spent a lot of my time studying education systems with International Ed News’s founder and editor, Tom Hatch (I was also the managing editor of this site for four years). We asked big questions about how education systems change, what constrains them, and what kinds of transformations are possible both within the grammar of schooling and beyond it. This work resulted in The Education We Need for a Future We Can’t Predict, Tom’s book on which he invited Sarah Gerth van den Berg and I to collaborate.
While the majority of my own work looks at the abolitionist possibilities of everyday educational life, I remain stuck on those same questions Tom and I were exploring a decade ago, ones which are visible in the new season of my podcast Another Education Is Possible.
The first season focused on the educational trajectories of anti-Zionist Jewish folks. Focusing on biography as an educational method, guests shared complex and winding paths toward and through anti-Zionist education. Across more than two dozen episodes, guests like sports writer Dave Zirin and genocide scholar Raz Segal offered expansive and yet intimate stories.
The second season—part of my graduate seminar Education, Genocide, Liberation—searched through education’s dynamic and competitive purposes in the world. Six students joined me as co-hosts and co-producers to think about how education serves oppressive, reproductive, or emancipatory purposes. As we read and asked questions about education’s purpose, the class invited in a weekly guest to interview and discuss these topics. Our episodes featured everything from TC’s own Haeny Yoon and Nathan Holbert talking about education as a form of play to professor Amanda Tachine talking about education as an indigenous practice of weaving knowledge.
Another Education is Possible, Season 2
Our new season turns to build a web of radical education projects. Along with my co-host, Eli Meyerhoff, each episode will feature an interview that looks at a radical education project somewhere in the world. We will have episodes on the schools of the autonomous Zapatista communities in Southern Mexico, the anarchist Modern Schools of early 20th century Spain, and much else. We’ll have episodes set in present day New York City and 1960s East Africa. Throughout, this season will see the centrality of education in social movements and building radically different worlds.
We hope listeners will enjoy our biweekly episodes launching this September.
In the concluding section of this week’s blog post, David Labaree succinctly sums up some of the key factors that explain why school reform efforts in the US often fail to achieve their ambitious goals. In part one, Labaree discussed why US schools are so often asked to pursue goals — like support economic productivity, foster social mobility, and reduce inequality — that they have never been equipped to achieve. Labaree is an Emeritus Professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education and one of the foremost experts on the history of education and educational reform in the US. As Labaree explains, this post was originally published in the Swiss journal Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Historiographie and his book, Someone Has to Fail. Labaree added an introduction (and cartoons) and posted this on his blog on July 9, 2026.
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Roots of the Failure of School Reform to Resolve Social Problems
In closing, let me summarize the reasons for the continuing failure of school reform in the U.S.
The Tensions Among School Goals: One reason for the failure of reform to realize the social goals expressed in it is that these goals reflect the core tensions within a liberal democracy, which push both school and society in conflicting directions. One of those tensions is between the demands of democratic politics and the demands of capitalist markets. A related issue is the requirement that society be able to meet its collective needs while simultaneously guaranteeing the liberty of individuals to pursue their own interests. As we have seen, these tensions cannot be resolved one way or the other if we are going to remain a liberal democracy, so schools will inevitably fail at maximizing any of these goals. The result is going to be a muddled compromise rather than a clear cut victory in meeting particular expectations. The apparently dysfunctional outcomes of the educational system, therefore, are not necessarily the result of bad planning, deception, or political cynicism; they are an institutional expression of the contradictions in the liberal democratic mind.
The Tendency Toward Organizational Conservatism: There is also another layer of impediment that lies between social goals and their fulfillment via education, and that is the tension between education’s social goals and its organizational practices. Schools gain their origins from social goals, which they dutifully express in an institutional form, as happened with the construction of the common school system. This results in the development of school organization, curriculums, pedagogies, professional roles, and a complex set of occupational and organizational interests. At this more advanced stage, schools and educators are no longer simply the media for realizing social aspirations; they become major actors in the story. As such, they shape what happens in education in light of their own needs and interests, organizational patterns, and professional norms and practices. And this then becomes a major issue in educational reform. Such reforms are what happens after schooling is already in motion organizationally, when society seeks to assign new ideals to education or revive old ones that have fallen into disuse, thus initiating an effort to transform the institution toward the pursuit of different ends. But at that point society is no longer able simply to project its values onto the institution it created to express these values; instead it must negotiate an interaction with an ongoing enterprise. As a result, reform has to change both the values embedded in education and the formal structure itself, which may well resist. As I have shown elsewhere, three characteristics of the American school system – loose coupling, weak instructional control, and teacher autonomy – have made this system remarkably effective at blocking reforms from reaching the classroom.
Reformer Arrogance: Another problem that leads to the failure of school reform is simple arrogance. School reformers spin out an abstract vision of what school and society should be, and then they try to bring reality in line with the vision. But this abstract reformist grid doesn’t map comfortably onto the parochial and idiosyncratic ecology of the individual classroom. Trying to push too hard to make the classroom fit the grid may destroy the ecology of learning there; and adapting the grid enough to make it workable in the classroom may change the reform to the point that its original aims are lost. Reformers are loath to give up their aims in the service of making the reform acceptable to teachers, so they tend to plow ahead in search of ways to get around the obstacles. If they can’t make change in cooperation with teachers, then they will have to so in spite of them. They see a crying need to fix a problem through school reform, and they have developed a theory for how to do this, which looks just great on paper. Standing in the state capital or the university, they are far from the practical realities of the classroom, and they tend to be impatient with demands that they should respect the complexity of the settings in which they are trying to intervene.
The Marginality of School Reform to School Change: Finally, we need to remind ourselves that school reform has always been only a small part of the broader process of school change. Reform movements are deliberate efforts by groups of people to change schools in a direction they value and to resolve a social problem that concerns them. We measure the success of these movements by the degree to which the outcomes match the intentions of the reformers. But there’s another player in the school change game, and that’s the market. By this I mean the accumulated actions of educational consumers who are pursuing their own interests through the schooling of their children. From the colonial days, when the expressed purpose of schooling was to support the one true faith, consumers were pursuing literacy and numeracy for reasons that had nothing to do with religion and a lot to do with enhancing their ability to function in a market society.
That very personal and practical dimension of education was there from the beginning, even though no one wanted to talk about it, much less launch a reform movement in its name. And this individual dimension of schooling has only expanded its scope over the years, becoming larger in the late 19th century and then dominant in the 20th century, as increasingly educational credentials became the ticket of admission for the better jobs. The fact that public schools have long been creatures of politics – established, funded, and governed through the medium of a democratic process – means that they have been under unrelenting pressure to meet consumer demand for the kind of schooling that will help individuals move up, stay up, or at least not drop down in their position in the social order. This pressure is exerted through individual consumer actions, such as by attending school or not, going to this school not that one, enrolling in this program not some other program. It is also exerted by political actions, such as by supporting expansion of educational opportunity and preserving educational advantage in the midst of wide access.
These actions by consumers and voters have brought about significant changes in the school system, even though these changes have not been the aim of any of the consumers themselves. They have not been acting as reformers with a social cause but as individuals pursuing their own interests through education, so the changes they have produced in schooling by and large have been inadvertent. Yet these unintended effects of consumer action have often derailed or redirected the intended effects of school reformers. They created the comprehensive high school, dethroned social efficiency, pushed vocational education to the margins, and blocked the attack on de facto segregation. Educational consumers may well keep the current school standards movement from meeting its goals if they feel that standards, testing, and accountability are threatening educational access and educational advantage. They may also pose an impediment to the school choice movement, even though it is being carried out explicitly in their name. For consumers may feel more comfortable tinkering with the system they know than in taking the chance that blowing up this system might produce something that is less suited to serving their needs. In the American system of education, it seems, the consumer – not the reformer – has long been king.
