In September’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Dr. Jose Eos Trinidad argues that understanding educational change requires a broader understanding of how learning, development, and transformation occur across broader spaces. Dr. Trinidad is an Assistant Professor at the University of California Berkely, where he researches the interaction between schools and “outside” research, philanthropic, and nonprofit organizations. The LtC series is produced by co-editors Dr. Soobin Choi and Dr. Jackie Pedota and their colleagues at the Educational Change Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. A PDF of the fully formatted interview will be available on the LtC website.
Lead the Change (LtC): The 2026 AERA Annual Meeting theme is “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Educational Research.” This theme calls us to consider how to leverage our diverse knowledge and experiences to engage in futuring for education and education research, involving looking back to remember our histories so that we can look forward to imagine better futures. What steps are you taking, or do you plan to take, to heed this call?
Jose Eos Trinidad (JET): In undergrad, I remember learning about the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, who wrote Memory, History, Forgetting. One of the most profound lessons I learned from his book is the importance of narrative to our remembering and the equal importance of forgetting—of a happy forgetting in the same way that we talk about a happy memory.
Dr. Jose Eos Trinidad
I think of Paul Ricoeur now as we consider what to remember, what to forget, and what to unforget in order to construct new vision for educational research. So let me try to answer the question in this way of thinking.
First, what should we remember? I think one of the things we should remember is that education has always been a state of tension. It has involved a history of expansion and exclusion, a history of moving forward and moving back, a history of individuals fighting for causes and the resistance that emerges from such fights. In my own work, I talk about the many forces outside schools that influence education: researchers, philanthropic managers, social justice warriors, teachers’ unions, nonprofit staff, and community-based organizations. I think it is key that we remember how forces both within and outside schools work alongside one another (and at times, in tension with one another) to construct this vision.
Second, any act of remembering entails forgetting. There is this moment in the movie Inside Out when jelly bean-shaped workers decide which memories are no longer relevant, like old phone numbers, and they get thrown into the abyss of oblivion. Remember the fate of Bing Bong? In a way, we need to forget in order to have space for new memories. What, then, do we need to forget? One of the things I have found striking in academia is that we can get hung up on small differences, and we can be very critical of each other’s views—even ones that are almost identical to our own. This can bubble up resentment and antipathy toward one another. Perhaps this is a space where forgetting can happen: that we look forward toward a future where people work alongside one another rather than in conflict with one another. I’m not saying that we must sweep differences under the rug. Rather, we must think about how to productively and constructively be in tension with one another.
“I’m not saying that we must sweep differences under the rug. Rather, we must think about how to productively and constructively be in tension with one another.”
Third, what must we not forget? I think we should never forget the struggles of those at the peripheries and the hope that things can get better. As news of wars and disasters, as well as existential questions, pepper our daily existence, I think we should not forget the experiences of students and families in the thick of these situations. Growing up in the Philippines, I remember that floods, typhoons, and electric blackouts were common occurrences for me—disrupting not just education but also life itself. Elsewhere in the country, I know of friends whose schooling was routinely disrupted by violence and war— whether because of the “drug war” of the former administration or the conflicts in the southern and rural parts of the country. In the world today, these experiences are all too common. Yet I also think that, especially during these times, we should hold steadfast to the hope that things can get better, with us working collectively with one another.
LtC: What are some key lessons that practitioners and scholars might take from your work to foster better educational systems for all students?
JET: My research has typically focused on actors and forces outside schools that affect what happens within schools. These research, philanthropic, nonprofit, and community-based organizations can have profound consequences not just for student outcomes but also for educational change. In many developed countries, research-practice partnerships and school reform organizations can provide added support to schools. In many developing countries, nongovernmental organizations can also be a source of much-needed resources and talent. But these organizations can also carry risks, as they may push their own agendas without consulting or even thinking about students, families, and their communities.
My work, particularly my new book Subtle Webs: How Local Organizations Shape US Education(Oxford University Press, 2025), aims to expand the aperture through which we think about our educational systems. It aims to show what strategies various actors use to influence education, which ones are most consequential, what organizational dynamics underlie particular decisions, and which populations benefit or suffer from these decisions. I think education leaders can take on some of these lessons by understanding the ecosystem of forces that influence what happens in schools.
Another area where I’ve been working is the use of organizational theories to understand schools and support school leaders. In my next book with MIT Press titled Thinking Organizationally: Seven Perspectives on How Organizations Work, I detail seven organizational perspectives that can help frame how we think about schools in particular, and organizations in general. I suggest the acronym SCRIPTS to help organize these perspectives: Structure, Culture, Relations, Institutions, Professions, Transformation, and Social Conflict. By providing practitioners and scholars with an easy mnemonic to remember all these perspectives, I hope they can figure out which aspects to focus on or change. For example, school leaders can interrogate whether their main problem is one dealing with the organization’s structures or routines, or one concerning its culture and identity. By understanding the symptoms and accurately diagnosing the problem, the solutions can become clearer.
LtC: What do you see the field of Educational Change heading, and where do you find hope for this field for the future?
JET: I see the field of educational change moving toward a more expansive definition of “education.” I do not think we should limit our understanding of change to what happens inside PreK–12 systems or higher education institutions alone. Education is happening in many different spaces: in families, community organizations, social movements, nonprofit organizations, digital environments, religious institutions, workplaces, and civic networks. If we want to understand educational change seriously, then we need to document and theorize how learning, development, and transformation occur across these broader spaces. Change does not begin and end with schools, even if schools remain central institutions in people’s lives.
Relatedly, I hope we continue to decenter the most dominant sites and voices in the production of knowledge about educational change. Some of the most important lessons about adaptation, resilience, and transformation are emerging from communities that are too often treated as peripheral to the field: underrepresented minorities, developing countries, indigenous communities, migrants, and families living through conflict, displacement, or environmental instability. These communities are not simply sites of suffering or implementation; they are also sites of knowledge, invention, and strategy. We should learn from how these communities navigate uncertainty, sustain hope, and create meaningful forms of education under difficult conditions. In many ways, they may have much more to teach us about change than the systems we usually place at the center of our theories.
Where do I find hope? I find hope in the fact that, despite all the setbacks and crises that surround education, people continue to organize, imagine, and build. I find hope in teachers who continue to care deeply for students amid enormous constraints, in families and communities who create supports where formal systems fall short, and in young people who insist on more just and humane futures. I also find hope in the possibility that the field itself can become more historically grounded, more globally attentive, and more open to voices that it has too often overlooked. If we can broaden our understanding of where educational change happens, who drives it, and what counts as knowledge about it, then I think the field has much to contribute—not only to improving schools, but to imagining better futures more broadly.
“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
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.”
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.
In this week’s post, David Labaree explores why 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. Labaree’s conclusion to the post will be published next week.
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This post is the text of a lecture I gave in 2009 at the University of Berne. It was originally published in the Swiss journal Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Historiographie and then found its way into my 2010 book, Someone Has to Fail. Here is the link to the first published version.
It’s about a longstanding problem in American educational policy: We ask schools to pursue goals that are beyond their capabilities. Schools are simply not very good at a lot of things we ask them to do. They can’t promote equality, they can’t end poverty, they can’t create good jobs, they can’t drive economic growth, they can’t promote public health. Yet we expect them to do all this heavy lifting for us.
Part of the story is about why schools aren’t good at these things. Another is why we keep giving them such assignments anyway. The answer to the second, I suggest, is that we pass off on schools social problems that we are unwilling to accomplish through the political process, where the capability for success actually resides. Instead of addressing these problems directly through political action, we foist them off on schools and then blame them for continually falling short of the desired goal. Herein lies the reason why school reform has been such steady work. Read and weep.
Even if you’ve read this before, don’t miss the cartoons that I tucked into the text this time. They’re worth a post all by themselves.
Americans have a long history of pinning their hopes on education as the way to realize compelling social ideals and solve challenging social problems. We want schools to promote civic virtue, economic productivity, and social mobility; to alleviate inequalities in race, class, and gender; to improve health, reduce crime, and protect the environment. So we assign these social missions to schools, and educators gamely accept responsibility for carrying them out. When the school system inevitably falls far short of these goals, we initiate a wave of school reform to realign the institution with its social goals and ramp up its effectiveness in attaining them. The result, as one pair of scholars has put it, is that educational reform in the U.S. is “steady work.” In this lecture, I want to tell a story: What history tells us about what schools cannot do.
At its heart, this is a story grounded in paradox. On the one hand, American schooling has been an extraordinary success. It started as a small and peripheral enterprise in the 18th century and grew into a massive institution at the center of American society in the 21st, where it draws the lion’s share of the state budget and a quarter of the lives of citizens. Central to its institutional success has been its ability to embrace and embody the social goals that have been imposed upon it. Yet, in spite of continually recurring waves of school reform, education in the U.S. has been remarkably unsuccessful at implementing these goals in the classroom practices of education and at realizing these goals in the social outcomes of education.
America, I suggest, suffers from a school syndrome. We have set our school system up for failure by asking it to fix all of our most pressing social problems, which we are unwilling to address more directly through political action rather than educational gesture. Then we blame the system when it fails. Both as a society and as individuals, we vest our greatest hopes in an institution that is manifestly unsuited to realizing them. In part the system’s failure is the result of a tension between our shifting social aims for education and the system’s own organizational momentum. We created the system to solve a critical social problem in the early days of the American republic, and its success in dealing with this problem fooled us into thinking that we could redirect the system toward new problems as time passed. But the school system has a mind of its own, and trying to change its direction is like trying to do a U-turn with a battleship.
Today I will explore the failure of school reform to realize the central social goals that have driven it over the years. And at the end I explore the roots of schooling’s failure in its role as an agent of social reform.
The social missions of schooling in liberal democracies arise from the tensions that are inherent in such societies. One of these 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. In the American setting, these tensions have played out through the politics of education in the form of a struggle among three major social goals for the educational system. One goal is democratic equality, which sees education as a mechanism for producing capable citizens. Another is social efficiency, which sees education as a mechanism for developing productive workers. A third is social mobility, which sees education as a mechanism for individuals to reinforce or enhance their social position.
Democratic equality represents the political side of our liberal democratic values, focusing on the role of education in building a nation, forming a republican community, and providing citizens with the wide range of capabilities required to take part in democratic decision-making. The other two goals represent the market side of liberal democracy. Social efficiency captures the perspective of employers and taxpayers, who are concerned about the role of education in producing the job skills (human capital) that are required by the modern economy and that are seen as essential for economic growth and social prosperity. From this angle the issue is for education to provide for the full range of productive skills and forms of knowledge required in the complex job structure of modern capitalism. Social mobility captures the perspective of educational consumers and prospective employees, who are concerned about the role of educational credentials in signaling to the market which individuals should get the jobs with the most power, money, and prestige.
The collectivist side of liberal democracy is expressed by a combination of democratic equality and social efficiency. Both aim at having education provide broad social benefits, with both conceiving of education as a public good. Investing in the political capital of the citizenry and the human capital of the workforce benefits everyone in society, including those families who do not have children in school. In contrast, the social mobility goal represents the individualist side of liberal democracy. From this perspective, education is a private good, which benefits only the student who receives educational services and owns the resulting diplomas. Its primary function is to provide educational consumers with privileged access to higher level jobs in the competition with other prospective employees.
So let me look at how well – or rather, how poorly – American schools have done at accomplishing these three social missions.
Democratic Equality
School systems around the world have been more effective at accomplishing their political mission than either their efficiency or mobility missions. At the formative stage in the construction of a nation state, virtually anywhere in the world, education seems to have an important role to play. The key contribution in this regard is that schooling helps form a national citizenry out of a collection of local identities. One country after another developed a system of universal education at the point when it was trying to transform itself into a modern state, populated by citizens rather than subjects, with a common culture and a shared national identity. For the U.S. in the early 19th century, the key problem during this transitional period was how to establish a modern social order based on exchange relations and democratic authority out of the remnants of a traditional social order based on patriarchal relations and feudal authority. A system of public education helps to make this transition possible primarily by bringing a disparate group of youths in the community together under one roof and exposing them to a common curriculum and a common set of social experiences. The result was to instill in students social norms that allowed them to emerge as self-regulating actors in the free market while still remaining good citizens and good Christians. Creating such cultural communities is one of the few things that schools can consistently do well.
So the evidence shows that at the formative stage, school systems in the U.S. and elsewhere have been remarkably effective in promoting citizenship and forming a new social order. This is quite an accomplishment, which more than justifies the huge investment in constructing these systems. And building on this capacity for forming community, schools have continued to play an important role as the agent for incorporating newcomers. This has been particularly important in an immigrant society like the United States, where – from the Irish and Germans in the mid-19th century to the Mexicans and South Asians in the early 21st century – schools have been the central mechanism for integrating foreigners into the American experience.
But the ability of schooling to promote democratic equality in the U.S. has had little to do with learning, it has faded over time, and it has been increasingly undermined by counter tendencies toward inequality. First, note that when schools have been effective at community building, this had little to with the content of the curriculum or the nature of classroom teaching. What was important was that schools provided a common experience for all students. What they actually learned in school was irrelevant as long as they all were exposed to the same material. It could have been anything. It was the form of schooling more than its content that helped establish and preserve the American republic.
Second, the importance of schooling in forming community has declined over time. The common school system was critically important in the formative days of the American republic; but once the country’s continued existence was no longer in doubt, the role of the system grew less critical. As a result, the more recent ways in which schools have come to promote citizenship have been more formalistic than substantive. This is now embedded in classes on American history, speeches at school assemblies, pilgrim pageants around Thanksgiving, presidential portraits on classroom walls, and playing the national anthem before football games. What had been the system’s foremost rationale for existence has now retreated into the background of a system more concerned with other issues.
Third, and most important, however, the role of schools in promoting democratic equality has declined because schools have simultaneously been aggressively promoting social inequality. One of the recurring themes of my book is that every move by American schools in the direction of equality has been countered by a strong move in the opposite direction. When we created a common school system in the early 19th century, we also created a high school system to distinguish middle class students from the rest. When we expanded access to the high school at the start of the 20th century, we also created a system for tracking students within the school and opened the gates for middle class enrollment in college. When we expanded access to college in the mid-20th century, we funneled new students into the lower tiers of the system and encouraged middle class students to pursue graduate study. The American school system is at least as much about social difference as about social equality. In fact, as the system has developed, the idea of equality has become more formalistic, focused primarily on the notion of broad access to education at a certain level, while the idea of inequality has become more substantive, embodied in starkly different educational and social trajectories.
Social Efficiency
In the current politics of education, the goal of social efficiency plays a prominent role. One of the central beliefs of contemporary economics, international development, and educational policy is that education is the key to economic development as a valuable investment in human capital. Today it is hard to find a political speech, reform document, or opinion piece about education that does not include a paean to the critical role that education plays in developing human capital and spurring economic growth – and the need to reform schools in order to fix what’s wrong with the economy.
Economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz have made a strong argument for the human capital vision of education in their recent book, The Race Between Education and Technology. They argue that the extraordinary expansion of the American economy in the 20th century was to a large degree the result of an equally extraordinary expansion in educational enrollments during this period. It is no coincidence, they say, that what turned out to be the American Century economically was also the Human Capital Century for the U.S.
The numbers are indeed staggering. In the United States education levels rose dramatically for most of the 20th century. For those born between 1876 and 1951, the average number of years of schooling rose a total of 6 years, which is an increase of 0.8 years per decade. This means that the average education level of the entire U.S. population rose from less than 8 years of grade school to two years of college in only 75 years. The authors estimate that the growth in education in the U.S. accounted for between 12 and 17 percent of the growth in economic productivity across the 20th century, with the average educational contribution at 13.5 percent. Put another way, they argue that increased education alone accounted for economic growth of about one-third of one percent per year from 1915-2005.
One problem with this claim, however, is that the size of the human capital effect they show is relatively small. On average they estimate that the growth in educational attainment accounted for less that 14 percent of the growth in economic productivity over the course of the 20th century. That’s not negligible but it’s also not overwhelming. This wouldn’t be a concern if education were a modest investment drawing a modest return, because every little bit helps when it comes to economic growth. But that’s clearly not the case. Education has long been the largest single expenditure of American state and local governments, which over the course of the 20th century devoured about 30 percent of their total budgets. In 1995 this came to almost $400 billion in direct payments for elementary, secondary, and higher education. In short, as costly as education is, it would seem that its economic benefits would need to be more substantial than they are in order to justify these expenses as a solid investment in the nation’s wealth instead of a large drain on this wealth.
Another problem is that it is hard to establish that in fact education was the cause and economy the effect in this story. The authors make clear that the growth in high school and college enrollments both exceeded and preceded demand for such workers from the economy. Employers were not begging high schools to produce more graduates in order to meet the needs for greater skill in the workplace; instead they were taking advantage of a situation in which large numbers of educated workers were available, and could be hired without a large wage premium, for positions that in the past had not required this level of education. So why not hire them? And once these high school graduates were on the job, the employers may have found them useful to have around (maybe they required less training), so employers began to express a preference for high school graduates in future hiring. But just because the workforce was becoming more educated didn’t mean that the presence of educated workers was the source of increases in economic productivity. It could just as easily have been the other way around.
Producing a large increase in high school graduates was enormously expensive, especially considering that the supply of these graduates was much greater than the economic demand for them. But strong economic growth provided enough of a fiscal surplus that state and local governments were able afford to do so. In short, it makes sense to think that it was economic growth that made educational growth possible. We expanded high school because we could afford to. And we wanted to do so not because we thought it would provide social benefits by improving the economy but instead because we hoped it would provide us with personal benefits. The authors point out that the growth of high school enrollments was not the result of a reform movement. Instead, the demand for high school came from educational consumers. Middle class families saw high school and college as a way to gain an edge – or keep their already existing edge – in the competition for good jobs. And working class families saw high school as a way to provide their children with the possibility of a better life than their own. The demand came from the bottom up not the top down. Administrative progressives later capitalized on the growth of the high school by trying to harness it for their own social efficiency agenda, as expressed in the 1918 Cardinal Principles report. But by then the process of high school expansion was already well under way, with little help from them.
The major accomplishment of the American school system was not necessarily that it provided education but that it provided access. The system may or may not have been effective at teaching students the kinds of skills and knowledge that would economically useful, but it was quite effective at inviting students into the schools and keeping them there for an extended period of time. Early in their book, Goldin and Katz identify what they consider to be the primary “virtues” of the American educational system as it developed before the civil war and continued into the 20th century. In effect, these virtues of the system all revolve around its broad accessibility. They include: “public provision by small, fiscally independent districts; public funding; secular control; gender neutrality; open access; and a forgiving system.”
Note that none of these virtues of the American school system speaks to learning the curriculum. Instead all have to do with the form of the system, in particular its accessibility and flexibility. I thoroughly agree. But for the human capital argument that Goldin and Katz are trying to make, these virtues of the system pose a problem. How was the system able to provide graduates with the skills needed to spur economic growth when the system’s primary claim to fame was that it invited everyone in and then was reluctant to penalize anyone for failing to learn? In effect, the system’s greatest strength was its low academic standards. If it had screened students more carefully on the way in and graded them more scrupulously on their academic achievement, high school and college enrollments and graduation rates never would have expanded so rapidly and we would all be worse off. This brings us to the third goal of education, social mobility.
Social Mobility
In liberal democracies in general, and in the United States in particular, hope springs eternal that expanding educational opportunity will increase social mobility and social equality. This has been a prime factor in the rhetoric of the American educational reform movements for desegregation, standards, and choice. But the evidence to support that hope simply doesn’t exist. The problem is this: In the way that education interacts with social mobility and social equality, both of these measures of social position are purely relative. Both are cases of what social scientists call a zero sum game: A + B = 0. If A goes up then B must go down in order to keep the sum at zero. If one person gets ahead of someone else on the social ladder, then that other person has fallen behind. And if the social differences between two people become more equal, then the increase in social advantage for one person means the decrease in social advantage for the other. Symmetry is built into both measures.
Although social equality is inherently relative, it is possible to think of social mobility in terms of absolute rather than relative position. During the 20th century in the U.S., the proportion of agricultural, manufacturing, and other blue collar workers declined while the proportion of clerical, managerial, professional, and other white collar workers rose. At the same time the proportion of people with a grade school education declined while the proportion with more advanced education rose. So large numbers of families had the experience in which parents were blue collar and their children white collar, parents had modest education and their children had more education. In absolute terms, therefore, social mobility from blue collar to white collar work during this period was substantial, as children not only moved up in job classification compared to their parents but also gained higher pay and a higher standard of living. And this social mobility was closely related to a substantial rise in education levels. This was a great success story, and it is understandable why those involved would attribute these social gains to education. For large numbers of Americans, it seemed to confirm the adage: to get a good job, get a good education. Schooling seemed to help people move up the ladder.
At the individual level, this perception was quite correct. In the 20th century, it became the norm for employers to set minimum educational qualifications for jobs, and in general the amount of education required rose as one moved up the occupational ladder. Youths overall had a strong incentive to pursue more education in order to reap social and economic rewards. Economic studies regularly demonstrate a varying but substantial return on a family’s investment in education for their children. For example, one estimate shows that males between 1914 and 2005 earned a premium in lifetime earnings for every year of college that ranged from 8 to 14 percent. That makes education a great investment for families – better than the stock market, which had an average annual return of about 8 percent during the same period.
What is true for some individuals, however, is not necessarily true for society as a whole. As I explained about social efficiency, it is not clear that increasing the number of college graduates leads to an increase in the number of higher-level jobs for these graduates to fill. To me it seems more plausible to look at the connection between education and jobs this way: The economy creates jobs, and education is the way we allocate people to those jobs. Candidates with more education qualify for better jobs. What this means is that social mobility becomes a relative thing, which depends on the number of individuals with a particular level of education at a given time and the number of positions requiring this level of education that are available at that same time. If there are more positions than candidates at that level, all of the qualified candidates get the jobs along with some who have lower qualifications; but if there are more candidates than positions, then some qualified applicants will end up in lower level positions. So the economic value of education varies according to the job market. An increase in education without a corresponding increase in higher level jobs in the economy will reduce the value of a degree in the market for educational credentials.
This poses a problem for the chances of social mobility between parents and children. After all, children are not competing with their parents for jobs; they’re competing with peers. And like themselves, their peers have a higher level of education than their parents do. In relative terms, they only have an advantage in the competition for jobs if they have gained even more education than their peers have. Educational gains relative to peers are what matter not gains relative to parents. As a result, rates of social mobility have not increased over time as educational opportunity has increased, and societies with more expansive educational systems do not have higher mobility rates.
Raymond Boudon and others have shown that the problem is that increases in access to education affect everyone, both those who are trying to get ahead and those who are already ahead. Early in the 20th century, working class parents had a grade school education and their children poured into high schools in order to get ahead; but at the same time, middle class parents had a high school education and their children were pouring into colleges. So both groups increased education and their relative position remained the same. The new high school graduates didn’t get ahead by getting more education; they were running just to stay in place. The new college graduates didn’t necessarily get ahead either, but they did manage to stay ahead.
So school reform in the U.S. has failed to increase social mobility or reduce social inequality. In fact, without abandoning our identity as a liberal democracy, there was simply no way that educational growth could have brought about these changes. School reform can only have a chance to equalize social differences if it can reduce the gap in educational attainment between middle class students and working class students. This is politically impossible in a liberal democracy, since it would mean restricting the ability of the middle class to pursue more and better education for their children. As long as both groups gain more education in parallel, then the advantages of the one over the other will not decline. And that is exactly the situation in the American school system. It’s the compromise that has emerged from the interaction between reform and market, between social planning and consumer action: we expand opportunity and preserve advantage, both at the same time. From this perspective, the defining moment in the history of American education was the construction of the tracked comprehensive high school, which was a joint creation of consumers and reformers in the progressive era. That set the pattern for everything that followed. It’s a system that is remarkably effective at allowing both access and advantage, but it’s not one that reformers tried to create. In fact, it works against the realization of central aims of reform, since it undermines social efficiency, blocks social mobility, and limits democratic equality.
These three goals, however, have gained expression in the American educational system in at least two significant ways. First, they have maintained a highly visible presence in educational rhetoric, as the politics of education continuously pushes these goals onto the schools and the schools themselves actively express their allegiance to these same goals. Second, schools have adopted the form of these goals into their structure and process. Democratic equality has persisted in the formalism of social studies classes, school assemblies, and the display of political symbols. Social efficiency has persisted in the formalism of vocational classes, career days, and standards-based testing. Social mobility has persisted in the formalism of grades, credits, and degrees, which students accumulate as they move through the school system.
Next Week: Roots of the Failure of School Reform to Resolve Social Problems: David Labaree on What Schools Can’t Do (Part 2)
In the fourth part of this month’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Daisy Salazar-Garza discusses her firsthand experience of the inequities in the public education system and the impact this has on students, families, and communities. Salazar-Garza is a Ph.D. student in the School of Educational Studies’ Urban Leadership Program at Claremont University. German is a recipient of the Student Travel Award from the Educational Change Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association (AREA). The LtC series is produced by co-editors Dr. Soobin Choi and Dr. Jackie Pedota and their colleagues who lead the Ed Change SIG. A PDF of the fully formatted interview will be available on the LtC website.
Lead the Change (LtC): The 2026 AERA Annual Meeting theme is “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Educational Research.” This theme calls us to consider how to leverage our diverse knowledge and experiences to engage in futuring for education and education research, involving looking back to remember our histories so that we can look forward to imagine better futures. What steps are you taking, or do you plan to take, to heed this call?
Daisy Salazar-Garza: The 2026 AERA theme, “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Education Research,” calls us to draw upon our diverse knowledge and lived experiences to engage in meaningful “futuring” for education. For me, as a Chicana educator, scholar, and first-generation doctoral student, this theme feels deeply personal. It is a call that echoes the lessons my family instilled in me from an early age.
My family, especially my father, taught me about life’s harsh realities and the beauty of resilience through the power of storytelling. Around family meals, during long drives, or in quiet moments on the porch, I listened to stories of our history—stories of struggle, perseverance, and hope. These narratives shaped my understanding of who I am and filled me with a deep sense of pride. They taught me to honor the strength passed down from my ancestors and to recognize that storytelling is not only an act of remembrance but also a tool for transformation.
This foundation shapes how I approach educational research. To truly “unforget” our histories, we must center the voices and stories that have been pushed to the margins. Leveraging our collective knowledge requires valuing the lived experiences of those most impacted by educational inequities. By empowering communities with a vested interest in the future of education, we can imagine possibilities rooted in justice, equity, and collective empowerment.
As I continue to heed the 2026 AERA theme, I draw upon this legacy of storytelling and historical remembrance to inform my work. Understanding the social, economic, political, and racial contexts that have shaped communities is essential to serving them authentically—honoring both their strengths and the systemic injustice they have endured. Through remembering and honoring these histories, we can envision and build educational spaces that celebrate our roots and uplift our voices. In doing so, we can cultivate a just and hopeful future that directly confronts the inequities we must transform.
Source: Bank Street Graduate School of Education website
LtC: What are some key lessons that practitioners and scholars might take from your work to foster better educational systems for all students?
DSG: Recently, I had the privilege of working with Dr. Osworth to co-author “Outward Portrayals of Equity: An Examination of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Los Angeles County School Districts.” In 2024, we collected data from 80 public school districts to assess the current state of DEI commitments in Los Angeles County districts.
From this work, several lessons emerge for practitioners and scholars in the field of Educational Change. First, our findings highlight the need to look beyond surface-level portrayals of equity and focus on how DEI policies are enacted in districts and schools. Value statements made toward DEI without creating infrastructure through policy to support the work does not address the racialized nature of the structures within school districts (Salazar-Garza & Osworth, 2026). Second, schools as organizational systems often reproduce existing inequities. Recognizing these structural patterns is the first step toward redesigning them. Ultimately, transformative change needs to occur at the systemic level to disrupt and dismantle entrenched systems of inequality (Salazar-Garza & Osworth, 2026). Finally, pairing enforcement mechanisms, such as culturally responsive teaching, with policy can contribute to conscious efforts to alter internal patterns of organizational inequity (Salazar-Garza & Osworth, 2026).
“Value statements made toward DEI without creating infrastructure through policy to support the work do not address the racialized nature of the structures within school districts.”
Together, these insights emphasize that fostering educational change requires both reflective practice and systemic change. Equity efforts translate into improved student experiences and outcomes when we can redesign structures enacting patterns of inequity.
LtC: What do you see the field of Educational Change heading, and where do you find hope for this field for the future?
DSG: As a scholar-practitioner, I believe the field of educational change is heading toward a deeper partnership with people who are the most affected by our current educational realities. By centering the voices of teachers, students, families, and communities, we can inspire real progress. Change comes when research and practice work go hand in hand to bridge the gap between theory and lived experience.
Given the current polycrisis world we’re navigating, where social, economic, and environmental challenges continually intersect, I find hope in collaboration within the field of education (Virella, 2025). Dr. Virella’s Crisis as Catalyst: Equity-Oriented School Leadership During Difficult Times reminds me that even in moments of uncertainty, there is great potential for transformation. As a school principal who was interviewed and whose narrative is present in this research alongside numerous other school leaders, it is a reminder that practitioners are engaging in powerful practices that are meeting the needs of our present moment. It is also a call to action that we can study practices from the field, derive key lessons, and create frameworks that empower and sustain more educators across the field.
What gives me hope is seeing more educators and researchers approach their work not just as inquiry, but as partnership with students, families, communities. When our research centers humanity and lived experience, educational change can lead us toward a more just and human-centered system for all students.
References
Salazar-Garza,D. and Osworth, D. (2026) Outward portrayals of equity: an examination of diversity, equity, and inclusion in Los Angeles County school districts. Leadership in Education Racial Equity and the Organization: An Educational Change Call to Action. Frontiers in Education. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2026.1642675
Virella, P. M. (2025). Crisis as catalyst: Equity-oriented school leadership during difficult times. Harvard Education Press.
What does it take to create more sustainable school facilities? In the third part to this series, Carter Hyde and Hannah Nguyen discuss some of the new developments in facilities and facilities management that schools across the country have implemented to conserve energy, cut costs, and support students’ learning and wellbeing. The first post explored the negative impact that climate change and related disruptions have on students, and the second post focused on how schools are making busing and other aspects of school transportation more sustainable.
Environmental changes are contributing to disasters, crises, and day-to-day conditions that disrupt schooling, increase costs, and undermine students’ health and learning. Combatting these problems is profoundly complex, often requiring difficult trade-offs. Efforts to improve student health and learning environments may conflict with long-term sustainability goals and cost-effectiveness. These tradeoffs force school administrators to weigh the benefits of expensive structural upgrades against smaller, more affordable interventions. Despite the challenges, schools in the US and around the world are taking innovative steps that range from major infrastructure upgrades to homegrown, creative adjustments made by teachers in their classrooms.
A student from John McDonogh Senior High School’s first graduating class since Hurricane Katrina walks past a damaged wall on the way to commencement June 8, 2007, in New Orleans, LA, K12 Dive
Major Infrastructure Upgrades and Renewable Energy
After salaries, energy represents a critical area for both reducing costs and addressing sustainability. In the US, energy bills make up the second highest cost for school districts, amounting to roughly 8 billion dollars per year. To address these significant expenses, many institutions are moving beyond reactive budgeting and toward strategic roadmaps that help schools set sustainability goals that are aligned with national sustainability targets. Schools can use these roadmaps to help reduce the schools’ energy and water consumption, waste, and greenhouse gas emissions.
In the US, energy bills make up the second highest cost for school districts, amounting to roughly 8 billion dollars per year.
In addition to strategic budgeting, some schools are turning to high-impact technology to reduce energy costs and to promote sustainable practices. For instance, some schools are now putting in place geothermal wells because they offer a particularly sustainable way to heat and cool schools without burning fossil fuels. At the same time, some schools are turning to solar energy so that they can develop their own sources of energy. Though a costly up-front investment, solar panels can help reduce the electrification gap by providing a sustainable way to power schools that reduces costs over time and contributes to better air quality.
Countries with large with large school electrification gaps tend to have high potential for solar power generation, UNESCO via Gem Statlink
Improving HVAC Systems and the Building “Envelope”
Beyond energy sources, improvements to the school’s physical “envelope”—the walls, windows, and climate systems—can support student performance. Upgrading old HVAC systems, in particular, provides a way to cool classrooms and create better learning conditions at the some time. As one review of survey data from New York State schools showed, improving HVAC systems contributed to a 2% increase in attendance and a 3% increase in math scores over multiple years. Among other benefits, HVAC improvements can produce better air flow, which reduces the spread of disease and helps students focus. Improving air filtration through the use of air purifiers and portable air cleaners, can also help improve cognition and mitigate illness-related absences.
At the same time, air conditioning alone is not always a sustainable solution, as these systems can expel hot air outdoors and contribute to global warming. As architect Francis Kere explains, “energy-intensive air conditioning, which expels hot air outdoors, contribute to global warming, which then fuels demand for more air conditioning.” Instead, Kere recommends using passive cooling techniques, such as overhanging roofs to improve air circulation and generate cross-ventilation.
A student leaves the secondary school building built by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Francis Kere, in Kere’s home village of Gando, Burkina Faso, The Japan Times via Reuters
Schools can also make improvements in the outdoor environment to address sustainability. For instance, planting trees on asphalt playgrounds can reduce temperatures through shading, and painting roofs white, adding vegetation of false ceilings, and creating more green spaces can reduce the “heat island” effect.
Balancing Lighting and Temperature
Lighting represents another area where schools need to consider potentially conflicting benefits. In a 2020 review of 130 studies, lighting was found to be one of the environmental factors that had the biggest impact on students’ learning and wellbeing. Maximizing the amount of natural light in classrooms, in particular, has been shown to have a number of benefits including reducing eye strain, boosting mood, and improving cognition. Although artificial lighting may lead to lower motivation and eye strain, research reviews highlight that students in classrooms with more natural light showed higher productivity, engagement, and attention level. Despite these benefits, some classrooms may still suffer from poor lighting or rely too heavily on artificial sources. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that, in an effort to reduce energy consumption and costs, many schools have implemented LED lighting in classrooms.
Maximizing the amount of natural light in classrooms, in particular, has been shown to have a number of benefits, including reducing eye strain, boosting mood, and improving cognition.
In addition to finding a balance that maximizes the benefits of natural lighting with the costs, schools have to take into account the fact that both too much direct sunlight and too little light can negatively impact student engagement and impair test scores. Furthermore, schools have to take into account mitigating factors, including structural limitations that prevent some classrooms from relying on daylight, as well as the increases in classroom temperature and energy costs that come with larger windows. One way to deal with these challenges is to use temperature-treated or double-paned glass to provide light while keeping the heat out. The use of window shades may also be useful in eliminating glare.
Teachers’ Role in Sustainability
Whether or not schools have the resources for major structural changes or sustainability upgrades, teachers play a key role in striking the right balance between lighting and temperature and supporting both sustainability and an optimal learning environment. For instance, teachers have demonstrated a host of creative ways to combat heat and to improve the environment including using fans, creating window art to reduce glare, and turning off heat-generating electronics. In some cases, the simplest solutions may be the best solutions, as teachers in schools located in temperate regions with good air quality can open windows to allow for natural air flow.
Improving Facilities in “Old” Buildings
Along with so many natural disasters and rising temperatures, many communities face a long-standing demand to improve aging or inadequate school buildings. One of the most recent assessments of school infrastructure in the US shows that it would cost almost 200 billion dollars to bring all K-12 school buildings into good overall condition and the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the condition of America’s 100,000 public school buildings an overall grade of D+. Estimates suggest it would take as much as 85 billion dollars a year to make the needed improvements. On top of that, the costs of deferred maintenance continue to compound with every one million dollars worth of needed improvements deferred in one year leading to $1.08 – 1.12 million in costs the following year.
In the US, the burden and responsibility for addressing this problem falls on individual school districts and communities, but many lack the resources to pay for the significant upfront costs of building new facilities. Some districts have tried to mitigate these costs – and the sustainability problems that new construction often produces – by repurposing older buildings. For instance, struggling malls have opened the doors to charter schools as tenants to use the empty spaces. One charter school in South Carolina opened up in a former JC Penny Store. In Massachusetts, instead of building a new high school, one district opted to co-locate a school in the community’s senior center. center down the road.
Liberty STEAM Charter School in Sumter, S.C., is one of many schools that have opened up in malls across the nation, The New York Times
For more information regarding infrastructure and sustainability, see:
In the third part of this month’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Celina German discusses her experiences researching the intersection of community-based youth leadership, after-school club affinity programming, and student activism history. German is a Ph.D. student in the Learning, Literacies, and Technologies program at Arizona State University. German is a recipient of the Student Travel Award from the Educational Change Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association (AREA). The LtC series is produced by co-editors Dr. Soobin Choi and Dr. Jackie Pedota and their colleagues who lead the Ed Change SIG. A PDF of the fully formatted interview will be available on the LtC website.
Lead the Change (LtC): The 2026 AERA Annual Meeting theme is “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Educational Research.” This theme calls us to consider how to leverage our diverse knowledge and experiences to engage in futuring for education and education research, involving looking back to remember our histories so that we can look forward to imagine better futures. What steps are you taking, or do you plan to take, to heed this call?
Celina German: While working on my 2026 AERA submission, the notion of Sankofa (also visible in the conference logo) kept guiding me through the process. The Akan symbolism of a bird looking back and the word, literally translated as “go back and get,” made me think about what one returns to as part of the process of going forward. As a former high school English teacher and co-advisor of the Black Student Union, my heart also remembers all the great work that is part of the Summer Sankofa program at Arizona State University. My educational background informs the academics I want to participate in.
Source: Arizona State University website
I carry into this work my identity as my family’s first and only birthright citizen. As I navigated the U.S. education system (PK12) as a Romanian-American, gender-question young woman, I saw the unhealthy relationship between whiteness, patriarchal logics, and academic achievement. To engage in coalition work, I deeply reflected (and continue to reflect) on what my positionality and actions say about liberation. My identity hung in the balance of being the only American in a family of naturalized and permanent residents, while at school, I was learning in real time my racialized identity and how others interpreted it. Growing up in southcentral Indiana around very few Romanians, I learned very quickly the gradation of whiteness and how multicultural spaces, like my swim team, filled with mostly first-generation American kids like me, were more accepting of me than most of my educational leaders. However, I thrived in leadership roles despite what adults expected of me.
I bring this worldview to the interviews, research partnerships, and organizing efforts to 1) acknowledge how fraught multicultural coalitions’ history has been in America, and it is with the mindset to 2) recognize that futuring for education is rooted in trust and empathy. We don’t dream with abandon with those whom we are unsure of, and I try to speak with that honesty and humility in the liberation work I engage in. It is not always well-received, and I am constantly learning how to leverage the privilege I have to ensure that those I care about are heard. However, the first step I take is recognizing that all communities have tremendous privilege.
For those reasons, the critical race feminism and transnational frameworks I operate within were part of a journey of learning about my love for critical and real U.S. history (read: Black, Indigenous, Immigrant history). Still, I would not have gotten there alone without the multitude of college professors who engaged me with what I later learned was at the core of Black studies and Ethnic studies curricula. Therefore, the research I do, which I see as a labor of love, explores the history of antiracist educational activism. To better understand the problems we face today, I look back through high school yearbooks, archives, and oral histories to understand what the youth of the past did, attempted, and did not do to transform school structures.
LtC: What are some key lessons that practitioners and scholars might take from your work to foster better educational systems for all students?
CG: Part of my intellectual commitments towards educational change is writing alongside folks whose genius deserves to be heard and recognized, whether in the academic canon or in community outlets. The good fight is happening in the Black Student Unions (BSU), where advisors are engaging in fugitive mentorship and young people are demanding more of their school sites through an art-based YPAR inquiry (German, Smith, Berard, & Wilkerson, 2026; German, Nguyen, Joyner, & Johnson, 2026). To foster better educational systems, listening to practitioners and students for their insights into school system leadership is crucial.
In particular, young people in cultural affinity groups, such as BSU, M.E.Ch.A., or AAPISU, are extremely gifted in their critical consciousness of their leadership identities and in their understanding of the inner workings of school power dynamics. Expanding the definition of educational leaders to include student leaders of color, especially women of color, is the focus of my research. If young people are not part of that school-improvement feedback loop or act only as consultants, we are not engaging the school community that the administration aims to serve. Enacting changes because one is listening to young people in these elected roles is my vision of transformative school leadership.
“If young people are not part of that school-improvement feedback loop or act only as consultants, we are not engaging the school community that the administration aims to serve.”
Part of how I listen is understanding how young people are mentored in out-of-school or after-school programming. I aim to explore how adults co-conspire with youth to bring about educational change. Therefore, I had the opportunity to examine systemic designs for the equity director role through job descriptions. Dr. Ishmael Miller and I researched how institutional logics shape the role of equity directors. Miller’s work reflected on the lived realities of Equity Directors, either through reflexive accounts or historical inquiry (Miller, 2026a); (Miller, 2026b). His work is inspiring me as I explore leadership historically through a review of high school yearbooks illustrating BSU activism. Learning more about non-traditional educational leaders has broadened my perspective on organizational change in community partnerships and out-of-school-time youth organizations.
Lastly, I explore the limits of qualitative methods, such as interviewing, to see where dialogue about educational change can occur across differing, layered identities. Dr. Franklin-Phipps and I are using art to speculate Black educational futures (German and Franklin-Phipps, 2026). Our art inquiry is not to resolve or reach consensus, but to embrace the change needed to keep framing hope when we see sites of Black suffering (Dumas & Ross, 2016). Expanding my methods has inspired me to push the limits of positionality and reflexivity while doing coalition work in the academy.
LtC: What do you see the field of Educational Change heading, and where do you find hope for this field for the future?
CG: I find hope for educational change in young people’s responses to adult-led decisions. Whether a student responds in rage or profound patience, that hope compels me to muster the courage I have as an adult co-conspirator to reconcile what can be mended. I see how educational change is still addressing adultism and rewiring frameworks, so youth voice is not seen as performative. The roles of youth in elected leadership, such as school boards, serve as a weathervane of progress in some districts. I think seeing young people presenting at AERA is expanding the horizons of YPAR research.
I also derive hope from all the community youth work organizers who have been in this work longer than I have. Their creativity in structures that run counter to the leadership development of young people makes me refuse to see the tunnel vision with which academia portrays it. Seeing how strong, mutually beneficial research-practice partnerships engage communities of practice is a step in the right direction for the educational change scholarship.
References
Dumas, M. J., & Ross, K. M. (2016). “Be real black for me” imagining BlackCrit in education. Urban Education, 51(4), 415–442.
German, C., & Franklin-Phipps, A. (2026). Speculating Black Educational Futures: Wit(h)nessing Interviews Through Politics of Knowing. Special Issue. Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology (under review).
German, C., Smith, S. L., Berard, L., & Wilkerson, R. (2026). Fugitive Mentorship and Cultivating Expansive Futures: A Collaborative Autoethnography by Black Student Union Advisors. Current Issues in Education, 27(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol27iss1.2384
German, C., Nguyen, L., Joyner, J., Samuel, C., Johnson, A. (2026). Creatively Investing in Today’s Changemakers: Setting a YPAR Precedent for Empowered Student Leadership in Our Black Student Union. Journal of Participatory Research Methods. (under review)
Miller, I. A. (2026b). Historicizing the Equity Director Position: Black Community Advocacy by an Intergroup Relations Specialist. Journal of School Leadership, 36(1), 21–45.
Reed, E., German, C., Geraghty, P., Brown, K., & Carmichael, J. (2025). Editorial Introduction: Reflecting on Our Shared Educational Futures: A Global Need to Belong for Transformative Learning. Current Issues in Education, 26(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol26iss2.2475.
In the first part of this month’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Dr. Paul Campbell discusses his experiences researching educational change, leadership, and policy. Campbell is an Assistant Professor of Educational Administration and Leadership at The University of Hong Kong and President-Elect of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI). His research focuses on how diverse approaches to knowledge production and research engagement shape reform, and offer new ways for understanding what it means to lead, be a leader, and exercise leadership. Dr. Campbell is a recipient of the Emerging Scholar Award. The LtC series is produced by co-editors Dr. Soobin Choi and Dr. Jackie Pedotaand their colleagues at the Educational Change Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. A PDF of the fully formatted interview will be available on the LtC website.
Lead the Change (LtC): The 2026 AERA Annual Meeting theme is “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Educational Research.” This theme calls us to consider how to leverage our diverse knowledge and experiences to engage in futuring for education and education research, involving looking back to remember our histories so that we can look forward to imagine better futures. What steps are you taking, or do you plan to take, to heed this call?
Paul Campbell: The 2026 AERA theme invites us to remember the histories that have shaped our field while imagining futures that are more inclusive, equitable, and transformative. My scholarship begins with the belief that we cannot imagine new futures without first acknowledging the epistemic closures of the past. Educational leadership and change have long been dominated by Anglo-American traditions, privileging certain ways of knowing while marginalising others. To move forward, we must confront this history directly and commit to advancing epistemic diversity.
In my recent paper with Sefika Mertkan (Campbell & Mertkan, 2025), we argue that while geographical diversification of scholarship is a foundational step, it is insufficient on its own. What is more critical is epistemic diversity; the recognition and mobilisation of multiple epistemological traditions. This requires interrogating who produces knowledge, what epistemologies are applied, how knowledge is circulated and cited, and whose voices are solicited. As we wrote, “advancing epistemic diversity is more critical than geographical diversification in liberating the educational leadership knowledge base from the Anglo-American hegemony.” Remembering this history of epistemic dominance is essential if we are to imagine futures where pluriversal perspectives thrive. Only then can new possibilities emerge for how we understand the nature and purpose of leading educational change, and only then can more just realities for learners and communities thrive.
“Advancing epistemic diversity is more critical than geographical diversification in liberating the educational leadership knowledge base from the Anglo-American hegemony.”
My work also examines how supranational discourses shape our understanding of leaders, leading, and leadership in policy, research, and practice. In ‘Leadership for Learning: A Policy Analysis of the GEM Report 2024’ (Campbell & Sum, 2026), Nicola Sum and I show how global accountability frameworks often fail to take local realities into account. By applying a leadership-for-learning lens, we highlight pathways to reimagine futures where global frameworks are translated into contextually responsive practices. This reflects a desire to bridge histories of epistemic dominance with futures of inclusive, situated knowledge.
Taken together, this body of work reflects both optimism and frustration. Optimism, because there are genuine opportunities to rethink how educational change is understood and enacted. Frustration, because leaders are often positioned within policy-saturated environments that constrain their agency, and because knowledge production practices too often reproduce dominant paradigms rather than center the voices of educators and leaders themselves. The increasingly complex realities facing school leaders, shaped by global norms and demands, local contexts, and broader socio-political realities, require us to rethink not only what leadership and change are, but also how we study and support them.
Heeding the call of the 2026 AERA theme, therefore, means committing to a dual task: remembering the exclusions and closures of the past, while actively constructing futures that are plural, inclusive, and transformative. My scholarship seeks to contribute to this by interrogating the structures that sustain epistemic hegemony, amplifying diverse voices and thinking, and reimagining leadership and the leadership of educational change as a relational, educative, and contextually grounded practice. In doing so, I hope to support a field of educational change that is globally relevant and locally meaningful; one that ultimately serves the needs of students, educators, and communities in more just, equitable, and necessarily diverse ways.
LtC: What are some key lessons that practitioners and scholars might take from your work to foster better educational systems for all students?
PC: “I’m working on the margins in order to shake the core” was how one principal, in my study of principals’ life histories in relation to education reform, described the theme of their professional life and work. This articulation captures the complex realities of how leaders, their leadership, and change are positioned within systems, and the consequences this has for the enactment and possibilities of educational change. From this and related work, several lessons emerge for both scholars and practitioners.
Collaboration must be understood as socially and culturally situated. In ‘Leading Collaborative Educational Change: A Critical Policy Analysis of Leadership and Governance in Hong Kong Schools’ (Campbell & Kam, 2026), I show how hierarchical traditions, accountability demands, and conflict avoidance complicate the intentions and enactment of collaboration. Principals navigate tensions between policy ideals and lived realities, revealing that meaningful collaboration requires relational trust, cultural sensitivity, and reflexive leadership. This highlights the participatory dynamics of collaboration: who is involved, how power is exercised, and how goals are negotiated. Collaboration cannot, therefore, be reduced to structural arrangements or compliance mechanisms; it must be cultivated through participatory processes that respect cultural norms and empower diverse voices.
Agency is central to reimagining leadership in complex systems. In ‘“I’m Working on the Margins in Order to Shake the Core”: Educational Leadership, Agency, and the Reimagining of the Principalship’ (Campbell & Kam, 2026), principals describe how they enact agency through temporal, experiential, and relational dynamics. The agency framework articulated in this work, temporal (drawing on reform histories and aspirations), experiential (learning through practice and mentorship), and relational (building trust and mobilising communities) dynamics, offers a lens for understanding how leaders navigate, reinforce, or resist systemic constraints. For scholars, this challenges dominant conceptions of leaders’ positioning within and against system structures and constraints, and for leaders and educators in sites of practice, it underscores the need to support leaders in exercising agency within, with, and against systemic structures.
Organisational and socio-cultural dynamics must also be foregrounded. Accountability regimes, governance arrangements, and resource allocation shape the possibilities for collaboration and agency. At the same time, socio-cultural dynamics, comprised of hierarchical traditions, community expectations, and cultural dispositions toward conflict avoidance, mediate how leadership is enacted. Leaders must constantly negotiate these forces, balancing compliance with innovation and authority with relational trust. For educators, this means recognising that leadership is enacted within layered organisational and cultural contexts. For scholars, it calls for analyses that move beyond abstract models to examine how leadership is lived and contested in specific contexts.
Innovation in processes of change must also be conceptualised as situated and contested. In ‘Conceptualizing Innovation in Education: Implications for School Leadership and Change’ (Campbell et al., 2026), our editorial team and authors identified five themes requiring consideration for the leadership of innovation: innovation as relational, leadership as enabler or constraint, tensions between policy and practice, supportive cultures, and equity. Innovation is not a neutral construct; it reflects power relations and dominant epistemologies. For policymakers and professionals in sites of practice, this means developing organisational cultures of trust and inclusion. For scholars, it requires interrogating whose knowledge is valued and how innovation intersects with equity and justice.
Together, these insights highlight that educational change is shaped by participatory dynamics, organisational structures, socio-cultural contexts, and the agency of leaders. To reach better systems for all students, we must support leaders as active agents of change who navigate this dynamic complexity and are appropriately prepared and supported to do so.
LtC: What do you see the field of Educational Change heading, and where do you find hope for this field for the future?
PC: Despite persistent challenges, and what seems like a relentless intensification of complexity in education systems, I find hope in several directions.
First, epistemic diversity. Scholars are increasingly interrogating citational practices, editorial structures, and epistemic injustices, creating space for alternative epistemologies to shape the theoretical core of our fields. This movement holds promise for dismantling universalist narratives and cultivating pluriversal perspectives. It also signals a shift toward valuing multiple ways of knowing and being, and toward scholarship that is globally open but locally meaningful.
Second, leadership is reframed as educative, relational, and political. By moving beyond managerial and compliance-driven framings, we can reimagine school leaders as agents of justice, democratic ideals, and community empowerment. My work with school leaders in Hong Kong demonstrates that even within high-accountability systems, leaders exercise agency to sustain trust, adapt practices, and preserve professional identity. These acts of agency, often enacted “on the margins,” provide seeds of transformation that can “shake the core” of entrenched structures. They remind us that leadership is so much more than positional authority; it is a practice of agency, enacted through relationships and values.
Third, innovation as relational and inclusive. As our editorial in School Leadership & Management (Campbell, MacGregor & Sum, 2026) argued, innovation must be understood as a situated process of change rather than a discrete product. It is inherently political, reflecting epistemologies, power relations, and assumptions about whose knowledge counts. Equity and inclusion cannot be treated as add-ons; they must be central to how innovation is defined, led, and legitimised. When innovation is framed this way, it becomes a vehicle for addressing systemic inequities and fostering cultures of collaboration. This is where I see the field heading: toward a more nuanced, contextually grounded, and justice-oriented understanding of educational change.
Fourth, collective capacity. Ultimately, my hope lies in the collective capacity of scholars, policymakers, and professionals in sites of practice to remember histories of exclusion, interrogate present structures of dominance, and imagine futures of inclusivity and equity. The provocations we posed in the editorial mentioned earlier, innovation as process, leadership as dilemma space, and innovation as political, are invitations to debate, but also to act. They call for research and practice that is conceptually plural, empirically grounded, and ethically serious.
By centering agency, collaboration, and epistemic diversity, educational change can become truly transformative. The future of the field depends on our willingness to embrace complexity, to resist reductive framings, and to cultivate leadership and change that are relational, inclusive, and equity-oriented. In this, I find hope: that even amid constraints, leaders and scholars can work on the margins to shake the core and, in doing so, reimagine futures that are more just and humane.
References
Campbell, P. & Kam, Y. C. (2026). Leading Collaborative Educational Change: A Critical Policy Analysis of Leadership and Governance in Hong Kong Schools, Leadership and Policy in Schools, 1-21, https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2026.2636612
Campbell, P., Macgregor, S. & Sum, N. (2026). Editorial: Conceptualizing Innovation in Education: Implications for School Leadership and Change, School Leadership and Management, 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2026.2631919
Campbell, P. & Sum, N. (2026). Leadership for Learning: A Policy Analysis of the Global Education Monitoring Report 2024 and Its Local Implications for School Leadership, Management in Education, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1177/08920206261430580
Campbell, P. & Kam, Y. C. (2026). “I’m Working on the Margins in Order to Shake the Core”: Educational Leadership, Agency, and the Reimagining of the Principalship, Journal of Educational Administration, 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1108%2FJEA-06-2025-0246
Campbell, P. & Mertkan, S. (2025). Geographical Diversification of Educational Leadership Research: Gaps in Our Understanding, Management in Education, 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1177/08920206251407030
In the first part of this month’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Dr. David Osworth discusses his experiences researching the intersections of educational policy and leadership for equity. Osworth is an Assistant Professor of Educational and Cultural Foundations at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His research focuses on anti-LGBTQ+ policy, school discipline disparity, and neoliberal educational policy.The LtC series is produced by co-editors Dr. Soobin Choi and Dr. Jackie Pedotaand their colleagues at the Educational Change Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. A PDF of the fully formatted interview will be available on the LtC website.
Lead the Change (LtC): The 2026 AERA Annual Meeting theme is “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Educational Research.” This theme calls us to consider how to leverage our diverse knowledge and experiences to engage in futuring for education and education research, involving looking back to remember our histories so that we can look forward to imagine better futures. What steps are you taking, or do you plan to take, to heed this call?
David Osworth: My scholarship—both at AERA 2026 and beyond—critically examines oppressive structures in education through a historical lens with the express intent of supporting progressive reform that is humanizing and liberatory. I do this, for example, in my recent scholarship on the political hostility toward LGBTQ+ communities. In a critical policy analysis of anti-transgender legislation in North Carolina, I situate the present hostility toward transgender communities against the backdrop of the histories of LGBTQ+ communities within the United States over the 20th century (Osworth & Edlin, 2025). This focus on history not only allows us to understand the current political moment as form of retrenchment (see McQuillan et al., 2022) but also provides a road map to highlight resistance movements that have found purchase in the struggle for equity and how to learn from those strategies to inform present-day policies and politics.
Source: University of North Carolina at Greensboro website
While this is a throughline of my scholarship, it is exemplified by the work I am presenting at this year’s annual conference. Continuing my work surrounding LGBTQ+ issues in education, I am presenting from a larger study on LGBTQ+ educational leaders. This study examines the experiences of 23 LGBTQ+ educational leaders from across the United States as they navigate the current political climate. In this paper, I specifically examine how support—or a lack of support—plays a role in how LGBTQ+ leaders navigate their work. The findings of this paper are set against the history of LGBTQ+ educators in the United States. This paper concludes by outlining how leaders envision the future for other LGBTQ+ leaders and how schools can be made more supportive spaces for LGBTQ+ communities.
Another presentation at this year’s annual conference also engages with history to interrogate the present state of charter schools in New Jersey. Building from previous work that conceptualizes charter schools as a form of racialized enclosure that continues the neoliberal disinvest in public goods (Osworth & Tanner, 2025), my coauthors and I present a spatial analysis of charter schools using census data. We find that charter schools in New Jersey are almost exclusively located in geographies that are urban, lower-income, and predominantly serve non-white families. We situate this finding within the work of Marxist and racial capitalism scholars. We underscore that this exploitative pattern of charter proliferation in the state is directly ties to the history of federal redlining and opportunity hoarding of affluent, white communities (Cashin, 2021; Rothstein, 2017).
LtC:What are some key lessons that practitioners and scholars might take from your work to foster better educational systems for all students?
DO: My work aims to take a critical and interdisciplinary approach to educational research. I think that this is a major takeaway for the field as well as a commitment of the Educational Change SIG. In my recent work on school takeover in a rural school district, I interviewed Parents to better understand how they experienced the State’s intervention (Osworth, 2025, 2024). In this study, parents’ experiences illuminated counter-narratives about the takeover and complicated the State’s narrative about its progress. I think that these studies encapsulate a major takeaway from my scholarship as a whole. If we want to implement and enact change that meets the needs of the communities our schools serve, those communities must be included in the process. Too often, changes in our educational system relegate parents and communities to the periphery in the planning process while simultaneously relying on them to help implement the latest reforms. The findings from my scholarship point toward this reality. While the state education agency may say it includes parent feedback, parents’ experiences point in the opposite direction and demonstrate that trust and goodwill were destroyed in the process.
“Too often, changes in our educational system relegate parents and communities to the periphery in the planning process…”
Scholars and practitioners in educational change should therefore look toward centering community and family knowledge in the process of planning for change—not simply relegating them to be a tool to leverage in the journey for change. This moves from a more transactional view toward a more community-engaged and dialogic approach (see Freire, 1970/2018). My scholarship draws on the work of critical philosophers and thinkers, and I believe that those engaged in educational change need to prioritize the use of these theories, as bell hooks (1994) called for, making theory the cornerstone of liberatory practice.
LtC: What do you see the field of Educational Change heading, and where do you find hope for this field for the future?
DO: More than ever, the field of educational change must remain firmly grounded in a commitment to equity. Current resistance to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts disproportionately affects individuals from non-dominant identity groups, including—but not limited to—those marginalized by ability, socioeconomic status, gender, language, race, and sexuality. This contemporary moment of retrenchment (see Crenshaw, 1988) poses significant obstacles to efforts aimed at fostering socially just learning environments for all students. I view both my own scholarly work and the broader field as continuing to advance a justice-centered agenda—one that prioritizes the well-being of children and works toward realizing the democratic ideals upon which public education is founded.
At the same time, I am energized by the possibilities for engaging in theoretically robust scholarship within educational change. Concerns are often raised about a perceived disconnect between theory and practice, or about theory-driven research that lacks practical applicability. Yet I see the field at an especially promising juncture for meaningful praxis. Critical theoretical frameworks that offer important analytical tools for addressing today’s equity challenges also explicitly call for action. What is particularly compelling is the opportunity to pursue intellectually rigorous work that simultaneously informs how we act upon research insights. As educators and scholars continue to confront the complex, “wicked” problems facing education, it will be essential to do so through collaborative, community-engaged approaches that integrate theory and practice in purposeful ways. As we respond to the current political moment, I hope to see the field of educational change to keep these commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion as political pressure continues to mount for us to abandon these lines of inquiry and practice.
References
Cashin, S. (2021). White space, Black hood: Opportunity hoarding and segregation in the age of inequality. Beacon Press.
Crenshaw, K. (1988). Race, reform, and retrenchment: Transformation and legitimation in antidiscrimination law. Harvard Law Review, 101(7), 1331-1387.
hooks, b. (1993). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.
Freire, P. (1970/2018). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Bloomsbury.
McQuillan, M. T., Eckes, S., Lewis, M. (2022). A solution in search of a problem: Justice demands more for trans student-athletes to fulfill the promise of Title IX. Marquette Sports Law Review, 33(1), 195-228.
Osworth, D. (2025). “Prepare yourself for the change”: Counternarratives of parents experiencing state takeover. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2025.2601552
Osworth, D. & Edlin, M. (2025). The Political Construction of Anti-Transgender Policy: A Critical Policy Analysis of North Carolina State Legislators’ Discursive Formations. Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education, 2(2). 1-11. https://doi.org/10.60808/ren9-ak07
Osworth, D. & Tanner, M.N. (2025). From public good to private gain: Charter schools and the racialized enclosure of public education. The Urban Review, 57(4), 833-854. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-025-00744-w
Rothstein, R. (2017). The color of law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. Liveright Publishing Company.
