By Larry Grau, DFER Indiana State Director
I recently read an editorial piece by Arlene Ackerman, former Philadelphia public schools superintendent and longtime educator, on how she came to the realization that our public education system will not improve on its own. I have come to the same realization, because among other reasons, there is no indication school districts are suddenly going to hold themselves accountable for elevating the academic achievement of all students; or take every step necessary to ensure all students only have effective teachers. There are also just too many people who have a vested interest in keeping the current system intact, who are resistant to even the smallest of changes – let alone the dramatic improvements most of us recognize must be made in order for the system to succeed.
The traditional school establishment and its supporters know if you change the ingredients, it likely changes the recipe. If you change the recipe, you get a different dish; and, there are no real internal motivators to change a system that has served a whole bunch of adults so well for such a long time.
The lack of changes generated from inside the system and ongoing resistance to proposed reforms over the past 20 years supplies ample evidence that most traditional school systems are adverse to change. In fact, most of the people in the system I have heard from or seen quoted are quick to recite a litany of reasons why they can’t: implement meaningful teacher evaluations, raise the achievement levels of all students, or explore different approaches to produce better results in our schools. Instead, most traditional schools have been stuck using the same recipe for years – one that calls for them to keep doing what they have been doing and oppose or ignore changes. Even when a school, or in some cases districts, occasionally appear to embrace a new idea, such as using data to drive decisions or allowing more autonomy in a school, it doesn’t last. How could it when new ideas – policies, practices – are typically subject to lackluster and flawed implementation?
I have been involved in education from nearly every vantage point – from being a governor’s education policy advisor to PTO president. I can say my knowledge of the education world is fairly expansive, at least enough to determine there are a lot of people working in the system who are opposed to every type of change. Their opposition is not necessarily because they think a proposal will not serve children well, but on account of the fact they are content in what they do and how they do it. Anything that may cause them to deviate from that routine takes them out of their comfort zone.