How My Thinking about School Reform Has Changed (Part 2)

Part 1 appeared October 20, 2026. A few years ago, Richard Elmore asked me to write a piece about how my ideas have changed over the years. Daily experience in schools as a teacher, administrator, and researcher (and the reflection and writing that I did about those experiences) have indeed altered my ideas about the nature of reform and how reform policies worked their ways into districts, schools, and classrooms. Elmore included my piece in I Used to Think… And Now I Think (Harvard Education Press, 2011). I used to think that structural reforms (e.g., creating non-graded schools; new district and school site governance structures; novel technologies; small high schools with block schedules, advisories, and student learning communities) would lead to better classroom instruction. And now I think that, at best, such structural reforms may be necessary first steps toward improving instruction but are (and have been) seldom sufficient to alter traditional teaching practices. In teaching…