In 鈥淪traight Talk with Rick and Jal,鈥� Harvard University鈥檚 Jal Mehta and I examine the reforms and enthusiasms that permeate education. In a field full of buzzwords, our goal is simple: Tell the truth, in plain English, about what鈥檚 being proposed and what it means for students, teachers, and parents. We may be wrong, and we will frequently disagree, but we鈥檒l try to be candid and ensure that you don鈥檛 need a Ph.D. in eduspeak to understand us. Today鈥檚 topic is 鈥渆ducational change.鈥�
鈥�Rick
Jal: A few years ago, I was teaching a course on deeper learning. Drawing on my mentor, David Cohen, I鈥檇 frequently say, 鈥淐hange is a generational proposition.鈥� Shallow, teacher-centered learning is a product of many forces: State tests and accountability structure reinforce it, teachers teach the way they were taught, there is little demand among parents or students for change, and college admissions reinforce the conservatism of the existing structures. Things might change, I would say, but it would take 30 years or more as we move across these various institutions鈥攕chools, districts, college admissions, teacher-preparation institutions鈥攖hat need to all gradually transform.
Enter Alice Tucker. She was a former 4th grade teacher in my class. For her final class project, she went back to the school where she worked to deepen the learning there. Her first idea was to introduce project-based learning. However, when she interviewed the teachers, they said they had little interest in project-based learning but that they were being pressed to ask higher-order questions and didn鈥檛 know how. Alice had some credibility with these teachers: She had taught at the school and was regarded as a good teacher. Over several lunch periods, she showed them how to move from more directed to more open-ended questions. She collected data before and after these meetings and found that teachers鈥� use of higher-order questioning had increased from 10% to 40% between October and December. Three months, not a generation. Student 1, professor 0.
I鈥檓 slow, but I鈥檓 not that slow. As I watched Alice and others like her鈥攕tudents, but also real-world changemakers whose work I respected鈥擨 noticed some patterns. Like Alice, people started with some goal, a North Star that they held onto and guided their work. But then they engaged in conversation with the people who would be involved鈥攚hat the design thinking process would call 鈥渆mpathy interviews鈥濃�攁nd they developed or co-developed strategies that met local needs. And they worked in places where they had relationships, trust, and credibility, which caused people to want to move with them. Another way to put it is that they started with what they had鈥攚ho they knew, what time was available, what skills or knowledge they could offer鈥攔ather than with some huge Platonic ideal of what a different system might look like.
Rick, what do you think? When you鈥檝e seen actual change happen, what does it look like?
Rick: As you know, I鈥檝e spent a lot of years asking why 鈥渞eform鈥� so rarely yields actual change. Heck, my first book, , took off mostly because鈥攊n an era of calls to 鈥渟hake up鈥� urban systems鈥擨 showed that districts were actually launching a barrage of reform. And I鈥檝e spent years trying to explain why billions spent on the School Improvement Grant program and teacher-evaluation reform didn鈥檛 deliver.
But I鈥檒l skip the history lesson and offer a simple example of change. A charter school leader reached out a couple years ago because she was dealing with all manner of headaches in the aftermath of the pandemic. Students were disengaged. Misbehavior was up. And phones contributed to a huge hit in school culture. Kids were distracted in class and always on their phones between them. Her response was to adopt a no-phones policy for the school day. There were clear rules and strict enforcement. Phones stayed in lockers, even during lunch. A year later, she reports dramatic changes in culture, with many fewer interruptions and much more student interaction.
This isn鈥檛 really about a change to teaching or learning. This is about adopting a policy and sticking to it. The thing about policies is they can provide a clarity that鈥檚 missing from more subtle behavioral change.
All of this raises a couple of thoughts. First, while policy can be a powerful lever, it has stark limits. Its impact depends on how it鈥檚 employed. Second, the permanence of change is a big deal when judging whether it鈥檚 meaningful. In your example, will Tucker鈥檚 shift deepen with time or fade away by year鈥檚 end? With the phone ban, will the new policy become part of the school鈥檚 DNA, or will it gradually lose force due to student pushback or relaxed enforcement?
You鈥檝e raised big questions about the scale of change and how you get new habits to stick. I fear that I鈥檓 short on grand insights. How about you?
Jal: A few years ago, I took in managing complexity, and one of the distinctions that stuck with me was the difference between 鈥渟olving problems鈥� and 鈥渃hanging patterns.鈥� It is often really hard to solve problems because each 鈥渟olution鈥� generates a new set of unintended consequences. What you described with the phone story is more about changing patterns than solving problems: By restricting access to electronic devices, students began to form new patterns of interaction which, on the whole, were healthier than what they replaced. What I like about that example is that the school didn鈥檛 try to micromanage each individual problem they were facing. Instead, they made a significant change in the overall ecosystem.
I tend to think this is also how large-scale change happens. Something changes with the overall rules of the game, which creates new and different opportunities for reform closer to the ground. Sometimes, these changes come from social norms鈥攕chools are highly permeable institutions that are quite susceptible to the social and cultural changes occurring in the broader world. Many schools today have clubs that support LGBTQ+ rights, whereas when I was in high school 30 years ago, there was not one student who was openly out on campus. Other times, changes come from shifts in the policy environment. For example, British Columbia moved from the kind of broad but shallow content standards that are common in many places to standards that emphasized fewer competencies and gave teachers more time to realize them. Teachers, closer to the ground, work in concert with each other, their districts, and their professional associations to translate those new standards into different lessons.
How does the British Columbia example differ from the kinds of policy overreach that we have both critiqued? I think the difference is that it was less a policy that attempted to micromanage many people toward a particular change and more that it was changing the expectations while giving teachers a lot of room to figure out how to achieve them. There were no unrealistic timelines or standardized tests that were the only measure of outcomes. Rather, it was more leadership by persuasion鈥攖he province was indicating to districts and teachers a different set of more humanistic priorities and inviting teachers to think about how to best achieve them.
Some districts we鈥檝e partnered with in our project have used a balance of coherence and emergence. They work with stakeholders to develop some shared ends to aspire to (more student-centered learning) and then let that emerge as it will in different settings (stations in elementary school, Socratic seminars in high school English). A key part of this 鈥渃oherence plus emergence鈥� view is building networks that connect bottom-up changemakers, such as teachers experimenting with more inquiry-oriented pedagogy. By linking these innovators and galvanizing them around a shared direction, you can accelerate learning and generate local momentum for change.
Rick: This stuff is crucial, but it can also get convoluted. So let me close by bringing it back to a few core intuitions.
The first is that there鈥檚 no such thing as an 鈥渋mplementation problem.鈥� We鈥檙e always hearing about promising ideas that were undone by 鈥渋mplementation鈥� missteps, but that鈥檚 mostly a way for policymakers, advocates, funders, and academics to pass the blame. Nothing ever works as designed. If a model of change is so delicate or specific that it doesn鈥檛 work in real schools, then it doesn鈥檛 work. Period. When seeking a change strategy, this means it鈥檚 good to focus less on how the change could conceivably work if everything goes right and more on how it鈥檒l actually work in practice.
The second is that, when it comes to change, there鈥檚 a chasm between 糖心动漫vlog and policymakers. Educational change is ultimately about what students and teachers actually do all day. This is the case with testing, teacher evaluation, standards, professional development, reading instruction, cellphone policies, and so on. But that simple truth can get lost. Because they鈥檙e in classrooms, 糖心动漫vlog tend to have maximum visibility into how change happens. That proximity, though, can make it tough to see the big picture. Meanwhile, those writing laws and giving directives have limited visibility into how change is going. The result is a big disconnect between those making changes and those experiencing them.
And a third is that changes in policy don鈥檛 necessarily lead to changes in practice. An instructive example is Obama-era teacher evaluation. A , highlighting that more than 99 percent of teachers were routinely rated 鈥渟atisfactory,鈥� even in poor-performing schools, helped spark a national push for change. Well, eight years later, in 2017, researchers Matt Kraft and Allison Gilmour examined the results in 24 states that had changed evaluation and that 97 percent of teachers were rated effective. A lot of time, energy, and money yielded very little change. Why? Principals weren鈥檛 sure what poor teaching looked like, didn鈥檛 want to upset their staff, and didn鈥檛 think giving a negative evaluation was worth the hassle.
Educational change is ultimately about getting students, 糖心动漫vlog, or parents to embrace a new way of doing things. That鈥檚 a complicated proposition. But it requires setting a clear direction, showing what鈥檚 possible, shifting cultural norms, and institutionalizing new incentives. All of that, of course, is much easier said than done. Hence, our frustrations.
