Anyway, I’m moved to share a few loosely connected reflections that emerged during a long, meandering conversation I had at the summit with Brumley, who I find to be one of the nation’s sharper education thinkers.
We talked at some length about how much reform is too much, especially given the ambitious efforts of states like Louisiana and Mississippi. As regular readers know, I’ve always been more skeptical than most when it comes to school “reform.” It’s been more than a quarter-century since I published Spinning Wheels, in which I explained that urban school reform often disappoints because it’s part of a constant churn of initiatives that educators deflect by closing their doors and telling each other, “This too shall pass.” In schools, where culture plays such a crucial role in determining success, this is deadly. Now, looking at Louisiana, one might note that they’re tackling reading, classroom culture, math, CTE, and more and be moved to ask, “Is that too much reform?” It’s a reasonable question. But I think the answer is no.
In Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, we see a coherent series of actions that point in the same direction. The problem with most school reform efforts is not the sheer number of changes but the cultural discordance—the whiplash, fad-chasing, and stopping-and-starting. So, when a literacy agenda involves a number of moving parts, it’s not a problem so long as they’re working in concert. It would be a mistake to imagine the lesson of Spinning Wheels is that inertia is good for schools. Rather, it’s that chaos is bad for them.
Brumley and I also got into “Let Teachers Teach,” a comprehensive agenda for school leaders and legislators that the Louisiana Department of Education released last year. I love this initiative. Devised in concert with a few dozen respected Louisiana teachers, the recommendations aim to make teaching more manageable. They call for limiting students’ cell phone use, placing ungovernable students at alternative sites, abolishing antiquated lesson-planning requirements, reducing the burdens of mandated teacher trainings, ensuring adequate time for preparation, and so forth. It’s overdue and the kind of thing that I’ve been (mostly fruitlessly) urging “reformers” to do for decades, both for the practical benefits and as a way to show respect for those doing the work.
It’s tough to capture just how dramatically “Let Teachers Teach” contrasts with the ethos that’s fueled so much reform during the past few decades. Heck, I can still recall pretty clearly the time (15 years ago) when the push for value-added teacher evaluation yielded half-baked algorithms and crappy placeholder measures for the 70 percent of teachers who didn’t teach reading or math in grades 4 through 8. I’ve seen plenty of advocates roll their eyes at teachers who dare to voice sensible concerns about student misconduct or raging student absenteeism, especially when those teachers are crosswise with the dictates of “restorative justice.” It’s laughable but sadly true that a reform focused on making it easier for professional educators to do their damn job qualifies as novel.
