Is Improving Schools from the Bottom Up the Key to Real Reform?

Early on, the authors profile several of education’s best-known CID efforts—including Instructional Rounds, Data Wise, Networked Improvement Communities, Lesson Study, and Design-Based Implementation Research. Although they are clearly CID enthusiasts, they observe that these acclaimed strategies have received little scrutiny. No one has spent much time or energy figuring out if they actually work.

That’s the task that Mehta et al. set out for themselves. The bulk of the book consists of in-depth case studies of four long-running CID initiatives aimed at tackling challenges ranging from early literacy to high school biology. Along the way, the authors conducted more than 350 interviews and observed hundreds of meetings, trainings, and classrooms between 2016 and 2019. (If you think a book that draws on research that wrapped seven years ago should’ve been out sooner, I’m with you. Academe, man.)

The authors do a skillful job of explaining why TQM and its heirs have yielded uneven results, and how they depend on things like the clarity of goals, the predictability of workflows, and the precise measurement of outcomes. Even sensible design principles falter when applied clumsily or in the wrong context. Sure enough, even though they are clearly fans of CID, they thoughtfully explore why it’s frequently a poor fit for isolated, harried school systems in which teachers and leaders harbor a lot of distrust for one another.

The book is at its best when unpacking how culture, political dynamics, professional isolation, tight timelines, and misaligned incentives play out. I was reminded of Charles Payne’s wonderful So Much Reform, So Little Change, except with a more systematic frame. For instance, Mehta et al. point to the useful distinction between “complicated” problems (which require expertise) and “complex” ones (which require navigating human and organizational dynamics). They note how CID models seek to harness expertise, believing it will somehow help resolve complex interpersonal and organizational problems. Not surprisingly, the results frequently disappoint.

Indeed, the book’s most revealing contributions show up in the candid expressions of snark by educators who feel threatened, condescended to, or overburdened by these “teacher-centered” efforts. There’s the teacher who explained, “I don’t trust all data that they’re looking at.” Or the teacher who reported, “The kids were making fun of [the exit ticket]. They were like, ‘How does this lesson make me feel? Sad? Lonely?’ And it’s like, no, these are high school kids, they don’t give a shit.” Another teacher said,

What have [these partners] done to save me time? Not a lot. Last I checked, I’ve spent hours redoing all their shit, so if they want to take me up to the 99-yard line on that, cool, but I have six meetings on top of that six hours of work. I’m not going to waste my time.

A school leader lamented, “It’s an elective data collection. So . . . we’re missing a ton of data, and probably the very teachers who we wish we had it from, we don’t.”  One principal observed, “It’s not really safe to say ‘I messed up,’ . . .  because then you’re judged.” All of these complaints may seem kind of picayune, but that’s the point. It’s the accumulation of these minute, easy-to-overlook foibles that have been the undoing of so many reforms that looked like gamechangers from 30,000 feet. Given all this, readers may wonder why the authors are so sympathetic to CID. It’s clear they believe in the importance of skilled practice, are skeptical of top-down diktats, and view CID as a promising way for communities of professionals to tackle challenges collaboratively—in large part because it puts educators and those who train and support them in the driver’s seat. Put that way, it’s not hard to see why CID approaches are popular with education consultants and ed school professors; especially when the alternative is reforms that shift decisions away from educators and ed school “experts” and towards elected officials.

If I sound skeptical of CID, that’s because I am. But the authors’ measured approach offers a sense of why CID approaches can be so appealing. For instance, in discussing one reading program, they note the positive impact of coaches:

In the past, teachers had been handed huge binders of materials at the beginning of the year; they then had to turn this overwhelming mass of guidance into day-to-day lessons. The coaches worked with them to help them figure out what to prioritize, what to let go, and how to [use assessments] . . . to organize their lessons.

At another point, they quote a teacher participating in a CID collaboration, who explains:

I think that teaching [this curriculum] has made me more aware of . . . what I’m actually trying to do with students . . . Because if I ask the question, “What did we figure out today?,” and I get a bunch of blank stares, then it’s like, “Cool, I was failing miserably in my job, which was to get them to figure something out” . . . And so, I think it’s helped me be more reflective.

This may all seem obvious. And it is. But inattention to these practical frustrations has humbled many school improvement efforts—great and small. Now, it’s no surprise that teachers prefer improvement strategies that feel supportive. They like coaching when it’s unobtrusive, convenient, and focused on their priorities. They like collaboration when they feel heard, respected, and unhassled. The big question, of course, is whether genial coaching and no-offense collaboration can drive academic improvement. That’s a question the book doesn’t answer.

For me, Mehta et al.’s bottom line is this: CID asks educators to use methods that are poorly suited to the culture and turbulence of America’s K–12 systems. Changing mindsets, routines, and practice requires time and predictability. In schools today, though, initiatives get knocked askew when curricula change, district priorities shift, personnel turn over, or teachers feel overwhelmed. In other words, even these less “political” low-key reforms still inevitably run afoul of system dynamics, dysfunction, and distrust. Whoops.