Why education reform always fails

Every time that we push education reform, we fail. Why is that? In short, it's because we are too deeply entrenched in the flawed traditional schooling environment. To add a little depth, there are three obstacles that really seem to stand out.

Evaluating our schools

All evaluations for schooling performance, both formal and informal, are based off of traditional schooling. This includes various tests that focus on certain core subjects and test taking skills. If a student is highly skilled in an obscure but valuable subject or does a much better job with practical understanding than understanding the wording of a test, this can be detrimental to such scores.

Personally, math was a strength of mine. I did well with word problems. Have you read some of these word problems? If half as many plus one third... You will never encounter anything like them outside of the schools.

How about informal evaluations? This essentially means that someone observes. All expectations of most observers were built off of the schooling system that we already know. Those who observe will typically recognize any shortcomings in comparison to the traditional model. Strengths in areas with which they lack familiarity will go unnoticed.

As I have said numerous times over the years, no innovative school will ever outperform traditional schools at being traditional schools. Existing evaluations ensure that deviations are viewed as inferior. As a result, we will push back against all legitimate educational innovation.

Teacher training

Thanks to credentialism, all teachers come from the same background. They invested time, money, and effort into colleges to learn about teaching duties in the current schooling environment. This means that they have to prove support for the way things already are. They also will lack training in ideas that emerged after they acquire their credentials.

Most schools follow a traditional approach taught by individuals who have been trained in the traditional approach. They are then being compared to semi-innovative schools taught by individuals who have been trained in the traditional approach. Do you see a problem with that?

To further complicate things, these teachers are generally going to want to revert to what they know. If a school innovates, the teachers will provide continuous pressure, although not always with strength, to go back to how things have always worked.

Shallow quick fixes

A lot of people are scared off by the thought of throwing away work that we have already put into education. Unfortunately, the very foundation of our schools was built off of definitively anti-educational values. Simply building on top of this foundation will never be sufficient for anyone who true believes in a quality education.

All reform efforts that I have seen involve a simple change to the existing system. In most cases, reform efforts try to strengthen what the schools are already doing rather than fixing legitimate problems. For example, standards-based reform is a heavy-handed attempt to enforce flawed standards. The ideal education for different students is variable. Pushing all children to pursue the same goals has always been a problem. Instead of embracing what's best for the children, standards-based reform strengthens and enforces an existing problem that we should be trying to correct.

Even in the rare instance that a reform idea is not based off of traditional schooling, we rely on the traditional schooling model for implementation. Instead of looking at ideas and how to best implement them, we look for the best way to add them to our schools. Even if someone has a great idea, it will be tested in an environment that was never optimized for that idea.

The simple reality is that building on top of a faulty foundation will not repair that foundation. If we want meaningful reform, we have to go deeper. We need to look at the best approach to education without embracing the constraints of our current disaster. We need to stop looking at how to reform the schools and start looking for a replacement.