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Abstract

This project began modestly enough, as a response to the question posed by a good friend, the superintendent of a midsized school district. I had been giving him a hard time about his school reform plan, as I’m wont to do. Finally, he said, “So what would you do if you were in my shoes?” Being an academic, I did what any academic is trained to do. I waffled. “Well, it’s tough to say,” I hemmed. He wasn’t having any of it. So I went ahead and said my piece. I told him that all the pedagogical and curricular tweaking that so concerned him was nothing but a distraction because his system itself was dysfunctional. I told him that the first steps in real improvement had little to do with instruction and a lot to do with sensible management. I told him that his school system was engineered to foster and accept incompetence. No amount of new spending, professional development, or instructional refinement would suffice to change that. In truth, education reformers routinely approach school improvement as a matter of technical expertise rather than common sense--undermining their own best efforts while distracting public attention and energy from the larger, structural problems.

Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar and the director of education policy studies at AEI.