By Tom

I don’t care for school reform. In fact, the very phrase “school reform” doesn’t really make any sense. “Reform” implies a fundamental change. But no matter what shape school reform takes, we’ll still end up with the same teachers, the same buildings, the same curriculum and most importantly, the same students. That’s not reform. It’s like remodeling a kitchen by pulling out all the cabinets and appliances and then putting them right back, but in a slightly different configuration. You haven’t remodeled anything. All you’ve done is waste an enormous amount of time and energy.

The people who scream the loudest about school reform usually have the most complicated, disruptive and expensive solutions: merit pay, charter schools and firing entire faculties of low-performing schools.

Merit pay will never work for two reasons: it’s impossible to establish a fair way to do it, and most teachers really don’t need more incentive to do better; they’re already performing as well as they know how.

Charter schools won’t work, because their very existence comes at the expense of the public school system. It’s the educational equivalent of people running to the high side of a tilting ship: pretty soon the ship tilts the other way.

Firing “bad teachers” doesn’t work because it’s the ultimate example of treating the symptom by ignoring the cause.

So we’ll never have “school reform.” Not really. And I don’t think we need it. What we do need, what every institution and every system and every organization needs, is improvement. Constant, gradual, sustainable improvement.

How do we improve? We teach better. It’s that simple. Teachers need to constantly improve the way they teach. They need to develop and deliver better lessons, and organize those lessons within better units of study. This might seem obvious to most people, but it is surprising how little attention is paid to the most obvious solution. I can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve sat through in which the goal was better student achievement and in which the only thing we didn’t discuss was better teaching.

Maybe that’s because teaching better; while it seems so simple and obvious, actually takes a lot of time and work. Becoming a better teacher, you see, involves a constant and deliberative cycle of planning instruction, delivering lessons, analyzing student work, reflecting on the lessons, and using that data to inform and improve the next cycle. That’s hard, and it consumes a lot of time. But it’s the only way to get better, and it’s the only way education in this or any country will improve.

Fortunately, teachers don’t always have to do it alone. If a teacher is genuinely interested in improvement, it’s relatively easy to find one or two people who share that passion and are willing to work together.

That’s what we did in my school. I came across a good book over the summer with some interesting teaching strategies. I thought I could improve my practice by systematically studying each strategy and applying them, one at a time, in my classroom. I asked two other teachers in my school if they wanted to join me. They did. So we now have a study group. We read about a new strategy every week, plan instruction to utilize that strategy, try it out in our classrooms, get together to discuss how it went and then work on the next strategy.

It’s simple. We’re not reforming anything. We’re just improving. We’re slowly but steadily becoming better teachers. What’s more, we’re not costing anybody anything. No one had to write a grant, no one had to pass a bond issue, and no one got fired. We’re even sharing the same book. It’s just three people who want to get better at what they do, and have agreed to commit an hour or so each Wednesday in order to make it happen.

Is the public school system broken? No. Can it be improved? Yes; gradually and sustainably. One teacher, one lesson at a time.