Huffington Post

A couple of anniversaries should inspire a discussion of education reform history to inform the next generation of school improvement. Stanford’s Professor Emeritus Larry Cuban marked the seventh birthday of his must-read blog, Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice, by explaining that it allows him to “put my teaching hat on,” and describing how current policy-driven reforms “are deeply rooted in the past.” Cuban understands, however, “too many reform-driven policymakers are inattentive to what has occurred in past efforts and what occurs daily in classrooms,” so “chances of full or even moderate implementation approach nil.”

As Cuban documents, school reformers failed in their effort to “deputize” teachers as the agents for overcoming the complex and intertwined legacies of poverty. His wisdom is echoed in another great blog, Chalkbeat, which featured Harvard’s Heather Hill, and her retrospective on the 50th anniversary of the Coleman Report, and what we have learned since that seminal study was published...