Diverse learners and instructional strategies

Diverse Learners

How Schools Change Reforms

The article, "How Schools Change Reforms: Redefining Reform Success and Failure" by Larry Cuba covers just how schools can affect reforms, and how school reform can be truly effective. The author cites three criteria commonly used to evaluate reforms: effectiveness, popularity, and fidelity, and then goes on to discuss the merits and problems with creating and utilizing such criteria. The author uses the educational reform enacted in Gary, Indiana at the turn of the 20th century as a model for school reform. He shows how the innovations in Gary took hold across the nation in just a few years. However, after a few years, studies showed the Gary students did not make as many strides ahead as people had thought, and their achievement scores were generally weaker than other schools. The Gary reform movement died, and others took its' place, many of which have also disappeared entirely. The author maintains that modern school reforms are quite the same. He notes "They are adopted and, as they are implemented, undergo changes that transform them in ways that few of the designers of the original reform could predict, or even claim ownership" (Cuba 455). The article is geared toward policymakers and administrators, and urges them to truly "rethink" school reforms before they actually implement them.