Diverse Learners

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. This article makes it quite clear that school reforms are not often thought out before they are implemented, and then they are often judged with faulty criteria.

He gives some alternate ways to judge how successful reforms are, and urges school districts to develop new criteria that are not so easily swayed and prejudiced. The author notes not all reforms are failures, and cites some of the successes too, and what made them successful. Ultimately,.