“School improvement” has been the mantra of school leaders for generations. The story for educators who have been in the profession for more than about 10 years is familiar:
- An innovative new approach to education is presented as the panacea for finally realizing the schools that we want and that the described in our vision statements.
- The innovation becomes the focus of workshops, training and planning, curriculum development, and teacher observation efforts for several years. (In many cases the length of this work depends on the timeframe of the grant funding the work.)
- For a number of reasons, the innovation will be deemed to have failed to deliver the intended outcomes, and a new innovation will be identified.
- The cycle repeats.