New Column: Education Ideas and Education Implementation

Last week, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeed Act (ESSA) into law and finally put No Child Left Behind in the hands of historians. The law gives states considerable latitude to decide which students, schools, and districts need extra resources and attention to improve. This new flexibility is designed to give local educators the freedom to dream big and try novel strategies for serving students better. The law’s architect, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), promised that it will unleash a flood of excellence in student achievement state by state and community by community.”

That’s a perfectly intuitive theory of action. But we should be careful in equating “space to innovate” with “developing and implementing effective new ideas.” American students, parents, educators, administrators, and researchers will generate countless new strategies for improving education in 2016 (just like this did this year). To put it gently, not all of them will work. And, importantly, many will have promise, but will be implemented haphazardly. Under ESSA, oversight of these new local reforms will be considerably less predictable.

In other words, ESSA’s success or failure hinges on whether or not these local and state innovators implement their new ideas well. Unfortunately, the field of implementation has long been neglected in American education. I discuss this phenomenon in a new column at The 74 Million today:

America’s top education thinkers love to debate the Big, Very Serious Principles. They We love to get charged up about Equity, Choice, Accountability, Excellence and a bevy of other core ideals. They We also love to cross swords over priorities: Fund afterschool programs! No, pay for art teachers! Professionalize teaching! No, raise teachers’ pay! Update facilities! Invest in technology!

These are things we need to talk about, obviously. But we usually do so without paying attention to what it would take to actually make these things happen.

Click here to read the rest of the column.“