On Scripting the Classroom

By Stanley Pogrow

The current wave of reforms cannot work because they are based on myths about human behavior.

Education has been victimized over the past 10 years by well-intentioned reformers run amok with the support of governmental and foundation elites. These members of what I call the Research Academic Reform community, hereafter to be referred to as REAR, have used the widespread failure of existing practices to seduce the education profession into pursuing a series of alternative reforms that cannot work in their proposed forms. These reforms include, but are not limited to, whole language, full inclusion, heterogeneous grouping, schoolwide models, teacher empowerment, the middle school movement, authentic assessment, learning communities, school restructuring, multidisciplinary curricula, overreliance on staff development, and many others.

The current wave of reforms cannot work in their proposed form because they are based on myths about human behavior, the nature of professions, and how organizations function. These myths include the beliefs that: a) you can change instruction primarily via advocacy, in-service, and training; b) you can reform education primarily by disseminating knowledge and leaving it up to practitioners to apply that knowledge; c) substantive change requires radical reformulation of existing practice, that is, new paradigms, to restructure whole schools; d) you can develop learning through reforms designed to enhance correlates and processes of learning, such as self-concept, empowerment, democratic participation, equity, and so forth; and e) you can understand large-scale change by understanding what happens on...