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Waiting for the Transformation

By Arthur E. Levine

A Nation at Risk formally launched the longest continuous school reform movement in American history. Today, more than 25 years later, that movement is divided into two camps: traditionalists, attempting to repair the existing public schools, and more-radical reformers, promoting such alternative practices and policies as charter schools, vouchers, non-university-based teacher preparation, pay for performance, and dismissal of failing tenured teachers.

Despite the split, the traditional and more radical approaches to school reform are actually more alike than different. And the changes sought by both may take longer to achieve than either side thinks. A quick look back and ahead may help explain why.

America’s current education system, created during the industrial era, resembles an assembly line, the era’s quintessential method of production. It puts all students through a common process tied to the clock; children progress based upon the amount of time they spend being taught in a classroom, with all students required to master the same body of knowledge in the same period of time. Beginning at age 5, they are educated in batches of from 25 to 30 students for a period of 180 days a year for 13 years. In high school, they study five major subjects a year, each in sessions lasting 40 to 60 minutes, meeting four or five times a week for 36 to 40 weeks per year, as recommended by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement...