Perspective: Still Tinkering

By Ronald A. Wolk

We’ve spent more than two decades trying to improve public schools and raise student achievement, the longest sustained reform period in history. We haven’t made significant progress. Willie Herenton, mayor of Memphis, Tennessee, and once superintendent of that city’s schools, told fellow mayors at their October summit on urban education that “the school budget keeps going up, and student performance keeps going down.”

School administrators and teachers don’t like to hear that kind of criticism. They feel they are being blamed for problems they didn’t create and cannot solve. And, for the most part, they’re right.

We are in a bind. Our education system is not as productive or successful as it needs to be, but no single reform effort has worked. More than 25 percent of our students (and twice that number in many urban districts) continue to drop out. Most students do not achieve proficiency in reading, math, or science, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. And standardized test scores tend to decline between...