Opinion
School & District Management Opinion

Why I’m Against Innovation in Education

By Mike Schmoker — May 01, 2018 4 min read
BRIC ARCHIVE
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

I’m against innovation in education—as currently conceived and conducted. I’m not against small-scale educational experimentation, where new methods are tested, refined, and proved before they are widely implemented. But I’m against our inordinate obsession with what’s new at the expense of what works—with exceedingly superior (if much older) evidence-based practices. The difference in impact isn’t slight: Michael Fullan, an international authority on education, believes that our best high-leverage methods produce “stunningly powerful consequences” in schools. And they will do so, as professional-development expert Bruce Joyce has noted, “very rapidly.” Our willingness to recognize and act on this difference may be the central educational issue of our time.

Consider John Hattie’s research on the power of formative evaluation and feedback. His exhaustive studies confirm what we’ve known since the 1960s: that ongoing monitoring and adjustments to teaching, informed by feedback, may have more impact on learning than any other instructional factor.

Doug Lemov concurs. In his mega-best-selling book, Teach Like a Champion, he identifies “checking for understanding” as the pivotal element in an effective lesson.

I know teachers in two different schools in the same district whose adoption of these methods contributed to enormous one-year, whole-school gains on their state writing exam. After learning of these incredible gains, I joined these teachers to advocate the expansion of their efforts in their district—but their successes were entirely ignored. To our astonishment, their respective school leaders opted to pursue a string of popular—but weak or unproven—innovations, including SmartBoard training and standards-based grading.

Perhaps the most promising fact about the best evidence-based practices is that they are currently the least implemented."

Or what of New York City’s New Dorp High School? With the struggling school in danger of closure by city officials, the principal decided to go all in on exceedingly traditional instruction in reading, public speaking, and writing in every discipline. In just two years, the school made immense gains and is now a mecca for visitors. As author Peg Tyre explained in a 2012 article in The Atlantic, the school’s success was not a function of innovation or experimentation, but of old, proven instructional “fundamentals that schools have devalued or forgotten” (my emphasis). As Tyre points out, the fundamentals-first instructional model on which New Dorp based its program “would not be unfamiliar to nuns who taught in Catholic schools circa 1950.”

And then there’s the simple power of curriculum. Nothing cutting-edge here. Yet meta-analytic evidence from Robert Marzano and other researchers indicates that a coherent curriculum—if implemented—has more impact on learning than any other in-school factor. Not long ago, I attended an award ceremony for a school in Arizona that ranked in the top three for statewide gains in math. They achieved this in a two-year period, a direct result of having teams of teachers map out, for the first time, what they would teach in each math course, by grading period. I’m friends with an elementary school principal in Boston who persuaded his faculty members to do the same for every course at his high-poverty school. Scores rose, in his words, “with amazing speed": from the bottom to the top third in the state, in a single school year.

Finally, consider working-class Brockton High School, in Massachusetts. Brockton was among the lowest-achieving schools in the state. The faculty responded to dire performance indicators by making “reading, writing, speaking, and reasoning” in every subject area their mantra. In 2001, the first year of their effort, the state’s education commissioner called to inform them that Brockton had made the largest gains in the commonwealth. In the next few years, Brockton rose from the bottom rungs to the top 10 percent in Massachusetts.

Perhaps the most promising fact about the best evidence-based practices is that they are currently the least implemented. Because of that, their use would have a swift and substantial impact in thousands of schools and on millions of students. But not if they continue to be supplanted, as they now are, by innovations like the flipped classroom, student-centered learning spaces, teaching with mobile apps, gamification, or the now-ubiquitous variations on personalized learning. Not one of those ranks high on any list of what’s most effective. What researchers Thomas B. Corcoran, Susan H. Fuhrman, and Catherine Belcher wrote years ago in their study of professional development is still true: Those in charge of what teachers learn are not an “evidence-based community.” They are driven, on the contrary, by “whims, fads, opportunism, and ideology.”

When I donated a kidney to my sister, the doctors didn’t experiment on her with the latest anti-rejection drugs. They gave her the best, evidence-based anti-rejection medicine available at the time—Cyclosporine. And it saved her life.

We have a pretty stark choice: We can either implement the best we know or continue to treat students and teachers like lab rats. It’s time for education to make the leap to a more authentic professionalism—by giving innovation its due, but never letting it supplant or precede those practices that would produce “stunningly powerful consequences” in our schools and in the lives of students.

A version of this article appeared in the May 02, 2018 edition of Education Week as Why I’m Against Innovation in Education

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Assessment Webinar
Rethinking STEM Assessment: Strategies for Administrators
School and district leaders will explore strategies to enhance STEM assessment practices across their district, within schools and classrooms.
Content provided by Project Lead The Way
Federal Webinar Keeping Up with the Trump Administration's Latest K-12 Moves: Subscriber-Exclusive Quick Hit
EdWeek subscribers, join this 30-minute webinar to find out what the latest federal policy changes mean for K-12 education.
Artificial Intelligence Live Online Discussion A Seat at the Table: Math & Technology: Finding the Recipe for Student Success
How should we balance AI & math instruction? Join our discussion on preparing future-ready students.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School & District Management Principals Urge Ed. Department: Leave School Safety Funding Alone
Schools need access to funds for mental health professionals and other student services, say principals who've experienced school shootings.
5 min read
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon listens to members of the Principal Recovery Network during their annual meeting on June 9, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon listens to members of the Principal Recovery Network during their annual meeting on June 9, 2025, in Washington.
Courtesy of Allyssa Hynes/NASSP
School & District Management Opinion For Principals, Emotional Intelligence Is More Than Just Being ‘Nice’
Emotions are contagious. When leaders struggle, the school environment does, too.
Marc Brackett, James Floman & Robin Stern
5 min read
Juggling emotions control concept, businessman juggling emotions icons and mood control, mindfulness and psychology, techniques and techniques for managing anger
iStock/Getty
School & District Management Opinion How Can Principals Grow the Next Generation of Teachers? Listen to My Student
Here’s what made this high schooler want to become a public school teacher.
S. Kambar Khoshaba & Mina Etemadi
4 min read
Conceptual image of growing the next generation of teachers from students.
Vanessa Solis/Education Week via Canva
School & District Management How Los Angeles Schools Are Responding to the ICE Raids and Protests
The school year in Los Angeles is ending amid immigration raids, protests, and the activation of National Guard troops and Marines.
4 min read
Los Angeles police officers with batons and riot gear attempt to move back protesters in downtown Los Angeles on June 9, 2025.
Los Angeles police officers with batons and riot gear attempt to move back protesters in downtown Los Angeles on June 9, 2025. Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the district's police force planned to set up "perimeters of safety" around graduation ceremonies this week amid immigration raids in the city, protests, and the activation of National Guard troops and Marines.
Eric Thayer/AP