The big problem with the usual approaches to improving schools is that we fiddle with all kinds of things except the one thing that really matters, which is instructional practice, according to Harvard's Dick Elmore. Putting pressure on schools to improve won't work unless teachers know what to do at the level of practice, and Elmore says they don't. Schools are not organized in a way that teachers can learn this, either, in part because teachers resist any intrusion into their classrooms. "The ethic of atomized teaching-teachers practicing as individuals with individual styles-is very strong in schools. We subscribe to an extremely peculiar view of professionalism: that professionalism equals autonomy in practice," he writes. In real professions, people get sued for doing things the way they like if they don't work, he points out. For more see "The Limits of 'Change," by Richard Elmore, Harvard Education Letter, January/February 2002.
