Chapter 9: Shaping Mandates For School Reform: Practices, Problems, and Possibilities— A Commentary

This commentary chapter uses examples from the case studies in the first part of the book to discuss the tensions and possibilities embedded in the policy and practice discourse about school reform. In particular, this chapter contrasts the decades-long policy/practice dichotomy between the pressures of mandated high-stakes accountability systems such as those in Texas and North Carolina and the culture-changing need to create community and build capacity between the teachers and leaders charged with accomplishing school improvement. Both perspectives are necessary, but there is still too little attention to creating the conditions that will disturb the “social realities” of schools and create local capacity for learning and change. These cases provide lessons and examples of the work it will take to create schools for low income students in which teachers simultaneously work on multiple agendas and develop community commitments that integrate their own social learning with the instructional needs of their students in these schools.