Can “Bad” Schools Teach Us Good Things?
Here’s a message that rings out loud and clear in the current debate on school reform: If we can learn anything from struggling schools, it’s what not to do. Those schools teach lessons about indifference, fecklessness and bull-headed resistance to change. It’s best to wipe the slate very, very clean. That is a counter-productive view of things. Struggling schools may be doing some things quite well, things that could anchor or enhance future turnaround strategies. More successful schools may be doing some things quite badly, and we can learn from their shortcomings. But our ideologies compel us to draw a thick, dark line between success and failure, which blinds us to the richer lessons we could be drawing from our experience. Can “Bad” Schools Do Good Things? We see ample evidence of this in current debates over school reform. When officials prepared to purge Central Falls High School in Rhode Island of its staff, they cited the school’s very low math scores. Others noted swift gains
