Five Lessons for School Reformers: 2026 Edition

“I first encountered the challenges of school reform 35 years ago as a high school teacher in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I was struck by the fact that bold-faced state and district initiatives had no obvious impact on what I saw happening in our acclaimed magnet school. When I headed off to pursue my PhD, I found myself wondering just why this might be. Five years later, I wrote Spinning Wheels to try to understand when and why districts pursued various reforms. But I ran into a serious problem: Every one of the 57 urban systems I studied was adopting every kind of reform I was looking at. Over the three years I examined, the typical district launched 13 major reforms—that’s more than one every three months. Reform was a ceaseless whirlwind that exhausted educators and bred cynicism. Teachers learned to shut their doors while muttering, “This too shall pass.” I concluded that reform done poorly is often worse than no reform at all. During the Bush-Obama years, back when endless K–12 reform was part of the natural order, I used to hum that theme in my sleep. But it’s been a while. Times have changed. Those fevered efforts to promote standards, teacher evaluation, accountability, and school turnarounds faded. There was a tendency to declare victory and move on to the next new thing, and eventually it created a lot of frustration with the failure of reforms to deliver on their promise . Funders shifted to other priorities, and much of the K–12 advocacy community wound up enlisting in Ibram X. Kendi’s “anti-racist” crusade. For nearly a decade since, the K–12 debate has been dominated by culture clashes, the pandemic, and shiny new technologies. Well, for better and worse, old-fashioned school reform shows signs of making a comeback. Fueled by dismal academic results, troubling levels of absenteeism and classroom misconduct, concerns about the doomscrolling mind virus, and a general sense of post-pandemic reckoning, one can see hints of revival everywhere. The science of reading has grown from a brushfire into a four-alarm movement. Proposals like state takeovers of failing schools are back on the radar . Advocates are pushing hard for civics, “high-quality” instructional materials, career pathways, and new high school models. Democrats for Education Reform has got its mojo back . School choice has exploded. There’s steady chatter about the prospects of resurrecting bipartisan school reform . The decade-long hiatus from “reform” means that many of those enmeshed in today’s renaissance were in middle school back when Race to the Top was an object of national fascination. Coming at these challenges with fresh eyes can be a plus. It can also usher in a naivete that ends up reenacting all the mistakes of the last crowd. As I noted a decade ago in Letters to a Young Education Reformer , there’s much to be learned from the Bush-Obama era. While the first two-thirds of that period saw a promising continuation of 1990s-era NAEP gains, a host of seemingly good ideas—from Reading First to teacher evaluation to school turnarounds—delivered a lot less than champions had hoped or promised (for examples of how disappointing things got, see here , here , and here ). Taking a moment to understand what went wrong last time really should be table stakes for today’s would-be reformers. Now, in noting this, humility is warranted. I don’t claim to have the authoritative set of lessons, much less any secret insight into how they would apply in 2026. After all, today’s politics and technology differ considerably from a decade ago. This makes it hard to know exactly how hard-earned lessons should apply. That said, here are five lessons that may prove useful in this new school reform landscape. Don’t mistake initial wins for lasting victories. Every corner of the Bush-Obama reform era was stuffed with old, tattered “Mission Accomplished” banners that had been hung too soon. The celebrations that followed No Child Left Behind, the high fives in the Gates Foundation war room tracking Common Core adoption, or the chest-thumping “wins” on teacher evaluation reform all look pretty premature in retrospect. The battle for adoption or an initial appropriation is often a long, exhausting push. While it can be natural to breathe a sigh of relief, declare victory, and move on after passing legislation, the hardest part of reform is all the tedious, ongoing work that follows in state agencies, local systems, and classrooms. There’s recently been a lot of healthy talk about the importance of “implementation.” That’s good, as long as it’s accompanied by an understanding that in education, there’s no such thing as an “implementation problem.” The stuff that gets termed “implementation” is the actual work of reform. Legislative wins, no matter how tough, are just an opening act. Reformers used to give me buckets of grief when I said this, complaining that I was denying them the credit they’d earned. That doesn’t make it any less true. State voucher expansions or science of reading mandates draw national interest and allow advocates to tally up wins, but the long battles that follow are what determine whether the efforts pay off. Resist drinking the Kool-Aid. Reformers tend to be committed to their cause. Even if the passion wasn’t there at the start, years of pursuing funds, wooing allies, taking fire, and battling as part of a team tend to turn reformers into true believers. That can be a problem when it comes to making sense of public pushback or absorbing criticism from observers outside the circle of trust. The Common Core diehards were famously dismissive of “white suburban moms,” for instance. This made it a helluva lot tougher to understand good-faith complaints about goofy math problems or the de-emphasis of fiction. What might that look like in 2026? Well, those who’ve imbibed too much innovation Kool-Aid might be prone to dismiss ed tech backlash as AI panic, rather than a legitimate response to screen-saturated classrooms and schools’ history of fumbling technology. In 2026, the prevalence of echo chambers and algorithm-driven social media feeds makes it that much harder—and more important—to resist the pull of the tribe. Subscribe to Old School with Rick Hess Get the latest from Rick, delivered straight to your inbox. Name Email Subscribe Listen with a purpose. A lot of reformers brag about “engaging the community.” This has often meant doing a bit of performative listening in a community meeting and then repeating ed reform’s talking points s-l-o-w-e-r and LOUDER—kind of like the old caricature of the Ugly American asking directions in a foreign country. I’m reminded of a decade ago, when charter advocates, in the midst of losing a closely-watched initiative to lift Massachusetts’ charter cap , got in the habit of denouncing skeptical suburban parents as a bunch of selfish racists. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t play all that well among said parents and turned out not to be a winning strategy. The bigger issue was the fear, justified or not, that suburban schools would lose staff or enrollment to new charters. Reformers who genuinely listened might’ve been positioned to assuage those fears or offer solutions. But, since they didn’t listen, the $24 million pro-charter advocacy campaign came across as tone-deaf. Listening shouldn’t be a perfunctory chore; it’s a chance to absorb concerns, workshop solutions, clarify positions, and build trust. In a polarized age, I think this discipline may be more important than ever. Money is a mixed blessing. Reform battles are mostly fought in state capitals, where victory frequently means getting a budget appropriation. But more money for school improvement is not reform. Changing incentives, policies, practices, or business-as-usual is. More funds can help bring about those changes, but it’s no sure thing. Indeed, when new dollars are ladled atop existing outlays, it can be an excuse to avoid uncomfortable changes to the status quo. New funding can also paint a target on a program, as critics start hunting for evidence of failure, waste, fraud, or abuse . If your technology initiative or new ESA program requires $200 million, go for it; but don’t sigh with relief once you’ve secured it after the legislative session and imagine you’ve done the hard part. If you need a recent example, President Biden’s celebrated Green New Deal is an instructive tale as to how big new outlays can lead to high-level scrutiny and “ greenlash .” Recognize that six-sevenths of the iceberg is out of sight . Back in reform’s heyday, reporters would routinely call me to ask, “Who’s the most reform-minded superintendent out there?” When I was younger and more self-assured, I used to give them an answer. Now, I don’t. Why? I eventually realized I had no clue. I’m not close enough to see what’s really happening in any given state or school system. Way back when, I was mostly just relating who I liked, who was getting good buzz, and who had good PR. But because the real work is invisible to all but the most careful observers, it’s easy to mistake narrative for reality; to highlight state and school systems that are good marketers rather than those doing the hard stuff. A good rule of thumb is to focus on demonstrated outcomes rather than impressive talk. Given the wealth of knowledge at our fingertips today, it can be especially easy to overestimate how much we know about what’s really happening in a district or state. Peruse fawning write-ups with sensible skepticism, and don’t presume the bold declarations of a confident leader are proof of substantive change. This list is anything but exhaustive. But I think the lessons here may have special utility for a new generation of aspiring reformers as they navigate an evolving, challenging landscape. Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “ Old School with Rick Hess .” The post Five Lessons for School Reformers: 2026 Edition appeared first on Education Next .

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