The history of American education is, “in large part, the history of reform, or rather of recurring cycles of reform” (Elmore and McLaughlin, 1988, p. 1). Although previous eras of school reform assumed teachers would play important roles, it could be argued that many reform strategies, coupled with other societal factors including industrialism, social efficiency, school administration, federal and then state accountability and standardized tests, have “historically had little effect on teaching and learning” (Elmore and McLaughlin, 1988, p. 3). It might also be argued that the resulting frustration of reformers has only enhanced strategies that marginalize the role teachers are asked to play in succeeding reforms.

It is up for debate as to whether recurring cycles of reform is just the process of working on our current school issues, or whether the lessons learned from previous reforms are well understood in creating new reforms. The point of view of this website is that learning from the past is useful to changing the future.

One way we know about recurring cycles of reform is that schools are over-laid with the remains of many reforms that were enacted before we got here. The schools have remnants of these reforms such as the project method, gifted and talented, scheduling, uniforms, readers and writers, the new math, Chicago Math, teacher-proof curricula, portfolios, etc. Current examples of reform ideas are The No Child Left Behind Act,  The Writing Project, and Success for All.