How My Thinking about School Reform Has Changed over the Decades (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

How My Thinking about School Reform Has Changed over the Decades (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

How My Thinking about School Reform Has Changed over the Decades (Part 1)

by larrycuban

A few years ago, Richard Elmore asked me to write a piece about how my ideas have changed over the years. Daily experience in schools as a teacher, administrator, and researcher (and the reflections and writing that I did about those experiences)  altered key ideas I had about the nature of reform and how reform worked its way into districts, schools, and classrooms. He included my piece in a book called I Used to Think… And Now I Think (Harvard Education Press, 2011). I have divided the piece into two parts. Part 1 follows. 
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I used to think that public schools were vehicles for reforming society. And now I think that while good teachers and schools can promote positive intellectual, behavioral, and social change in individual children and youth, schools are (and have been) ineffectual in altering social inequalities.
I began teaching high school in 1955 filled with the passion to teach history to youth and help them find their