A Successful School Reform: The Age-graded School (Part 1)
Anyone reading the literature published by contemporary school reformers cannot avoid such phrases as “teacher leaders,” “change agents,” and “dynamic entrepreneurs … who challenge the status quo to lead urban school systems.” One is bombarded with happy visions of peppy, smart, young teacher leaders replacing tired, ineffective staff. Eager change agents swapping places with uninspired principals; and charismatic CEOs succeeding hapless superintendents.[i]
This rhetoric of gallant leaders and change-agents is narrowly individualistic to the point of discouraging collaboration across schools and within a district. The message that idealistic and energetic young teachers and principals get is that the system, its leaders and bureaucracy are the enemy, the source of all problems. Individual teachers and principals have to be mavericks tough enough to fight the system in behalf of their students.
This macho message–underscored by a war-like vocabulary of trenches and guerrilla tactics with district
