A version of this essay was first published

Sure, if you genuinely believe education is not a lever for change or empowerment, then you should go work in a different sector or on different issues. Reasonable people can disagree about the best way to effect change. Otherwise, let’s stop admiring the problems and get back at it with a lot more energy, new ideas, and some fresh arguments and debates. Here’s the bottom line:




Until the one-two punch of ESSA and the Laos Phone Number Data pandemic, achievement trends were going in the right direction—especially for students on the wrong end of the achievement gap. And the supports for students, whether new school options or curricula, are improving. There is pent up demand and increasingly supply around innovation. This is not a bad time to work in education. It should be an exciting time. Reform has hardly been flawless and hasn’t achieved its loftier goals, but at the same time, evidence of progress is all around.









This sort of fits-and-starts progress is how social policy change generally happens. In fact, given how stubbornly resistant to change the education system is, how political, and how fad driven, the narrative that nothing has worked is pretty much backwards. We should say so. And then act accordingly. Editor’s note: A version of this essay was first published on the author’s blog, Eduwonk.