Harvard Graduate School of Education

School Reform from the Inside Out
Policy, Practice, and Performance

Richard F. Elmore

"Giving test results to an incoherent, badly run school doesn't automatically make it a better school. The work of turning a school around entails improving the knowledge and skills of teachers-changing their knowledge of content and how to teach it-and helping them to understand where their students are in their academic development. Low-performing schools, and the people who work in them, don't know what to do. If they did, they would be doing it already."

So writes Richard Elmore in "Unwarranted Intrusion," an essay critiquing the accountability mandates and high-stakes testing policies of the No Child Left Behind Act. In School Reform from the Inside Out, one of the country's leading experts on the successes and failures of American education policy tackles issues ranging from teacher development to testing to "failing" schools. As Elmore aptly notes, successful school reform begins "from the inside out" with teachers, administrators, and school staff, not with external mandates or standards. This collection of some of Elmore's most probing and influential essays is essential reading for any school leader, education reformer, policymaker, or citizen interested in the forces that promote real school change.

Praise:

"Dick Elmore guides us to a clear, common sense strategy for linking educational policy and instructional change. He wants standards, incentives and professional supports that add up to a coherent system because “. . . teachers have to feel that there is some compelling reason for them to practice differently, with the best direct evidence being that students learn better. . .” Now that’s the heart of the matter."
—Sandra Feldman, President Emeritus, American Federation of Teachers

"In my work with policymakers and practitioners over the past decade I've drawn repeatedly upon these Elmore essays. This volume will now find its way into my courses on education policy."
—Robert B. Schwartz, Former President, Achieve, Inc. and Lecturer, Harvard Graduate School of Education

"Professor Elmore takes on many of the toughest education issues: improving teaching, taking programs to scale, managing performance accountability. His thoughtful analyses offer deep understanding and some hope for our future."
—Marshall S. Smith, Director, Education Program, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Former Undersecretary of Education

Highlights From Inside:

  • Getting to Scale with Good Educational Practice
  • Building a New Structure for School Leadership
  • Bridging the Gap between Standards and Achievement
  • When Accountability Knocks, Will Anyone Answer?
  • The Problem of Failing Schools and Performance-Based Accountability

About the Author:

Richard F. Elmore is the Gregory Anrig Professor of Educational Leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a senior research fellow at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE), a group of universities engaged in research on state and local education policy, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. He has previously held positions with the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and the U.S. Office of Education.