Looking Toward The Future

Tyack and Cuban suggest that reformers take a broader view of the aims that should guide public education and focus on ways that to improve instruction from the inside out rather than the top down. The most difficult type of reform has been to bring about the improvement at the heart of education. They also suggest that better schooling will result in the future, as it has in the past and does now. As stated in class week, teachers have been bypassed and their knowledge discounted of what schools are like today. Teachers are out of the policy loop in designing and adopting school reforms and because of this teachers tend to drag their feet about them. Teachers have a first hand on schools and what happens in the classroom, but they must care out the policies that are implemented on them. Tyack and Cuban state that teachers are considered "street-level bureaucrats", that they have sufficient discretion, once the classroom doors close, to make decisions about students that add up over time to "de facto" policies about instruction, whatever the official regulations might be.

Reform of instruction has not always worked well. Some reformers believe it to be necessary to devise "teacher-proof" instruction, however it is as foolish as student proof-learning. Reforms should be adapted by educators working together to take advantage of their knowledge of their own diverse students and communities and supporting each other in new ways of teaching. It is very important to collaborate with parents and involve them in the reforms of the schools. the public should also be involved when reforms challenge cultural beliefs about what a "real school" should be and do.

How would we go about reforming schools from the inside out? Think back to when we were all students, was there a teachers who was a great influence, who made things easier to understand, or pushed you in such a way that made you accomplish more with her help? According to Tyack and Cuban the "central purpose of reform is to make such encounters between students and teachers more common." We need to equalize school finance across the states and school districts. I believe that is where we should start. After that we could move on to making available more resources for children with disabilities and special needs. We can come up with new and effective ways to teach. Also adjust the school floor plan starting over from scratch. A better and improved learning environment for the students; more light, small spaces for groups to work on computers, which would allow the real focus of the room to be on the teacher and lead to ways of new teaching techniques. New curriculum frameworks, teaching methods, technology, diagnostic test, and other innovations are just a few ways of looking toward the future and reforming a school from the inside out.

Teachers will face serious obstacles such as state and federal regulations, being overworked, finding funds for the new reforms, and a lack of confidence while implementing the new reforms. However teachers have led the way in reshaping instruction and it can be done again. New talent must be recruited to help lead the way, to revise programs, and to be supportive to both new and old teachers during the reform process.