Our thesis is straightforward: Schools need to transition from the bureaucratic industrial-age structures in which they were created a hundred years ago into modern learning and improvement organizations that are suitable to the needs of today. To do so will be excruciatingly difficult, because it will require a change in mind-set, creation of new infrastructure, and changing patterns of authority and power. But this change is what is required if we truly seek to achieve our goal of educating all students to high levels. The contemporary school system bears the imprint of the industrial age in which it originated. The model was the factory, and the aim was to set up a system of command and control in which the superintendent specified ends and means that schools and teachers were supposed to implement. Over the course of the 20th century, attached to this factory model was a notion that university-based social science could inform educational progress. The idea here was that university researchers would identify good practices, policymakers would mandate these practices at scale, and again teachers would implement them.
Webpage for the 'Futures of School Reform' Working Group (via EducationWeek)
Mehta, J., Gomez, L. M., & Bryk, A. S. (2011, March 28). Schooling as a Knowledge Profession. Education Week. http://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-schooling-as-a-knowledge-profession/2011/03
‘Improving Improvement’ in Education: Louis Gomez, Keynote Speaker for DML2014 [Blog Post]