Infoworks Home

Statewide Analysis Home red-arrow.gif (869 bytes)

IV. Continuing Challenges
Maintaining Political Will and Support

An enormous challenge facing every major education reform effort in the nation is maintaining the political will and support to sustain the reform for a sufficient period of time for it to become institutionalized and bear fruit. Reforming individual and institutional practices is not a rapid process, and neither is the education of children. Even if Rhode Island’s schools could be reformed instantly today – and they cannot be – it would still take 12 years to have high school graduates who had experienced the completely reformed system.

Making information work takes time. Educators, policymakers, parents and business leaders must strike a productive balance between demanding progress and holding realistic expectations for system-wide reform. They must also work together to build sustaining state-local partnerships in order to ensure that schools and the students in them get the support they need.

"A school, like an automobile plant or insurance company, is a place of individual agents and vested interests. Change is hard and people yearn for ideas that can make change easy. The yearning for simple solutions is human nature. It is also very dangerous."

Richard J. Murnane, Frank Levy. (1996). Teaching the New Basic Skills: Principles for Educating Children to Thrive in a Changing Economy. NY: The Free Press, p. 201.

Return to the Statewide Analysis Home Page ||  Return to the Information Works Home Page