ABSTRACT
For the past six years, the coauthors of this chapter-Taffy, Kathy, and Susan-have collaborated in researching the Standards-based Change (SBC) Process (Au, 2005) to improve students’ literacy achievement. We have engaged in this work in the midst of a political climate defined by both a commitment to school reform and a wide array of positions on what form such efforts should take. From scholars (e.g., Berliner, 2006; Darling-Hammond, 2007) to the federal government (e.g., No Child Left Behind [NCLB], 2002) to the popular press (e.g., Tough, 2008), the very definition of the problem and the solutions offered represent quite disparate positions. Some reformers (e.g., Berliner, 2006) point to the challenges, if not the futility, of school reform without changing the very real impact on student learning that living in poverty creates. Some (e.g., the architects of NCLB, the 2001 reauthorization of the U.S. Elementary and Secondary Education Act) argue that increasing standards and accountability for teaching all students is the way to school reform. Others argue that NCLB reflects problems from “unintended consequences and conspiracies of good intentions . . . (to the) principles and practices we have compromised” (Pearson, 2007, p. 145). And some argue for fundamental changes to the very nature of schools that essentially are still organized and teach curriculum designed by nineteenth and early twentieth century educators who could only imagine life in the twenty-first century (Heckman & Montera, 2009).
