What Systems Know: Building Schools That Learn Together
A reflection inspired by a conversation with Dr. Joshua Glazer
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about school improvement. Helping schools to transform around a shared and unifying vision, is what I do in my work every day.
We have all been around reform and improvement efforts that center on new curriculum tools. Sometimes but not always, this comes with piloting fresh assessments. Schools bring in consultants, redesign classroom spaces, and launch initiatives with great fanfare. And yet too often, the anticipated gains fall short. The energy fizzles. Teachers return to their corners of the school and often don’t have the time to invest in learning how to bring the tools to life. And ironically we’re sometimes left wondering — what happened?
This isn’t because educators aren’t working hard. It’s because systems have memory, and they also have limits. If we don’t design for coherence, we end up designing for confusion.
The Illusion of Improvement
In many schools today, teachers work side by side — but not together.
One teaches in a STEM academy. Another follows a state-based or national curriculum. Down the hall, there's an international program with its own framework and philosophy. Each one may be doing good work. But they’re not speaking the same professional language. There’s no shared vision anchoring what they do.
Like Josh Glazer said to me in S1:E7 of the Education by Design podcast, “If we don’t build school-wide systems tied to a curriculum and instructional vision, then the knowledge and expertise walk out the door when the teachers do.”
This fragmentation makes collaboration nearly impossible. How can teachers support one another’s growth when they’re not drawing from a common instructional well? How can they reflect together when they aren’t even asking the same questions? How do they overcome the struggle and meet the needs of their students if they are tasked to do so, in isolation?
Schools Aren’t Programs — They’re Ecosystems
Real improvement isn’t about layering programs on top of one another or side-by-side. In the United States where I have done most of my work to contribute to improvement, the concept of choice for students is one of the catalysts for the lack of continuity of philosophy, practice, and strategy to improve learning outcomes.
Do students need that much choice? Do they know which English Language Arts course to choose or whether this Biology class or that one is going to help them to grasp a deep understanding of the nature of the subject and how to apply scientific investigation methodology to further understanding in the discipline? What about the choices they make within a learning centered environment? What if they could choose subject matter of interest and explore new and unfamiliar topics within a well design course context?
What we need to optimize is how learning experiences align — and that takes intentional design.
In our podcast conversation, Josh painted a vivid contrast between two types of school systems:
One where change is additive — more programs, more complexity, more fragmentation.
Another where change is coherent — fewer initiatives, deeper professional learning, and a culture that grows expertise from the inside out.
The second system isn’t simpler — it’s more sophisticated. But it works because it gives teachers the conditions they need to thrive.
A Story You Might Recognize
Years ago, I worked in a school where the schedule was packed with interventions. It had every hallmark of a "high support" environment. But in meetings, teachers talked about logistics — not learning. We rarely co-planned. We rarely reflected on pedagogy and practice, together. There was no shared curriculum. No shared vision. In stead of using a curriculum to find solutions to increase engagement and outcomes, we talked about student issues as if they were unapproachable.
In these contexts, some teachers didn’t see the point of collaborating. And, I get it. It wasn’t because they weren’t committed — but because they were tired of trying to fit things together that just were not designed to fit.
Contrast that with another school I worked at: fewer programs, but deeper alignment. One set of goals. One shared instructional model and a common language we could use to engage in rich discourse and collaboration that resulted in trying new things with our students. Teachers met weekly on a schedule to examine student work and improve lessons together, but they also had plenty of informal conversations in their own time. They didn’t always agree and we certainly did not all approach things in exactly the same way — but we had a framework to guide us in the same direction. Towards improvement.
In this school, we didn’t just improve. We got better at getting better.
So What Can We Do?
Here are a few questions that might help any school — regardless of program or population — move toward coherence:
What is our shared vision for student learning?
Do our curriculum and assessments reflect that vision?
Are teachers using a common language when they talk about teaching and learning in practice?
Is professional learning embedded in the way we work — or an event we attend?
When staff leave, what stays?
Improvement by design isn’t about hero teachers or silver-bullet programs. It’s about systems that make great teaching sustainable, shareable, and scalable not just within any one school, but across schools, networks, states and provinces, and across nations.
My final thought: A common vision and agreement for how we approach learning and teaching does not take away our autonomy, rather it helps us to channel our ingenuity in ways the build capacity and invest in the kind of school quality that will continue to improve, long after we are gone.
Read and explore more
Cohen, D. K., Peurach, D. J., Glazer, J. L., Gates, K., & Goldin, S. (2013). Improvement by design: The promise of better schools. University of Chicago Press.
A slide deck featuring excepts from “Improvement by design: The promise of better schools.”
