Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

These reflections on school reform began with a request from a colleague I admired, Richard Elmore.

Why has the act of teaching in public schools (including charters) that serve wealthy, middle-class and poor children looked so familiar to past generations of journalists, researchers, parents and grandparents who enter classrooms?

Yes, they have..

In the mid-1960s, prompted by a bestselling education book, a classroom approach called “Values Clarification” spread swiftly among elementary and secondary school teachers.

The old classroom model simply doesn’t fit our changing needs….It’s a fundamentally passive way of learning, while the world requires more and more active processing of information.

9.28.2026 Getty Images/Drazen Zigic Emily Freitag is the Cofounder and CEO of Instruction Partners.

Few policymakers, researchers, practitioners, and parents talk openly about corporal punishment in the 21st century.

I heard the phrase “experience rich, theory poor” on a podcast interview between New Yorker editor David Remnick and writer Malcolm Gladwell.

In the second week of my superintendency in the mid-1970s, the head of the principals group (there were 35 schools in the Arlington, VA school district), met me in the stairwell of the Administration building and we chatted a few moments about the weather…

This article appeared in Social Education, September 2026.

Over the years, readers and students have asked me about the work I have done on school reform and especially new classroom technologies.

Huh?

This article appeared September 1, 2026.

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

At this time of year, many journalists and bloggers write about the once obvious fact that schools used to begin in early September, the traditional start time for U.S. schools for nearly a century.

This article appeared in The New York Times, July 27, 2026 “Ms.

Delilah Brumer is a staff writer at the San Francisco Chronicle.

A reporter for The New York Times, Streitfeld often writes about technology.

I also observed a math classroom at another Summit charter school.

Charter schools in the U.S. are over three decades old.

I had to move out of my office on Stanford’s campus.

“Emily Cherkin, M.Ed., is a nationally recognized consultant who takes a tech-intentional approach to addressing screentime challenges.