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For most of the past 20 years, Justin Cohen has been a clarion voice for equity in public education. Since joining D.C. Public Schools as its director of school innovation in 2007, Cohen has focused much of his time on school improvement 鈥� exploring how to change schools so that they deliver excellent learning opportunities for all kids. Though he鈥檚 broadened his aperture over the years 鈥� campaigning for and 鈥� schools have always stayed on his mind. 

This fall, on the heels of six months interviewing 鈥渁bout 100 teachers in 15 cities鈥� who were working on substantial improvement efforts, Cohen is publishing his first book, . It鈥檚 an effort to answer a question he asks at the outset: 鈥淲hat would it actually look like for teachers to be at the center of discussions about school transformation?鈥� 

Change Agents comes out tomorrow (Oct. 25). I sat down with Cohen last month to talk about the book 鈥� and about what鈥檚 next for public education as leaders move past the pandemic. 

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

社区黑料: The book is built around profiles of Partners in School Innovation鈥攖ell me about them and how you came across them. 

Justin Cohen: About 15 years ago I was working for the D.C. Public Schools, and we were exploring a multi-district collaborative around early identification of young people who were on track to not finish high school. It never really went anywhere, but I got to meet a man named Derek Mitchell, in Prince George鈥檚 County, and he went on to Partners in School Innovation (PSI) years later, doing improvement science and continuous improvement in schools. 

At PSI, Derek introduced a notion that you know, continuously improving an unfair system isn鈥檛 enough. put it this way: 鈥渕aking incremental improvements at the margins of a system originally designed to sort children by race, class and language will only make inequitable sorting more efficient.鈥� And so Derek insisted that continuous school improvement needed to have a racial equity lens鈥攁nd PSI has been working on that for the last 13 years. 

He recently reached out to me, saying, 鈥淚鈥檓 really excited about what we鈥檝e been able to do. What about telling this story at a broader level?鈥�

A chance to capture their approach, codify it and make it replicable in more schools.

Right. Totally. From the outset, I envisioned something like Atul Gawande鈥檚 , which took some of the lessons of improvement science and showed how to do incremental change in health care on a day-to-day basis鈥�but for education. I was especially interested in writing something for teachers. Something for educators to pick up and read during the very limited time that they have, that鈥檚 practical, teacher-friendly, and 鈥� hopefully 鈥� inspiring without indulging in what my editor likes to call 鈥榯oxic positivity.鈥� 

I particularly enjoyed the part focused on conditional reasoning 鈥� that is, the 鈥渋f/then鈥� statements at the heart of almost any attempt to shift human behavior. It鈥檚 at the core of pragmatic, realistic change thinking. Every school improvement 鈥� every self-improvement 鈥� starts with a commitment to trying something new (鈥�if I do this鈥︹��) in the hopes of seeing different results (鈥�then we鈥檒l see this outcome鈥︹��). But that doesn鈥檛 mean that humans naturally start their problem-solving that way. It鈥檚 an acquired pattern of thinking. What are some tips for teachers trying to get themselves and their colleagues into thinking about improvement more constructively? 

There鈥檚 one acronym in the book. ROCI: Results-Oriented Cycles of Inquiry. The foundational idea is that you get together with a group of your peers every week for collaboration. During those meetings, you set a target: some sort of process improvement. And whatever that thing is 鈥� a 15-minute check for understanding at the end of each lesson or whatever 鈥� you鈥檙e all going to commit to doing it together. You make time in the subsequent week to watch each other try this thing out. And then, the next week, you talk it over. 

A big part of this is that it鈥檚 not top-down school reform, right? It鈥檚 not a principal calling everyone in a room and dictating The Plan. It鈥檚 ground-up, teacher-led inquiry. 

Yes. That’s the core thing that differentiates it from a lot of the last generation of reform. This is about asking teachers at the classroom level, 鈥淲hat do you want to try differently tomorrow?鈥� And then, let their judgments and expertise guide next steps. The inquiry process is just as important as the resulting improvements. It鈥檚 about building that habit, building that muscle of trying something new, seeing whether it works, observing each other to give feedback on whether or not it works, and then doing more if it continues to deliver results, and stopping doing it if it doesn’t. 

I mean, I know that sounds really basic, but people spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on gym membership they don’t use. Habit-building is hard!

You know, it鈥檚 the flip side of , this notion that If you invest heavily in early childhood education, you get better results overall for marginalized and underserved communities, because in the early years, kids鈥� habits haven鈥檛 been formed, their long-term trajectories remain fluid, they鈥檙e at a point of . Most people get that. But nobody talks about the flip side: Shifting adult behavior is super hard. I mean, anybody who’s ever tried to lose weight or shift their TV habits knows this. 

Yes. In the book, I take great pains to avoid a cheerleading, 鈥渋t’s easy, you can do it!鈥� kind of mentality. Because it’s actually hard, even if it鈥檚 rewarding. One of the things that really comes through is the joy people experience when they get to see the results of shifting their practice on their own terms versus shifting practice because somebody told them to or because the state, said 鈥淲e鈥檙e gonna shut your school down if you don’t change.鈥� For the last 25-30 years, it鈥檚 been all stick, no carrot. 

But in this teacher-led approach, there鈥檚 at least a sense that you can control some of the destiny, and some of what you decide to do.

Meaningful teacher agency 鈥� that鈥檚 clearly not what we, the country, have been doing. 

It鈥檚 not. And one of the key things about this, right, is that when school improvement is driven by teachers, it鈥檚 more durable. Even when funding dries up and top-down pressure for reform goes away, when improvement consultants鈥� PowerPoints go away 鈥� those habits don鈥檛. Teachers don鈥檛 just stop meeting with their peers to talk through the new things they鈥檙e trying. Once they get used to that, they keep doing it. 

Also: part of giving teachers agency is about giving them the opportunity to fail. I know that failure has been rhetorically weaponized against teachers 鈥� and families and children, in some cases 鈥� like, 鈥渇ailure is not an option anymore.鈥� 

And as a person who鈥檚 indulged in this language at times, I think we have to admit that that鈥檚 not helpful and is even psychologically jarring in some cases. We have to create enough room for people to try things and maybe not succeed the first time, particularly when we鈥檙e talking about institutions like schools. We have millions of teachers operating in tens of thousands of schools and districts. 

This is a good segue. Because you鈥檙e clear, in the book, that there are good reasons that we wound up in the place we鈥檝e been in, that we tried the reforms we鈥檝e been trying. The absence of data on student outcomes, on student achievement, meant that, for example, kids were assigned to English as a Second Language classrooms because their last names sounded Hispanic, not because they necessarily needed those services. Educational inequities and civil rights violations thrive when we don鈥檛 keep track of what kids know and can do. So maybe we need to modify the policies imposing these consequences on schools, but 鈥� can you say more about a policy agenda that leaves more room for teacher-led inquiry and improvement? That leaves room for teachers to fail?

I鈥檓 gonna do this in a roundabout way.聽

I remember, after the financial crash of 2008, thinking that it鈥檚 really nice that economic policy and monetary policy has some very clear available mechanisms. A new president shows up, appoints you to the Federal Reserve Board, and when you walk into the building, figuratively speaking, there鈥檚 a big lever labeled, 鈥淚nterest Rates Down鈥擝orrowing Up.鈥� That鈥檚 just what happens. We know how these forces work. 

But we do not have that in education. There isn鈥檛 a 鈥淪tudent Achievement鈥� lever to pull when a new administration arrives in the White House. It doesn’t exist. I think we have to acknowledge that. 

I鈥檓 not allergic to accountability. In fact, I think my book offers a very deep, very intense form of accountability at the individual practitioner level 鈥� a level of accountability that is more or less ignored by today鈥檚 policy regimes. 

And look, I鈥檓 not saying this to level a judgment on the people who crafted those policies or on the people who鈥檝e spent decades earnestly trying to implement them. But the exact measurements that those regimes insisted upon 鈥� academic tests 鈥� haven鈥檛 shown good results. And we鈥檙e not talking one or two years. We鈥檙e talking about a generation here. That鈥檚 just a fact. 

So I think we need to let go. We need to admit that this test-and-sanctions approach didn鈥檛 work. 

I mean, policymakers will have to institutionalize the work of continuous improvement at the practitioner level. Things like, at the more local level, creating time for collaboration or relaxing some of the annual test-based accountability, and creating multi-year, more robust accountability around different longitudinal measures. Think of things like civic participation, graduation, and post-secondary attainment, all the things that we know test scores were supposed to be a proxy for.

Are things moving in the right direction, then? We replaced No Child Left Behind with the Every Student Succeeds Act, which significantly weakened federal school accountability systems, but retained some transparency mechanisms whereby schools were still publishing data on students鈥� progress? After all, the last administration wasn鈥檛 really interested in implementing the law, and then the pandemic . 

I think a weakened and watered-down system that we know is not working 鈥� I mean, let鈥檚 just put it out of its misery. I mean, there are a lot of people who believe that fully erasing federal testing and accountability policy would return us to some educational policy Eden. I mean, the era before this one wasn鈥檛 some perfectly equitable moment in public schools. 

My view is that we need to, you know, erase the whiteboard and start over with some core principles in mind: transparency around outcomes, equity, ensuring that no school gets to go too long getting the same results over and over again without being prompted to rethink what they鈥檙e doing. 

So we still need and should want accountability. But we need to get away from these punitive regimes and focus on doing the real improvement work that we know actually works. 

You could make the case that, operationally speaking, we鈥檙e kind of moving that direction, right? There鈥檚 just so little appetite for top-down accountability right now. 

We need to think of accountability as starting with the inquiry cycle at the practitioner level. Plan to assess. Pick a target. Meet as a grade-level team to discuss the target. Watch each other try new things. See if it had an impact. Lather, rinse, repeat. Just keep doing that. 

So: I think that at each level out from the school 鈥� district, state, federal 鈥� needs to set up somewhat longer cycles of inquiry that look at whether these short-cycle returns are adding up into meaningful, long-term, equitable improvement. 

It鈥檚 going to be extremely hard. It opens up big questions of autonomy, empowerment, who decides what and where, but it beats sticking with the ineffective accountability approaches we鈥檙e currently using. 

There are 3 million teachers in the country. It鈥檚 one of the biggest professions in the country, and if we think that the education profession and the schools in general are going to get better without a deep investment in making sure those millions of people get better and better every day, we鈥檙e kidding ourselves. 

Sure. Part of the whole systemic education reform argument is that you can build policy structures that create conditions for success, that reduce the importance of individual teacher quality as a variable, right. And while I get that, as a project, it鈥檚 obviously nonsense to skip past teachers, to treat them like plug-and-play widgets. So I鈥檓 wondering, then, in rethinking teachers鈥� agency, in broadening their roles as agents of change 鈥� does the book have a message for their trainers? For schools of education? 

I mean, yes. Schools of education, in many cases, teach people completely wrong things about the processes of teaching and learning and the history of racial equity in this country. If you show up as a new teacher with no awareness of the history of racial exclusion here and no knowledge of why systematic inequities manifest in your community and building, and without, say, awareness of the cognitive neuroscience of how children learn how to decode, you are not prepared to be a teacher. A lot is going to need to happen on campus to prepare you to be truly ready to lead a classroom. 

I did not write this book to solve this problem, but fortunately, the cycles of teacher-led inquiry can help bring those folks up to speed. 

Those cycles provide accountability that鈥檚 about learning opportunities, right, which, I think, is an extension of the analogy above. If you sign up for a gym alone, you maybe waste that membership. But if you鈥檙e part of a running group that meets on the corner at 6 a.m. every two days, you鈥檝e got accountability to one another鈥攁nd a commitment to improvement. 

Yes. The more you collaborate, the more you can observe, the more you can unearth things. It鈥檚 all about opening 鈥渢he closed door鈥� of each American classroom. So often, teachers operate in relative isolation from each other, with no idea about what鈥檚 going on in other classrooms. 

And then, frustratingly, observation has gotten too tightly wound up with evaluation. We need to undo that. You鈥檙e not gonna like your job if every time someone shows up to observe you, it鈥檚 all negative and you鈥檙e anxious about how they鈥檙e gonna hurt you. 

If nothing else from this book gets through, I hope this does: most of the time, when you open your classroom door for a peer or a superior, it should be a rich learning experience. You should learn interesting things about your practice as an educator.

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