30 Ideas for Fixing U.S. Schools: What Education Leaders Should Notice

Summary for Educators

Based on an article by Sarah Mervosh, Francesca Paris, and Claire Cain Miller | The New York Times | September 28, 2026

American schools face a sobering reality: reading and mathematics performance has declined across much of the country during the past decade, with the slide beginning before the pandemic and continuing afterward. To explore what might reverse that trend, The New York Times asked 37 education researchers and academics to assess 30 commonly proposed school-improvement strategies for their likely academic impact and cost.

The results offer an important message for school leaders. There is no single reform capable of fixing schools. Researchers viewed several familiar strategies—including intensive tutoring, evidence-based reading instruction, stronger curriculum, expanded access to challenging coursework, preschool, and targeted investments in teachers—as potentially useful. But the article’s strongest theme may be that implementation matters as much as the intervention itself.

THE BIG IDEA

School improvement is less about discovering the next revolutionary program than about selecting a small number of evidence-informed practices and executing them extraordinarily well.

The researchers surveyed by The Times expressed relatively strong confidence in approaches such as small-group tutoring and science-of-reading practices. They also saw promise in high-quality curriculum, broader access to advanced coursework, preschool, and targeted strategies to place effective educators where needs are greatest.

Yet even promising ideas can disappoint when implementation is weak. Staffing, training, scheduling, curriculum quality, leadership stability, funding, and sustained follow-through all influence whether a reform succeeds.

That distinction should matter enormously to principals and superintendents. Schools rarely suffer from a shortage of initiatives. They more often struggle from initiative overload, uneven execution, and abandoning reforms before they have had time to work.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Targeted tutoring deserves serious attention. Researchers expressed substantial confidence in frequent, small-group tutoring conducted during the school day for students who need additional support.

• Early literacy remains foundational. Evidence-based reading instruction was viewed favorably both academically and financially, reinforcing the continuing movement toward systematic literacy instruction.

• Curriculum matters. Researchers supported greater use of high-quality, research-backed instructional materials rather than expecting every individual teacher to construct curriculum independently.

• Rigor should be expanded, not rationed. Increasing access to advanced classes—particularly in schools serving lower-income students—was among the strategies researchers considered promising relative to its cost.

• Technology deserves scrutiny rather than automatic acceptance. Limiting screen time, placing boundaries around classroom AI use, and restricting student cellphone use were described as comparatively inexpensive approaches researchers believed were worth further exploration, while acknowledging that the evidence base remains developing.

• Implementation may be the decisive variable. Researchers repeatedly cautioned that their judgments assumed interventions were carried out properly and at high quality.

WHY IT MATTERS

Education debates frequently become arguments over programs: phonics versus balanced literacy, technology versus paper, smaller classes versus additional staffing, accountability versus autonomy.

This analysis suggests that leaders should ask a different question:

Can we actually implement this idea exceptionally well?

A theoretically strong intervention poorly implemented may accomplish little. Conversely, a thoughtfully selected strategy—supported with training, resources, monitoring, and sustained leadership attention—can become part of a larger improvement system.

The experiences cited in the article from states including Mississippi and Louisiana also illustrate the importance of combining multiple aligned strategies rather than relying on one isolated initiative.

The survey itself also requires perspective. The authors explicitly describe it not as a scientific poll, but as a snapshot of how 37 education researchers assessed the proposed interventions. The ratings represent expert judgments rather than causal estimates from one controlled experiment comparing all 30 strategies.

LEADERSHIP ACTIONS

School leaders might use the article less as a prescription and more as an initiative audit.

Ask your leadership team:

1. What are our three most important academic priorities?
If the list contains 12 items, the school probably does not have three priorities.

2. Which current initiatives have the strongest supporting evidence?
Separate programs adopted because they are popular from practices supported by research.

3. Are we implementing our strongest practices consistently?
Visit classrooms. Examine student work. Talk with teachers. Look for evidence that the intended practice is actually occurring.

4. What should we stop doing?
Improvement requires subtraction as well as addition.

5. Are students who need the most support receiving the strongest instruction?
Examine tutoring, intervention, advanced-course access, curriculum quality, and teacher assignment.

6. Are we measuring implementation as well as outcomes?
Waiting for annual test scores is too late. Develop short-cycle indicators showing whether the strategy is being executed as intended.

LEADER REFLECTION

If you could no longer introduce any new programs into your school for the next two years, which three existing practices would you concentrate on implementing extraordinarily well?

That may be the most useful lesson from the entire discussion.

Schools probably do not need another “magic bullet.”

They need a small number of worthwhile practices, coherent leadership, careful execution—and the discipline to stay with them long enough to discover whether they truly work.

Original Article

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Prepared with the assistance of AI software OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (5.2) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com