Good Schools Are Built on Effective Execution

“Roland Fryer observes that "resources alone can't explain disparate outcomes among schools serving similar children with similar budgets" ("The Education of Nikole Hannah-Jones," op-ed, Sept. 24). He's right, but we should follow that insight where it leads.

 

For decades, education debates have focused nearly to exclusion on structures and inputs: funding, segregation, poverty, class size, governance and school choice. These things matter. But if similarly situated schools produce dramatically different results, our curiosity must extend inside the schoolhouse -- to what adults do with the children we entrust to them.

 

Nikole Hannah-Jones's account of her daughter's education makes this point painfully clear, although it seems lost on her. Bluntly, Najya didn't fail to learn fractions because her classmates were black. Her teacher didn't repeatedly fail to show up because the school was segregated. Assignments didn't go unread, unassessed or ungraded because affluent children attended elsewhere. Teachers failed to teach. Grades misled students and parents. Leadership failed to ensure that the basic functions of schooling occurred reliably. These are failures of institutional competence and a devastating challenge to Ms. Hannah-Jones's theory of change.

 

Mr. Fryer recognizes the broader lesson. "Choice advocates make the opposite mistake by assuming choice is enough," he writes. "Choice can provide an exit from a bad school; it isn't a production function for creating a good one." Precisely. How will an ineffective teacher suddenly become excellent merely because the person signing her paycheck changes?

 

This must be the enduring lesson of Ms. Hannah-Jones's experience. Structural reforms can create better conditions for improvement, but they can't guarantee it. Curriculum matters. Instruction matters. Assessment, school culture and leadership matter. Above all, competent execution matters.

 

The next task for education reform isn't merely helping parents identify good schools but understanding what makes schools good -- and how to make effective classroom practice routine rather than exceptional.

 

Robert Pondiscio

 

American Enterprise Institute

 

Medusa, N.Y.” [1]

 

1. Good Schools Are Built on Effective Execution. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 26 Sep 2026: A12.