Last week, I had the privilege of delivering keynote remarks at Marquette University Law School’s Lubar Center for a conference focused on redirecting K-12 education reform toward classroom teaching. Inspired by my recent Marquette Today piece, the event—hosted in collaboration with the College of Education—brought together educators, researchers, and policymakers to discuss how improving classroom practice is the linchpin of meaningful reform. A video of the convening is available online. Here are my remarks:

Good morning, everyone. I’m deeply honored to be here at the Marquette University Law School and the Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education. It’s both humbling and gratifying to see a piece I wrote for Marquette Today spark this academic convening at a place as distinguished as Marquette. A heartfelt thank you to Alan Borsuk for his leadership and for pulling this event together—I’m grateful for your vision and commitment to these critical conversations.

I will confess that I’m somewhat surprised that the argument I’ve made about education reform is in any way provocative or anything but obvious: Improving student outcomes depends on improving what happens inside classrooms—where teachers and students meet every day.

Yet for decades, reform efforts have rested–at least tacitly–on the assumption that schools and teachers already know what to do and only need to be “held accountable” for doing it. But for those of us who have been classroom teachers, this widely accepted theory of change overlooks a critical truth: Teachers often lack the training, support, and evidence-based tools—most specifically curriculum—to deliver effective instruction.

With respect to my higher ed colleagues, too often our schools of education don’t see it as their role to “train” teachers, leaving new educators unprepared for the classroom’s realities. As Doug Lemov, the author of Teach Like a Champion wrote, “Many of the tools likely to yield the strongest classroom results remain beneath the notice of our theories and theorists of education.”

In recent years, the public radio Sold a Story podcast series exposed how literary gurus and publishers compounded the disservice done to teachers, misleading generations of teachers about reading instruction by promoting ineffective practices like “balanced literacy” while eliding what research tells us about the science of reading and effective instruction.

This wasn’t teacher failure—it was a systemic failure to train educators in what works.

To be clear, teaching and learning cannot be divorced from education policymaking. Structural reforms—standardized testing, charter schools, accountability systems, funding formulas—have their place. I support them. They set conditions for progress. But they’re not enough. The heart of education is teaching and learning, and no policy succeeds if it doesn’t improve classroom instruction. Look at Mississippi and Louisiana, which have posted historic gains in reading and math by focusing on classroom practice, investing in teacher training, and prioritizing evidence-based curricula.

I’ve said for years and I’ll say it again this morning: We’ve made teaching too hard for mere mortals. Teachers are expected to juggle lesson planning from scratch, grading, data analysis, parent communication, and bureaucratic hurdles, often without adequate support. Increasingly we’re asking schools to be something like social service agencies, and teachers to act as unlicensed therapists. No wonder burnout and shortages persist.

I recently launched a Substack newsletter, which I’ve titled “The Next 30 Years.” The last three decades have been dominated by structural reform efforts that have frankly overpromised and under-delivered.  The next 30 years should prioritize classroom practice—high-quality curricula, streamlined workloads, and professional development rooted in evidence. And most importantly, a clear-eyed view of teaching so that the job can be done well by the teachers we have—not the teachers we wish we had.

For years we’ve talked about “teacher quality” as the biggest in-school factor in student success. We should instead be talking about “quality teaching”—not who the teacher is but what the teacher does.  Yet we’ve chased silver bullets—new policies, new programs—instead of helping teachers teach better.

Let’s keep pushing for smart policies, but focus on the classroom, making teaching a job people can do well and sustainably every day.