Memphis, What Happened? Notes on the Decline and Fall of Comprehensive School Reform Models in a Flagship District.

The Memphis Restructuring Initiative (MRI) was an attempt at comprehensive school reform in Tennessee that ended with a whimper. Its downfall seems to involve some sort of "schismogenesis" or "inversion," in which many teachers violently reacted against being overworked and overwhelmed, culminating in the easy discarding of 8 years of reform with hardly a tear shed. Although it is possible that a flaw existed within the reforms themselves, it is more likely that it existed in how reform progress swelled or "brought to scale." With specific reference to the reform models used, perhaps it was some admixture of administrative fiat and nostalgia that proximally realized the end. Another element involved in the demise of the reforms may have been a kind of silence that is engendered when "people think they are always right, whether in their machines or their ideas." This absence or dialogue or "dialectic" may have proven to be the final action that ended the reforms. Things might have turned out more positively if communication involved less dependence upon the technicalities of doing reform and incorporating a more encompassing approach. (Contains 61 references and 4 figures.) (RT) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.