Elmore/Victoria 1
Educational Improvement in Victoria
Richard Elmore
Harvard University
August 2007
For the past three years, I have had the opportunity to visit Victoria, to work with
teachers and administrators in Victorian schools, to visit classrooms, and to engage in an
extended conversation with leadership of the educational improvement strategy at the state,
regional, and local levels. This experience has been part of a larger program of research
and practice I have been pursuing, primarily within the U.S., around the state of knowledge
about large-scale improvement efforts in public education. I think I have a grasp of the
major trends in the development of the Victorian strategy, as well as some understanding of
what that strategy looks from the school and classroom levels. In this note, I would like to
reflect on what I have seen, and to put these reflections in the context of my broader
understanding of the state of knowledge about large-scale improvement in an international
context.
The Strategic Imperative in School Improvement
The feature that distinguishes the present stage of educational reform internationally
from all previous stages, and also distinguishes the Victorian approach among its peers, is
the presence of a strategic view of school improvement. The problems of school quality
and performance are systemic in nature—that is, they stem from a constellation of social,
organizational, cultural, and technical factors within schools that reinforce each other to
hold the system in a powerful state of equilibrium well below its potential. Complex
systems produce exactly what they are designed to produce; in this sense, they are highly
functional at maintaining themselves, regardless of whether they are functional in terms of
achieving larger social purpose. Systemic problems are not amenable to