The answer to change is no!

Can we change professional development? Can PLCs provide a basis for changing personal ability? These are excellent questions, but they are the same ones we've been asking for years.

At my website (http://LearningReimagined.com) I argue that substantive, deep change in the educational system in this country is impossible because the system is locked down tight by an interlocking set of forces making it immobile. We're losing 50% of new educators by year five and one-third of our kids are dropping out—and that doesn't count the kids who have tuned out and are just playing the game of school. While it is possible and probable that there will be pockets of change where things like PLCs and PD get done effectively, the "system" of education is still pretty much the same as when my father went to school. Until we fundamentally change our learning model and our mental models, change will be impossible.

Not to be pessimistic about it all, I think one of the most important things we (educators) need to do is to talk with each other and expand the conversation to include parents, community leaders, students, business people, etc. about what we want for our children, our future and our society. I think we should be provocateurs and organize the conversations so that across this land people are talking learning. We need to quit wasting precious time and resources marching down the same worn paths trying to re-form this institution. It's too late for that. What we need is re-creation or re-invention, new language, new practice, new narratives—or we are sunk.