Walk into a public high school in New England, and it will likely look largely the same as it did 50 years ago: a bell schedule, class periods for each academic subject, students sorted into regular and honors tracks, teachers teaching a single subject, students generally compliant, passive and very bored.
They still distribute opportunity, resources and credentials to different racial, ethnic and social groups unequally, translating social hierarchies into educational outcomes.
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But today’s public high schools serve different students and purposes, and those outcomes are worsening for young people — particularly for those of color and multilingual learners. Chronic absenteeism has remained stubbornly elevated since the pandemic. Persistent achievement gaps continue to widen. Fewer families believe college is worth the cost. And artificial intelligence is rewriting what work looks like.
This moment calls for district leaders to transform their schools to equitably serve all students, now and in the future — not merely to layer new programs and improvements onto that same old, flawed design, year after year.
Still, a new study from the Center on Reinventing Public Education shows that most districts are focused on stabilizing systems — assessment, curriculum, instruction, professional learning, staffing and the like — rather than transforming them. More than adopting new programs or policies, transformational change means fundamentally redesigning core systems to give all students the personalized support they need to succeed academically and plan for life after high school.
This often involves challenging long-held assumptions like the idea that each classroom should have only one teacher, or students’ current abilities should determine whether they belong in honors classes. And it means addressing racism and classism in policies and practices so all students, regardless of where they started, have a say in what they do in high school and after graduation.
Through surveys and interviews, we asked 307 superintendents across all six New England states whether they believe transformational change is needed in certain areas. Only a small fraction reported tackling one or more of the deeper structural changes that researchers associate with genuine transformation, such as eliminating tracking, rethinking how staff time and money are allocated or giving students real input into how they learn.
For example, one district redesigned its entire high school around career-focused academies, in which students choose among course pathways such as healthcare or information technology. Teachers tie core academic subject areas to those pathways through specific examples in the classroom or career-oriented projects.
While many high schools try to make learning more relevant through selective programs or electives, this district stood out for its schoolwide approach that redesigns core academic subject material, schedules, assessment and staffing.
Another leader spent years overhauling how students get access to challenging courses. Beyond eliminating tracked classes, the district rebuilt its schedule to enable daily “flex blocks” for students to receive tutoring help with course content or study skills. It also overhauled its teacher training practices, giving educators daily time to collaborate and coaching based on classroom visits that include student feedback. Now, nearly all high schoolers take courses that can get them college credit.
But these are the outliers. Nearly 90% of superintendents in our survey said they believe their districts need to substantially change at least one core domain, and nearly all said they feel personally motivated to truly rethink what school can be. Yet in practice, transformation takes a backseat to keeping the trains running. When we asked superintendents to describe their “most ambitious change effort this year” (2025-26), most referred to incremental improvements like adopting a new literacy curriculum that reflects the science of reading or improving teacher professional development. One superintendent talked about aligning the district’s goals to “things we already do” rather than pursuing “big changes.”
What’s stopping these superintendents from going further? Leaders are trained and expected to keep the current system moving and improve things along the margins, managing tight budgets and political pressures. They pursue changes they think their powerful stakeholders will tolerate and that they can accomplish even with staffing shortages, limited time and dwindling financial resources. In this way, even the most ambitious leaders envisioning transformation are constantly swimming upstream.
What will it take to change the direction of the river so every public education leader is trained, supported and expected to steward radical change with their districts?
One key finding of CRPE’s research is that while it focuses on superintendents because of their important role, transforming public education requires effort at all levels. School boards and state leaders should stop demanding short-term wins and start expecting districts to take on long-term, structural change. Superintendents need to be trained and incentivized to pursue that change with dedication and urgency. Researchers need to build a stronger evidence base for what leading transformational change looks like, and how school systems sustain it. Communities must build collective support among families for a genuinely different vision of public education that serves all students at a high bar, which requires the courage to let go of how school used to be. Philanthropy should invest in long-term efforts to build a more powerful, more equitable vision of what school can be rather than just marginally improving a system that was never built for every student’s success.
Despite the many challenges superintendents are juggling that push them toward stasis, now is a crucial time for them to reshape public education in their communities. Districts will not be able to prepare every student to thrive in the face of a rapidly changing workforce and an inequitable, politically and culturally fragmented society just by making incremental changes to curriculum, programs or budgeting. Doing more of the same, but better, is not adequate. It is also not a neutral choice; it means accepting deep inequities as the cost of protecting the way things have been historically done.
The evidence behind eliminating tracking, creating collaborative planning time and implementing more relevant instruction isn’t speculative; these moves can produce real gains for students and, notably, for teacher retention. It is up to district leaders across New England and the country to put these pieces together to transform their school systems at scale. And it is up to all of us — researchers, funders, school boards, communities and policymakers — to develop and support leaders so they can pursue a new vision for the future of public education with equity and excellence at its core.