Everyone at Your Child’s School Agrees on the Goal. Almost No One Defines It the Same Way.

Last updated: July 12, 2026

In 2011, an education researcher named Michael Fullan looked back across forty years of school reform and found something uncomfortable. The problem was never a shortage of new ideas. Schools had tried plenty of them. The problem was that the ideas pulled in different directions, arrived faster than anyone could absorb them, and left the moment a new leader walked in. He had a name for it: fragmentation. Your child has a name for it too, though they would never call it that. It feels like starting over, one more time.

TL;DR

A school team agrees on a goal like fluency while four members each mean something different by it. Agreeing on words is alignment; meaning the same thing is coherence, and children get lost in the gap.
Michael Fullan's 2011 paper Choosing the Wrong Drivers for Whole System Reform blamed forty years of weak results on fragmentation, not a lack of ideas: disconnected initiatives, constant turnover, everyone moving in different directions.
Change made incoherently produces worse outcomes than a steadier course, so more programs is not the same as more help for your child.
A child who progresses with one method and stalls under the next is usually caught in the churn, not showing that something is wrong with them.
You are the one constant, coherent adult across teacher, program, and leadership turnover. Ask the school to define its terms concretely, and hold one steady learning thread at home.

FROM THE VIDEO

Key moments from Does Everyone Know What Fluency in Math Means? Understanding the Math Coherence Gap, from the Making Math Moments That Matter podcast with Kyle Pearce, Jon Orr, and Yvette Lehman:

One team, four people, four different answers to what their own goal of fluency actually means. Watch at 02:14
Why forty years of school reform produced so little: fragmentation, not a lack of ideas. Watch at 06:14
What happened to one system that spent its time getting clear on a shared vision first. Watch at 21:12

Common questions from parents

Why does my child’s school keep switching methods and programs?

Often because the system rewards new initiatives more than it protects steady ones. Leadership turns over, priorities compete, and a promising approach gets dropped before it takes root. Michael Fullan named this pattern fragmentation, and his research suggests it produces weaker results than a slower, coherent course.

What is the difference between a school being aligned and being coherent?

Alignment is a group agreeing to the same words, such as a goal to strengthen fluency. Coherence is that group meaning the same thing by those words. A team is able to be perfectly aligned on paper and pulling in four directions in practice, and your child feels the second one long before anyone measures it.

What should I ask when a teacher says my child needs to improve fluency or reach grade level?

Ask what it would look like, sound like, and feel like by a specific date, such as June. A concrete answer tells you the school has a shared picture of the destination. A vague answer tells you the definition is still fuzzy, which is worth knowing so you are not chasing a target no one has drawn.

My child fell behind during all this change. Does that mean something is wrong with them?

Usually not. A child who progresses under one method and stalls under the next is often caught in the churn rather than showing a problem inside themselves. If you do suspect a specific learning difference, a parent screener is a useful starting point, not a diagnosis; for formal accommodations or a suspected vision, hearing, or medical cause, a professional evaluation is the route to those supports.

Your child's teachers all agree on the goal. Almost none define it the same way. That invisible gap, not a lack of ideas, is where kids get lost. The one constant across every program change is you. Tweet Now Follow Learning Success

The goal everyone shares and no one defines the same way

On a coaching call, a school improvement team was asked to describe a single word from their own plan: fluency. Four people sat at the table. Four people gave four different answers. These were not strangers pulled from a hallway. This was a team that had met together for months and believed it was on the same page. Everyone had agreed to strengthen fluency. No one had agreed on what fluency was.

That gap has a name. Alignment is a group saying yes to the same sentence. Coherence is that group meaning the same thing by it. A school is able to be fully aligned and completely incoherent at once. From the outside, those two look identical. Your child sits at the bottom of the difference. One teacher treats math number sense as the point. The next treats speed drills as the point. Your child is not learning one subject taught two ways. They are quietly being asked to be two different students. Have you watched your child do well under one teacher and stall under the next, and wondered what changed? You have already felt this. You did not need a credential to notice it. Parents feel the incoherence in the house long before a report ever names it. It is often the story behind a home where nothing the school tries seems to stick for long.

Author Quote "

A school is able to be fully aligned and completely incoherent at the same time, and your child sits at the bottom of the difference.

Laura Lurns Learning Success Expert

"Four decades of school reform failed less from a shortage of good ideas than from fragmentation: too many disconnected initiatives, too much turnover, everyone moving in different directions." - Michael Fullan, Choosing the Wrong Drivers for Whole System Reform, 2011

Why the methods keep changing, and why that costs your child

Fullan’s word for the fix is systemness, the theme of his 2021 follow-up, The Right Drivers for Whole System Success. A coherent system, he argues, runs across every level at once: the state, the district, and the school. All of them move toward one clearly defined purpose. Each classroom still decides the how. Most schools have the opposite. Priorities compete. A promising idea gets started, then abandoned before it takes root because a newer idea arrived. Leadership turns over every couple of years. One district leader tracked an average principal tenure near a year and a half. The plan resets about as fast as your child learns the old one.

Here is the part that stings. More initiatives is not the same as more help. Fullan’s point is sharper than that. Change made incoherently produces worse outcomes than a steadier course. When every classroom moves in a different direction, the whole effort turns into throwing approaches at the wall to see what sticks. Your child pays for that in the currency of a new set of rules every autumn. This is also why a child who makes progress with one program and then stalls is so common. The struggle you are seeing is often not a signal that something is wrong with your child. It is a signal that the adults around them never settled on where they were all going.

Key Takeaways:

Alignment is not coherence: A team agrees on the word fluency while four people each define it differently.

Fragmentation is the real problem: Fullan traced forty years of weak reform to churn and disconnection, not a shortage of ideas.

You are the constant: Across every program and leadership change, the coherent through-line in your child's education is you.

You are the coherence your child actually has

Across every teacher change, every new program, every leadership shuffle, one adult in your child’s education stays constant and keeps the story straight. That is you. You are the through-line the system keeps failing to be, and that turns out to be the most powerful position in the whole structure. Two moves make it count. First, make the school define its terms out loud. A teacher will say your child needs to build fluency, reach grade level, or show mastery. Ask the exact question that exposed the gap on that coaching call. What would that look like, sound like, and feel like by June? Vague words are where the incoherence hides, and a clear answer is worth more than a warm one.

Second, hold one steady thread at home while the school churns. Pick a small number of things: a nightly reading rhythm, one math habit, a steady way you talk about hard work. Keep them constant across the years the school keeps restarting. Researcher John Hattie found that students learn more when the adult teaching them is clear about where they are headed. That holds as firmly at your kitchen table as in any classroom. Being an involved parent was never mainly about showing up at the school building. The research keeps pointing back to the table you already sit at.

Author Quote "

Across every teacher change and every new program, the one adult who keeps your child’s story straight is you.

You want your child in a place that knows where it is taking them, one that protects their confidence and their sense that learning goes somewhere. The obstacle is not the teacher who cares. It is a system that changes the destination every eighteen months and files it under improvement. The people who spend the most hours watching your child struggle and succeed are not the ones writing the plans that keep resetting. They are the ones reading this sentence right now, and that constancy is the one thing the system has never managed to be.

The brain-based skills your child needs do not reset when a school’s plan does, and All Access is built to give you that steady through-line at home while the building keeps starting over.

Incoherence rarely stays in one lane. A child who spends years inside shifting instruction often carries gaps in focus, working memory, or confidence at the same time, each one quietly feeding the others. Rather than chasing a fresh program every autumn, All Access gives you one coherent place to strengthen the whole set of skills, on your schedule, on your terms, with the one teacher who is not going anywhere.

Why we use AI, plainly: it writes from a knowledge base our team maintains and audits—we work through it line by line and pull anything the evidence stops supporting. Doing that by hand for every family would take weeks each. This way the roadmap you get on Tuesday reflects what we corrected on Monday, and a human still reads it before you do.

Your school district must evaluate your child free of charge if you ask in writing, whatever your income and whatever the outcome (US, 34 CFR 300.111 and 300.301(b)). That route takes time and answers a different question than you do. This one starts today, from what you already know.

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A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations (an IEP or 504 plan), or you suspect a vision, hearing, or medical cause, pursue a professional evaluation too—that's the only route to those supports.