Difficulties with selecting a coordinator for Delaware's newly approved RE:LEARNING pilot project foreshadowed later obstacles to achieving planned reforms. Unlike other states, communities, and schools, Delaware schools were not seen as desperate enough to need comprehensive reforms. Affluent parents upheld the status quo, and state officials…

A Delaware middle-school principal reflects on a small town's provincial, picayune mindset when confronted with the RE:LEARNING project. Community culture made change very difficult; tradition and stakeholders' fears worked against new initiatives. Also, the district's commitment to the project was very superficial, and local politics stifled…

Project RE:LEARNING failed to gain state-agency support because there was no widespread sense of crisis in Delaware to prompt restructuring, no shared conviction that schools needed dramatic changes. The Delaware story should caution systemic reformers to "front load" their energy and publicize serious problems. It takes more than a…