Why do so many education reforms sound promising but fail to change what happens in the classroom? Can teachers, principals, and policymakers ever truly speak the same language when they live inside such different systems of pressure and reward?

Dr. Ebony N. Bridwell-Mitchell is the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Education, Management, and Organizational Behavior at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A leading scholar of organizational theory and institutional change, her work investigates how structures, cultures, and relationships within schools influence whether reforms succeed or stall. Drawing on her early experiences teaching in Brooklyn and her training at Harvard Kennedy School, she bridges the worlds of policy, leadership, and lived classroom reality. Through her research, she helps educational leaders understand not just what to do, but how complex systems either enable or resist meaningful change.

In this conversation, Ebony and I explore the unseen forces that govern how schools actually function. She explains why even the most well-intentioned policies often falter once they reach classrooms and how institutional structures, social identities, and organizational routines shape the possibilities for change. We discuss her metaphor of “nested dolls” to illustrate the layered nature of education—from individual classrooms to districts and state agencies—and how each layer affects the others in subtle but powerful ways.

Ebony shares why true reform requires creating cultures where teachers and leaders are encouraged to question assumptions, experiment, and adapt policies to their contexts. We also talk about the tension between efficiency and exploration, why organizations resist risk, and how leadership can foster spaces for creativity and reflection. This episode offers a rare, systems-level view of education—one that reveals why schools are not just places of teaching, but living organizations struggling, evolving, and learning in their own right.