The Human Costs of Education Reform: The Case of School Reconstitution

School reconstitution has become a prevalent but underexamined policy option. Although the stated aim of school reconstitution is to enhance the human capital available in low-performing schools, this aim may not be realized. Instead, reconstitution reform may impose substantial human costs, which undermine its ability to achieve its primary aim. This article draws on 2 years of case study data to examine the nature, distribution, and consequences of the human costs associated with this reform. This case study can be empirically instructive, because it exposes a category of costs - namely, human costs that were largely unanticipated and/or underestimated by the policy makers but were highly consequential for the fate of the reform. This discovery is significant, theoretically, because it reaffirms the recognition that human costs exist, and it contributes to the understanding of how these costs might be operationalized and linked to the efficacy of personnel-dependent reforms.