CHAROL SHAKESHAFT, SEYMOUR B. SARASON and PAUL SHAKER BIG CHANGE QUESTION WHAT IS NEEDED TO RESOLVE THE SOCIAL AND CRITICAL ISSUES AFFECTING LARGE SCALE REFORM? MACRO CHANGE DEMANDS MICRO INVOLVEMENT CHAROL SHAKESHAFT The Big Change Question is traditionally a debate or discussion be- tween two writers on the question posed. I approach the discussion of large scale reform from a practitioner perspective, in that much of my work is in the schools, providing feedback to administrators and teachers on the implementation and success of reform strategies. Seymour Sarason believes that the current federal initiatives for reform are based on empty pieties cloaking ignorance that will make a bad situation worse. While the first part of his prediction might be true, I do not agree with the latter. If they are anything like past reforms, these initiatives would not change the status quo. In order to do that, I believe reforms must change the culture and definition of school. Macro movements usually fail at the micro level. In the United States, there are 53 million students in 2 million classrooms in 80,000+ school buildings. Large scale reform pays more attention to solving macro than micro problems, although 30 years of research on school program implementation documents that classroom teachers are the final arbiters of all of our policies. It is not news that the process of teaching has been resistant to change. Reform success requires uncommon attention to detail in order to reach the micro level. I see at least four micro connections necessary to success of large scale reform: • Create support for improving student achievement • Hold schools responsible for student outcomes Journal of Educational Change 5: 289–302, 2004. Ó 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.