Signifying Improvement: Reform Symbols as Discursive Practice in School Improvement Plans.

This article examines School Improvement Plans (SIPs) as discursive tools that schools use less for substantive reform and more to signal conformity to accepted models of educational improvement. It introduces the concept of "reform symbols," defined as recognizable, authorized, and abstract discursive markers—such as references to best-selling books or prominent authors like Doug Lemov and Paul Bambrick-Santoyo—that schools employ within SIPs to legitimize their plans without detailing concrete actions. Drawing on institutional theory and discourse analysis, the authors argue that SIPs function as symbolic acts of compliance that uphold an ideology of school improvement tied to accountability measures and often reflect deficit-based, racialized constructions of underperformance. The paper highlights how these reform symbols simplify complex educational challenges and serve as markers of legitimacy in a policy environment shaped by charter management organizations and standardized testing, rather than as genuine pathways to meaningful change.