A Conversation with Dr. Curtis Palmore | True But Useless What if the hardest part of fixing a school isn't the curriculum? And, it's definitely not the kids.

According to Dr. Curtis Palmore, it's the mindset of the adults.

Dr. Palmore has spent nearly three decades in New York City turning schools around. And the lesson that he keeps learning?

You can have the right assessments, the right training, the right tools — and still go nowhere. When the mindset of educators working in high-need schools get stuck on everything that makes it hard — the challenges students are facing, the lack of resources, the systemic barriers – there can be no progress.

They're not wrong. It's true that those things are hard.

But Dr. Palmore's point is that cataloguing the challenges doesn't move anything forward. It's true but useless — accurate, but not actionable.

Once you've named the hard thing, you have to get out of it and ask what you're going to do about it. He sees this as one of the core mindset shifts that school turnarounds actually hinge on — before you ever touch curriculum or programming, you have to get the adults in the building on board.

That's why he's focused on supporting his amazing teams in shifting their mindsets first – also a very hard thing to do.

Hear all about how he's approaching this – and much more – in the new episode of Project Inclusion.