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In the past few days, articles in two major urban newspapers have demonstrated how quickly education reformers and the education "establishment" can find themselves in the same boat.

According to the LA Times, the schools at the center of Mayor Villaraigosa's reform efforts have fallen short of their goals:

The scores at Villaraigosa's schools fall well short of what his original rhetoric suggested. He implied that he could deliver rapid academic gains if given control of schools in the nation's second-largest district. At the time, L.A. Unified officials and some education experts said Villaraigosa was unfairly discounting the school system's incremental progress.

On Tuesday, it was the mayor's turn to celebrate increments.

"We expect progress and we have progress, but we still have a long way to go," Villaraigosa apparently told the LA Times. "Transforming a failing school takes more than one year." Very true.

According to the Chicago Tribune, turnaround schools championed by former Chicago superintendent Arne Duncan are also showing mixed results:

Duncan oversaw the opening of eight turnaround schools in Chicago starting in 2006. Results have been mixed overall for elementary schools.

Duncan has said changing the culture of a demoralized school is the "toughest work in urban education." High schools like Harper and Orr, where entrenched violence and low academic success have persisted for decades, are particularly difficult.

The Times and Tribune articles both question the often-asserted superiority of current high-profile reform strategies over strategies have fallen out of fashion. In Chicago, for example:

Some turnaround schools [with entirely new staff] have shown marked improvement. At Sherman and Harvard Elementary Schools, state test scores have shot up by more than 20 percentage points at each school since an outside operator stepped in a few years ago. But similar gains can be seen at schools with the same racial and poverty makeup, such as Altgeld Elementary, without having to fire an entire staff, non-profit district watchdog groups say.

In Los Angeles, both the Mayor's schools and traditional public schools posted incremental gains, though the Mayor's elementary schools posted somewhat larger average gains in reading.

In LA and Chicago--as in schools nationwide--the reformers and the "establishment" can both tout successes. And they must both own up to big ongoing challenges. Even after reforms to governance and incentive structures, we have to do the very hard work of improving teaching and learning.

"Welcome to our world," said the old establishment to the new.