[ashark]

I've even seen (though my wife, who's a teacher) admin that doesn't understand how replicability works, and takes on some new discipline strategy or teaching approach for their school(s), spending a bunch of money on it and wasting a ton of teachers' time, but jettisoning large parts of it they're not comfortable with... thus obviously to any observer with a lick of sense destroying any hope it had of succeeding. It's painful to watch.

I think most of the motivation for this (in general, not the specific failure mode in the previous paragraph) is blame-shifting. If you're switching stuff around you're trying something. It's a sign that you're working so hard to improve things. If it's some consulting-corporation-blessed system you don't need to justify it personally—they say it's good and sell it for you! If (when...) it fails, maybe the system was at fault, maybe the company, but at least there are potential targets for blame that aren't you.

And the only people who've lost are everyone who's not in school admin or education consulting/supply, so you know, just teachers, students, taxpayers, parents. No biggie.