Changing Urban Education

"This is the most important nationwide study of urban education politics in the last twenty years. The scope and quality of the case studies will generate intense discussion among policy makers and scholars. The concluding sections provide an incisive analysis of whether change in urban education is possible."--Michael W. Kirst, coauthor of Schools in Conflict: The Politics of Education"A unique resource for understanding why systematic educational reform is so hard to achieve today. Based on extensive and original research, the essays bring school reform into the broader political arena, showing how stakeholders across communities combine to promote--or prevent--change. This book will be of great interest to students of urban politics as well as practitioners in the education community."--Margaret Weir, coauthor of Schooling for All"A must read for those who want to learn about urban education and for all who care about improving schools."--Susan H. Fuhrman, editor of Designing Coherent Education Policy"Unlike most other studies of urban education policy, which either ignore politics or treat it only as a source of interference and distortion, this volume emphasizes that school reform must come through collective political engagement; reformers who try to work around politics are destined to fail."--Jeffrey R. Henig, author of Rethinking School Choice "This important book, a welcome addition to the ongoing debate about urban education, offers a comprehensive approach to studying change in urban school systems."--Choice"The 13 chapters lucidly point out the difficulty of changing such an entrenched monolith as public education, a complex decentralized enterprise existing in different contexts across the United States. Instead of calling for higher standards and better teachers, this book emphasizes that real school reform must come through the political realm--it can't be imposed from above as an election year promise."--Library Journal