Center for Urban Research and Policy Studies, University of Chicago
August 2001
Lawrence B. Joseph, a social scientist at the University of Chicago and program director of the Chicago Assembly, edited this collection of essays from the Chicago Assembly - a regional improvement organization that holds two-day seminars leading to policy recommendations and a background book. This is the book emerging from an Assembly session held nearly four years ago. 368 pages long, it contains seven essays, commentaries on them, and the 35-page "report" issued by the Assembly. The latter seems perfectly sound and sensible as it works through the rationale, problems and solutions of standards, tests and accountability arrangements with particular reference to the Chicago metropolitan area and makes solid if general recommendations. Some of the supporting essays are first-rate, particularly for those wanting to know more about the convoluted Chicago school-reform story. I was especially taken with Alfred Hess's piece unpacking the "conundrums" of statewide standards-based reform in Illinois and by Charles Payne's analysis of "building-level obstacles to urban school reform." There is a lot here for watchers of standards-based reform in America, much of it in the form of a Chicago/Illinois case study. The ISBN is 0-962675563. The publisher is the University of Chicago's Center for Urban Research and Policy Studies but the distributor - probably a better starting point - is the University of Illinois Press. The most direct path I can find is via the internet at http://www.press.uillinois.edu/f01/joseph.html
