Larry Cuban and Michael Usdan, editors, Teachers College Press
December 2002
The movement to reform education in the United States is mainly about improving urban schools. To revive their cities, politicians and business leaders have been driving a series of governance and leadership changes to reform their troubled schools. According to Stanford's Cuban and the Institute of Educational Leadership's Usdan, their theory of action presupposes that "Increased political effectiveness (governance and leadership changes) and enhanced organizational effectiveness (systemic alignment of functions within the district) will produce classroom effectiveness (improved students' academic achievement)." The strategy for putting that theory into practice includes greater mayoral control and the hiring of non-educators to lead city school systems. To gauge the effectiveness of this strategy, Cuban and Usdan present case studies of six cities that have been at the forefront of education reform since the early 1990s: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Diego and Seattle. The lessons they draw are mixed. Among the most interesting have to do with such unintended consequences as high turnover in principals and other school administrators. As for academic achievement, there are some interesting commonalities across all six case studies: a spike in elementary test scores but no discernible change at the high-school level. Mostly, though, we learn that there is no single model of successful reform, which demands customized tactics, excellent leadership, community support, good timing and a bit of luck. "Establishing the right conditions for district reform matched to the unique features of a city is," the authors note, "painstakingly crafted work that often puts off impatient advocates but is necessary, based on the evidence of these six cities." The authors give high marks to Boston, Seattle and San Diego, but say that reform efforts in Philadelphia, Chicago and Baltimore have been less successful. To get a copy for yourself (the ISBN is 0807742929) go to http://store.tcpress.com/0807742929.shtml#726.
