View the summary, press release, and author interview.

Today's urban school reformers face a bewildering array of challenges. Urgent problems pertaining to governance, management, labor relations, classroom instruction, and numerous other areas face those who wish to reform and improve urban schools. Having undergone one of the nation's most comprehensive school reform efforts in recent years, San Diego has been a site of nationwide interest--one that is uncommonly well suited to learning about the challenges facing all reformers.

This timely book addresses the full range of critical issues pertaining to urban school reform by looking closely at the recent reform efforts in San Diego. In essays by an impressive gathering of scholars and practitioners from across the country, the book considers crucial dimensions of reform efforts in the San Diego schools, including performance, governance, the external environment, central leadership and management, district infrastructure, support services, and school-level instructional efforts. The result is a full-scale assessment of San Diego's reform efforts--a record of unmistakable relevance and value to other urban reform movements throughout the United States.

An indispensable book for administrators, policymakers, scholars, and practitioners, Urban School Reform presents a revealing portrait of reform efforts in a much-discussed urban school system while identifying the full range of issues that education reformers will need to address in districts across the country in the years ahead. [more...]

Contributors include Daphna Bassok, Alan Bersin, Julian R. Betts, Christine Campbell, Amy C. Crosson, Michael DeArmond, Kate Garrison, Jane Hannaway, Amy M. Hightower, Frank Kemerer, Nonie K. Lesaux, Catherine Maloney, Milbrey W. McLaughlin, Jennifer A. O'Day, Margaret E. Raymond, Peter Robertson, Jon Schnur, Maggie Stanislawski, Sara Taggart, Michael D. Usdan, Victoria Van Cleef, Joe Williams, Patrick J. Wolf, and Andrew C. Zau.

Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar and the director of Education Policy Studies at AEI.