Almost everyone agrees that America's urban schools are a mess. But while this agreement has fostered widespread support for aggressive reform, Frederick Hess argues that much of what ails urban education is actually the result of continuous or fragmentary reform. Hess argues that policymakers have misallocated resources by pursuing the "right" structure or the "best" pedagogy while paying insufficient attention to the more mundane--and more important--questions of how to implement, refine, and sustain a particular approach in their particular district. Previous research on high-performing schools suggests that the best schools are characterized by focus and by an ability to develop expertise in specific approaches to teaching and learning. To help educators and policymakers adopt and nurture a focused agenda, Hess recommends institutional changes that increase the effectiveness of performance outcomes and reduce the incentives to emphasize symbolic reform.
Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar at AEI.
Table of Contents
Part 1: The Politics
Chapter 1: The Politics of Urban School Reform
Chapter 2: Organizational and Personal Incentives for Reform
Chapter 3: The Supporting Players in Urban School Reform
Part 2: The Evidence
Chapter 4: The Dizzying Pace of Urban School Reform
Chapter 5: A Political Explanation of Policy Selection
Chapter 6: Community Context and Urban School Reform
Chapter 7: The Effectiveness of Urban School Reform
Part 3: The Possibilities
Chapter 8: The Spinning Wheels of Reform: Getting Unstuck
Appendix A: Conducting the Study Appendix B: List of Districts Studied Appendix C: Summary Data on Respondents Appendix D: OLS Regression Results for Chapter 6
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