In 1998, U.S. district attorney for Southern California Alan Bersin was hired to run the San Diego City Schools. This June, he will depart San Diego as the nation's longest-serving big-city superintendent. During Bersin's tumultuous tenure, he achieved national prominence for his blunt challenge to the teachers' union and his ambitious efforts to reshape the nation's eighth-largest school system. Last September, AEI director of education policy studies Frederick Hess led a comprehensive effort to examine the Bersin reforms, and now the fruits of that effort are available in the new book Urban School Reform: Lessons from San Diego (Ed. Frederick Hess, Harvard Education Press).

Please join Bersin, Hess, and several contributing authors for a frank discussion of the practical lessons that San Diego holds for urban school reformers across the nation.