About Education Reform

Imagine that upon your arrival at an airline ticket counter, you are told that only 65 percent of the flights to your intended destination actually even arrive. The remainder crash en route. And, if you are a child of color, or poor, you are required to fly on special, poorly maintained planes—of which only 35 percent make it.

Sounds crazy, right? But this is exactly the deal that, as a nation, we are serving up daily to millions of children in thousands of our public schools.

-from Crash Course by Chris Whittle

Learn More
There are numerous books, publications and resources about our country’s urban education systems and reform strategies. Here are some selections to help you build an education library.

Books

Articles

Web Resources

Education Publications

Education Organization

Books

Crash Course
Chris Whittle
A fascinating discussion from the CEO and founder of Edison Schools, advocating integration of basic business principles into America’s school systems. Whittle shares lessons and ideas he has learned from the “front lines” of managing one of the nation's leading charter school companies.

Fighting to Save Our Urban Schools and Winning!
Donald McAdams
This selection reviews successful district-level reform in Houston, the nation’s seventh-largest school district. A first-hand account by a school-board member who helped craft and execute the reform initiatives, this book is a fascinating account of the intricacies and politics behind the successful turnaround of a major urban district.

Making Schools Work
William Ouchi
Ouchi believes educational management systems should be entrepreneurial rather than bureaucratic. Give principals real control over their budgets, empower parents as genuine participants in school decisions, and student achievement will soar, even in communities beset by poverty and high immigration rates.

No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning
Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom
Analysis of the racial learning gap from sometimes-controversial authors.

Savage Inequalities
Jonathan Kozol
In this graphic, eye-opening account, Kozol examines the state of public education from the eyes of children of poor families. The shocking realities he uncovers emphasize the urgency of the call to action to fix America’s public school systems. Solutions offered reflect liberal approach to education reform.

Standards for Our Schools: How to Set Them, Measure Them, and Reach Them
Marc S. Tucker and Judy B. Codding.
Practical guide on how to ensure that standards are well-designed and implemented, by two of the pioneers of standard-based education in the United States.

Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform
David Tyack and Larry Cuban
Tyack and Cuban examine the cyclical nature of educational reform and discuss difficulties faced throughout the last century by proponents of various agents for change. Their explorations provide an excellent foundation to the national discussion of education reform on local, state and federal levels.

Victory in Our Schools: We Can Give Our Children Excellent Public Education
Major General John Stanford
Reflections on first prominent non-traditional superintendent. Quick read that touches on many of the front-line issues in educational reform.

Articles

“What It Takes To Make a Student” (PDF)
Paul Tough, New York Times Magazine, November 26, 2006.
Excellent overview of the two competing viewpoints over whether the achievement gap can be closed or not and how it might be done.

“How to Manage Urban School Districts”
Childress, Stacey, Elmore, Richard, Grossman, Allen. Harvard Business Review, November 2006.
Compares managing business to managing school districts, makes case that school districts cannot in fact be managed like businesses.

“Lessons from the Inside” (PDF)
Wendy Hassett and Dan Katzir, With the Best of Intentions: How Philanthropy is Reshaping K-12 Education. Frederick Hess (editor), Harvard Education Press, 2005.
The role of philanthropy and foundations (including The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation) in school reform.

“Improved Principal Hiring: The New Teacher Project’s Findings and Recommendations for Urban Schools” (PDF)
The New Teacher Project, September 2006.
Practical guide to attracting and identifying high-quality principals.

“Missed Opportunities: How We Keep High Quality Teachers Out of Urban Classrooms” (PDF)
Levin and Quinn, The New Teacher Project, 2003.
Analysis of inability of urban school systems to hire and retain high-quality teachers.

About Education Reform

Books

Articles

Web Resources

Education Publications

Education Organizations