num_pages: 280
description: This frank and courageous book explores the persistence of failure in todays urban schools. At its heart is the argument that most education policy discussions are disconnected from the daily realities of urban schools especially those in poor and beleaguered neighborhoods.Charles M. Payne argues that we have failed to account fully for the weakness of the social infrastructure and the often dysfunctional organizational environments of urban schools and school systems. The result is that liberals and conservatives alike have spent a great deal of time pursuing questions of limited practical value in the effort to improve city schools.Payne carefully delineates these stubborn and intertwined sources of failure in urban school reform efforts of the past two decades. Yet while his book is unsparing in its exploration of the troubled recent history of urban school reform Payne also describes himself as guardedly optimistic. He describes how in the last decade we have developed real insights into the roots of school failure and into how some individual schools manage to improve. He also examines recent progress in understanding how particular urban districts have established successful reforms on a larger scale.Drawing on a striking array of sourcesfrom the recent history of various urban school systems to the growing sophistication of education research to his own experience as a teacher scholar and participant in reform effortsPayne paints a vivid and unmistakably realistic portrait of urban schools and reforms of the past few decades. So Much Reform So Little Change will be required reading for everyone interested in the plightand the futureof urban schools.
language: English
title: So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools
publisher: Harvard Education Press