More information on the Open Book is available. Copyright 1999, the Brookings Institution Press. How and why context matters have not been studied, how- ever. The knowledge we do have is largely the product of case studies and has not been comparatively tested using a large number of districts. This chapter examines why context matters and what it is about context that matters by studying the effects of several demographic and fiscal factors on the school reform agenda.
Reform is promoted as a tool to remedy identifiable problems in school- ing.
As a result, if it is about enhancing student performance, reform should emerge from a deliberative process in which needs are defined and ad- dressed as policy problems. There is little evidence of that behavior. This responsiveness to political imperatives does not mean that policymakers are unconcerned with local problems, but simply that reform is subsumed in the distnct's broader political process. There are currently two general understandings of how context affects district governance. This bureaucracy-oriented analysis implies urban districts will address reform in similar ways.