Part 2 is a set of essays related to Part 1, but somewhat redundant. The appendices seem to be essays that would not fit in either part but are nonetheless important to understand school reform, Chicago-style. This book accounts for the first two years of a five-year study of this reform, itself five years old at the time of writing the book. Hess argues that it is still too early to fully assess the effectiveness of the reform, especially in terms of student outcomes, but that it is clear that in some schools some progress is evident. Reform in Chicago is daunting, as his account details.
Schools are big business, and apparently, so is school reform.
There are numerous groups promoting, monitoring, prodding, and resisting reform, and they are important for the reader to track, both to know who is doing what to whom and to know what data are being produced by whom. Dr. Hess remains optimistic and determined to make reform happen in Chicago. From his position, there is much to reform in Chicago, beginning with the central bureaucracy and ending in the classroom and community. As a student of urban education and of school reform, there was much I learned from this book. Used judiciously and with other readings, it would be useful in a course on educational reform.