More information on the Open Book is available. Copyright 2000, the Brookings Institution Press. This conclucling chapter returns to the beginning, to the questions that mayors and other city leaders will inevitably ask when they realize that their public school system is not going to improve enough on its own and that intervention is necessary. Ideally, this realization should come before a crisis forces an immedi- ate takeover. Civic and business leaders in virtually all major cities, including those ana- lyzed in earlier parts of this book, need to be alert to the possibility that the reform initiatives tried so far will collapse and new, bolder strategies will be necessary.
Some basic prescriptions are clear.
Mayors and city leaders should at least track the performance of the public school system. Simple questions like these will identify a school system that can easily be tagged for takeover by a legislature, court, or mayor concerned about the conse- quences of a weak human resources base for the city's future. In monitoring school system performance, city leaders should watch what actually happens in the schools, not what central office leaders say should be happening. Leaders of the city's public school system might not be entirely candid about the schools' performance, not because they are dishonest but because they have convinced themselves that the latest action will solve the problem. So we find school leaders actively involved in trying to make things better by announcing new initiatives, raising standards, creating new academic programs, launching programs to make teachers smarter and happier, and investigating many other possibilities.