"Examines school board politics in U.S. cities at the end of the twentieth century, focusing on site-based management reforms, mayoral takeover, parental choice and competition, and standards and accountability initiatives, as well as the role of teacher unions, and assesses the promise of various governance reforms"--Provided by publisher.

In this book, David Tyack and Larry Cuban explore some basic questions about the nature of educational reform. Why have Americans come to believe that schooling has regressed? Have educational reforms occurred in cycles, and if so, why? Why has it been so difficult to change the basic institutional patterns of schooling? What actually happened when reformers tried to "reinvent" schooling? Tyack and Cuban argue that the ahistorical nature of most current...