Winner will receive So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools.

This frank and courageous book explores the persistence of failure in today s
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.

Description and image from Amazon.com.