Reinterpreting Urban School Reform

Louis F. Miron is Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Social Construction of Urban Schooling: Situating the Crisis. Edward P. St. John is Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Indiana University at Bloomington. He is the coauthor (with Alison I. Griffith and Leetta Allen-Haynes) of Families in Schools: A Chorus of Voices in Restructuring.

"This book offers a careful analysis of various reform strategies, including assessments of their strengths, weaknesses, successes, failures, and implications. It provides a reinterpretation of urban school reform through a critical empirical review, examining four kinds of reform, including court-ordered, government-initiated, research-based, and community-based. The contributors provide an examination of contexts, ideologies, theoretical claims, and assessments of relevant research. This is an ambitious undertaking and Mirón and St. John have done an excellent job." — Kofi Lomotey, coeditor of The Racial Crisis in American Higher Education: Continuing Challenges for the Twenty-First Century and President of Fort Valley State University

• Introduction: Rethinking Urban School ReformLouis F. Mirón and Edward P. St. John Part I. The Courts and Urban Schools 1. School Desegregation Is Over in the Inner Cities: What Do We Do Now?Richard Fossey 2. The Need for Issues-Driven School Funding Reform in Urban SchoolsNeil Theobald Part II. Government Initiated, External Reforms 3. Federal Title I as a Reform Strategy in Urban SchoolsKenneth K. Wong 4. Inclusive Education in High Stakes, High Poverty Environments: The Case of Students with Learning Disabilities in Indiana's Urban Schools and the Graduation Qualifying ExaminationGenevieve Manset and Sandra Washburn 5. Race, Restructuring, and Educational Reform: The Mayoral Takeover of the Detroit Public SchoolsBarry M. Franklin Part III. Independently Adopted Research-Based Reforms 6. Research-Based Reading Reform: The Impact of State-Funded Interventions on Educational Outcomes in Urban Elementary SchoolsEdward P. St. John, Genevieve Manset, Choong-Geun Chung, Ada B. Simmons, Glenda Droogsma Musoba, Kim Manoil, and Kim Worthington 7. Comprehensive School Reform: An Exploratory StudyEdward P. St. John, Genevieve Manset, Choong-Geun Chung, Glenda Droogsma Musoba, Siri Loescher, Ada B. Simmons, David Gordon, and Carol Anne Hossler 8. Private Scholarships and School Choice: Innovation or Class Reproduction? Carolyn S. Ridenour and Edward P. St. John Part IV. Community-Based Reforms 9. Parental and Community Empowerment: The Chicago ModelKathryn Nakagawa 10. Joint Ventures Between Public Schools and City Government: Implications for Community DevelopmentLouis F. Mirón 11. Rediscovering the African-American Tradition: Restructuring in Post-Desegregation Urban SchoolsLeetta Allen-Haynes, Edward P. St. John, and Joseph Cadray Part V. A Critical-Empirical View 12. A Critical-Empirical Perspective on Urban School ReformEdward P. St. John and Louis F. Mirón 13. Implications of the New Global Context for Urban ReformLouis F. Mirón and Edward P. St. John Contributors Index