So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools [Paperback]

Charles M. Payne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2008 | ISBN-10: 1891792881 | ISBN-13: 978-1891792885

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A brilliant, thoughtful, and provocative analysis. Charles Payne shows why almost thirty years of school reform has brought so little change to urban public schools. Rooted in the reality of the Chicago Public Schools, Payne s book contains lessons that are relevant to schools everywhere. --Pedro Noguera, New York University

This is a wonderful book, absolutely essential reading for educators, policymakers, and community and civic leaders who are committed to creating schools that promote high achievement for Black and Latino students. Payne helps us understand the challenges and possibilities for the transformation of urban schools. This is a smart book one that should change our conversation about the reform of urban schools. --Theresa Perry, Simmons College

Charles Payne s book is likely to anger teachers and administrators, conservatives and liberals, school reformers and the foundations that fund them. All will see themselves depicted as naïve about what it takes to improve urban schools. Many will see themselves depicted as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. At the same time no reader who has spent much time in urban schools will deny the accuracy of Payne s insights for example, about why improving high schools has proved so much more difficult than improving elementary schools, why more resources alone won t produce successful urban schools, and why the choice of a particular whole school reform program is not the critical decision. While his analysis is deeply sobering, Payne shows that improvement in urban schools is possible and indeed that significant improvements have already taken place. --Richard J. Murnane, Harvard Graduate School of Education

About the Author

Charles M. Payne is the Frank P. Hixon Professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. He is the author of numerous books, including I ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (1995), which won awards from the Southern Regional Council, Choice, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the Gustavus Myers Center for the study of Human Rights in North America. Payne has served on the board of the Chicago Algebra Project, the Steering Committee for the Consortium on Chicago School Research, the Research Advisory Committee for the Chicago Annenberg Project, and the editorial boards of Catalyst, Sociology of Education, and Educational Researcher.

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Education Press (April 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891792881
• ISBN-13: 978-1891792885
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #214,845 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fine and even handed review of the reform movement, September 28, 2008

By 

Jeffrey R. Snyder (Cambridge, Ma) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools (Paperback)

This is an exceptionally fine and well balanced review of the reform movement. Many believe that reforming urban schools should be easy, and many have tried, from the left and the right to bring reform over the last twenty years only to learn that it isn't so easy after all. This book is full of interviews with influential reformers and with research about their programs. The author himself is closely involved with the urban school reform movement in Chicago. In all, this is an excellent book and a must read for urban educators, and for anyone involved in the reforms sweeping our schools.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Robert A. Watts, May 29, 2010

By 

Robert A. Watts (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools (Paperback)

Our national dialogue about race, poverty and education reform would take a giant leap forward if reporters and interviewers would bring Charles Payne into the discussion. This is one of the most thoughtful books on education and poverty that I've encountered in some time. Wisdom. That's one way of describing Payne's perspective. He has read seemingly everything--every study on education in every city, by every foundation--and he sorts through this mountain of research in a helpful and honest way.
I'm a big fan of Payne as his previous work, I've Got the Light of Freedom, which analyzes the civil rights movement in Greenwood Mississippi in the Mississippi Delta. In that work and in this one Payne combines the skills of a historian, a social scientist and a novelist.
Several points stay with me almost a year after reading this book:

1.) The fragility of progress--yes, inner-city African American children can make progress in educational achievement without changes in poverty. But such progress is often quite quite fragile and gets reversed quite easily.

2.) The story of the Chicago schools where principals from the most successful schools were promoted to administrators, and their former schools lost ground. The skills of a good principals are tricky and difficult to identify apparently.

3.) The negative attitudes of a group of African American teachers who greeted the white trainer from James Comer's School Development Program. If anyone doubts that blacks can be racist and racist in a thoroughly self-destructive and backward way, read Payne's analysis of how these teachers brought all kinds of suspicion to training sessions led by white people.

4.) Payne's willingness to offer critical words about poor people. Poor children and poor parents are victims of poverty but their behavior often exacerbates their condition. Payne argues persuasively that holding poor people accountable is absolutely humane, progressive and just plain honest.

5.) The story at the end of his father and father's friends who would recite from memory long passages of poetry from English literature. It turns out that Payne's dad was educated at a great school for African Americans in New Jersey and students there learned to recite passages of English literature. Payne says he spent much of his early life thinking ALL black men could recite classic English poetry.

There is so much more in this great work. Bravo Professor Payne.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reform Realities, August 22, 2009

By 

Steven R. Rogg "Steven R. Rogg, Ph.D." (Aurora, Illinois U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools (Paperback)

Charles M. Payne gets it right in this reflection and, to some degree exposé, of educational reform. The text interprets a breadth of research primarily from the Consortium on Chicago School Research, Catalyst Chicago, and a rich smorgasbord of the more nationally recognized reform programs and initiatives.

Anyone who believes that they have some promising ideas about how to go about transforming schools should first read -- and seriously debate -- Payne's book. It will provide both a reality check and strategic insight. And those who's work is somehow related to education reform should probably read the book more than once, perhaps on some regular basis.

While the book is about a topic that, at least from my perspective, is "dead serious", the text is highly readable and often humorous. It reveals both personality and attitude; artfully drawing the reader in.

My only disappointment (and I was far from disappointed with this book) is that the author's treatment of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) numerous and substantive contributions to mathematics and science education reform may deserve more credit and coverage. Authoritative research on the impact of NSF-funded programs is available from SRI International, Horizon Research, Inc., the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (ACER), Systemic Research, Inc., and others. Understandably, the author does not promise a comprehensive analysis of all major reform efforts.

The annotated glossary of reform programs is another reason to add So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools to your professional library. It could also be required reading for education leaders. It is my hope that Professor Payne has already sent a complementary copy to Mr. Arne Duncan.