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

by Charles M. Payne (Author)

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

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

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

Product Description
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.

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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: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #117,030 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 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 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.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ...but the necessary change is unlikely!, May 21, 2009

By	F. Parker Fowler, Jr. (Longmont, CO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Charles Payne's work is well-informed and easy to read, and mercifully light on the usual pedagese (that mix of argot and jargon that makes you want to throw up!).

Payne's description of the several large and many small efforts to do something about the education of kids on the free lunch program is concise and useful, but in my thinking, fails to identify the 800-pound gorilla that should be obvious: the source of the problem is CULTURAL, and therefore not treatable successfully with economic or educational or other means. Others have pointed out the foolishness of expecting six hours in the classroom to overcome what these kids learn during the rest of the day from their familial and street "teachers."

An important example is language: Why should we expect these kids to speak acceptable American English without ethnic dialect when most of their lives is spent among parents and other adults who speak their patois as identification with and approval of their peers? What kind of job should these kids expect when the only way they can express themselves is with ebonics or the like, salted with dirty words not acceptable in the work force?

Doing the same things over and over while expecting a different result has been described as insanity. The persistence of failure in education reform should long since have convinced us that reasons for failure to learn need to be considered seriously without branding those who offer "politically incorrect" ideas as racists or whatever popular epithet is in vogue.

The success of KIPP schools and other tough-minded academic charter schools demonstrates that reform is possible where education can be delivered without intervention by those whose goals are at odds with the fundamental idea of public education ... giving individual kids the opportunity to go as far as they can in gaining knowledge, and perhaps wisdom.

We look forward to Charles Payne's ideas about the possibility of reforming American subcultures to value this goal. For starters, one needs to read Charles Murray's work, especially "The Bell-Shaped Curve."