Al Birmingham City School

Educational reform is one of the most critical issues facing our cities, but some cities are better at it than others. To explain why, this book relates education to politics, showing how the "whole village" can be mobilized to better educate tomorrow's citizens. City Schools and City Politics is based on an eleven-city NSF study of civic capacity and urban education. As participants in that study, the authors conducted research in three rustbelt cities that have lost much of their tax base and have legacies of machine politics. They analyzed the ways in which government, business, and community leaders create, or fail to create, civic support for public education, focusing on why certain cities show greater initiative than others in addressing these problems. The authors reveal that, of the cities examined. Pittsburgh has made the most strides in educational reform, followed by Boston. while St. Louis has consistently lagged behind Their observations show that cross-sectorial coalitions are essential for bringing about change; that organizational arrangements in the business community and their relationship to local government affect whether there is the capacity to address school reform; that leadership is critical in bringing about change: and that municipal institutions and culture influence a city's ability to take action. Packed with empirical data and analysis. City Schools and City Politics demonstrates the citywide and long-term character of successful efforts to reform public schools, relating education to the priorities of municipal governments and describing the conditions under which reform becomes possible. It extends regime theory to public education and shows thateducation policy is inextricably linked with urban political life and is an issue of real concern to political science.

A powerful myth plaguing many of our urban schools is the belief that African-American, Latino, and immigrant children are nothing but trouble. City Kids, City Teachers offers a new look at urban schools by examining the city, the kids, and the teachers to explode stereotypes of teaching in the city. In more than twenty-five provocative essays set in context by Ayers and Ford, leading educators and writers explore the realities of city classrooms from kindergarten through high school. City Kids, City Teachers moves back and forth from the poetic to the practical, celebrating the value of city kids and their teachers. It is a useful guide as well as a call to action for anyone who teaches, has taught, or is considering teaching in urban schools, and for every parent with children in our schools today.