The Great Fires

The most ambitious study ever of the impact of mayoral education control upon schools and children. Sure to be controversial because of its specific positive findings. --Michael Kirst, professor emeritus, Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research, Stanford University The most comprehensive, rigorous, and authoritative examination to date of a reform strategy that has occasioned heated debate in cities from New York to Los Angeles. This volume is essential reading for those parents, practitioners, and policymakers serious about improving urban schools. --Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Spinning Wheels: The Politics of Urban School Reform This empirically based, highly readable and desperately needed work will inform the discourse about the future of school reform. Every school politics watcher, academic, journalist, and activist should read this book. --Wilbur Rich, professor of political science, Wellesley College This excellent book provides evidence-rich answers to the questions of what happens to students, teachers, schools and communities when mayors take control of --and responsibility for--education in their cities. It will and should inform policymaking now and well into the future. --Patrick J. Wolf, 21st Century Chair in School Choice, University of Arkansas