This extraordinary view of
reform in action
illustrates what actually happens when school reform encounters a high-poverty, linguistically diverse school, that is, when policy ambitions collide with school realities. Based on two years of observation and interviews, the author shows how professional identities, social resources, and conflicting purposes shaped one elementary school’s capacity to understand and implement statemandated reforms. This book sheds much-needed light on the implementation of one of the most ambitious education reform attempts in recent history, the standards reforms in California.