In The Transformation of Great American School Districts, William Lowe Boyd, Charles Taylor Kerchner, and Mark Blyth argue that urban education reform can best be understood as a long process of institutional change, rather than as a series of failed projects. They examine the core assumptions that underlay the Progressive Era model of public education-apolitical governance, local control, professional hierarchy, and the logic of confidence-and show that recent developments in school governance have challenged virtually all of these assumptions.

Drawing on case studies of five urban districts-Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, D.C., New York, and Los Angeles-they trace the rise of new ideas and trends that are reshaping the institution of public education: mayoral control, shifting civic coalitions, federal and state involvement, standards-based accountability, and the role of educational outsiders in district administration. Although each city has evolved along a different path, the editors argue that a set of new underlying ideas is being auditioned in the transition to a new institutional model and describe the process by which institutional change occurs.