A 1958 New York community study dramatized the thesis that macro forces (urbanization, industrialization, bureaucratization) have undermined all small communities' autonomy. Such "oppositional case studies" succeed when they render the dominant view immediately obsolete, have plausible origins, are testable, and generate new research.…

In 1989, Chicago (Illinois) Public Schools began an experiment with the radical decentralization of power and authority. This book tells the story of what happened in Chicago's elementary schools in the first four years of this reform. Implicit in the reform was the theory that expanded local democratic participation would stimulate organizational…

Since 1993, school reform leaders from Chicago (Illinois), Denver (Colorado), New York (New York), Seattle (Washington), and Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) have come together in the Cross City Campaign to work for the improvement of urban education. In each of these cities rhetorical pleas for decentralization and the investment of decision making in…