Discusses recent curricular and instructional reforms, collectively called basic skills restructuring, that have developed in urban schools. Discusses these reforms as a response to various crisis tendencies in the operation of schools by dominant power groups. Discusses the causes and effects of top-down curricular reform initiatives. (JS)

This is a resource book on cutback management in public schools. It catalogs over 30 practices, provides policy models from 27 school districts in 17 states, and summarizes a decade of advice about decline management in light of recent research evidence on what works and what doesn't work in managing the politics of retrenchment. Its highlights…