This book raises provocative questions about the efficacy, viability, and sustainability of professional learning communities given the current political and structural realities of public schools. The culmination of six years of research in five states, it explores real-world efforts to establish learning communities as a strategy for professional development and school improvement. The contributors look at the realities of these communities in public schools, revealing power struggles, logistical dilemmas, cultural conflicts, and communication problems--all forces that threaten to dismantle the effectiveness of learning communities. And yet, through robust and powerful descriptions of particularly effective learning communities, the contributors hold out promise that they might indeed make a difference. Anyone persuaded that learning communities are the new "magic bullet" to fix schools needs to read this book, including teacher educators, educational leaders and practitioners, professional developers, and educational leadership faculty. Following an introduction by Betty Lou Whitford and Diane R. Wood, this book contains the following: (1) Professional Learning Communities for Collaborative Teacher Development (Betty Lou Whitford and Diane R. Wood); (2) Creating Learning Communities: The Lucent Peer Collaboration Initiative (Betty Lou Whitford and Debra R. Smith); (3) Learning Communities: Catalyst for Change or a New Infrastructure for the Status Quo? (Diane R. Wood); (4) Learning Communities in an Era of High-Stakes Accountability (Diane Yendol-Hoppey); (5) Context and Collaboration: Growing the Work in New Jersey (Debra R. Smith, Dick Corbett, and Bruce L. Wilson); (6) Deepening the Work: Promise and Perils of Collaborative Inquiry (Diane R. Wood); (7) What's to Not Like about Professional Learning Communities? (Ken Jones); and (8) A Look to the Future (Diane R. Wood and Betty Lou Whitford). An index is included.