As Good As It Gets : What School Reform Brought to Austin, Hardcover by Cuban, Larry, ISBN 0674035542, ISBN-13 9780674035546, Like New Used, Free shipping in the US

Looking in depth at school reform efforts in Austin, Texas, Cuban (professor emeritus, education, Stanford University) questions whether schools have the power to change socioeconomic and ethnic differences in students' academic performance. The city of Austin is chosen because it is similar demographically to many big-city school systems, and because it is located in a state that has a 20-year history of test-based accountability rules similar to newer policies recently enacted in other states with big-city systems. An introduction offers a detailed review of the national history of various urban school reform movements of the past 50 years. Statistics are given and interpreted to demonstrate that although the district has shown overall improvements in test scores and graduation rates, the improvements are unevenly distributed among elementary schools and among schools located in affluent neighborhoods, leaving high schools in poor and ethnic neighborhoods in the same dire straights. An appendix offers data tables on the district. The author has written two other books on school reform. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR ()