Marcus Foster and the Oakland Public Schools: Leadership in an Urban Bureaucracy

Critics of public organizations have charged them with rigidity, insensitivity to public needs, inefficiency, and other faults. The charges are not new, but the surge of urban political activism during the 1960s gave a sense of urgency to demands for organizational change. Marcus Foster and the Oakland Public Schools examines an urban political executive’s efforts to meet those demands.

In an attempt to reform education bureaucracy, Marcus Foster—former superintendent of schools in Oakland...