Building Civic Capacity: The Politics of Reforming Urban Schools

Winner: APSA Best Book Award in Urban Politics

The authors of this volume argue that urban education is in urgent need of reform and that, although there have been plenty of innovative and even promising attempts to improve conditions, most have been doomed. The reason for this, they agree, lies in the failure of our major cities to develop their “civic capacity”—the ability to build and maintain a broad social and political coalition across all sectors of the urban community in pursuit of a...