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Book Review of Change Forces: The Sequel

Much educational reform literature neglects the unique reform challenges faced by change agents striving to improve schooling for children placed at risk. Educators and community members who seek improved learning opportunities for such children must frequently overcome substantial political and normative obstacles. When, for example, these change agents propose detracking (Oakes, Quartz, Ryan, & Lipton, 2000) or culturally relevant teaching (Ladson-Billings, 1997), they often encounter elite parents, as well as educators, who view the reform’s goals as antithetical to their beliefs or their desire to retain privileges (Oakes et al., 2000; Wells & Serna, 1996; Welner, in press). Yet such change agents find little in the school reform literature to help them understand and overcome these obstacles. Michael Fullan beginsChange Forces: The Sequel with a description of these normative and political challenges. He notes that many reforms implicate the non-neutral issues of equity, diversity, and power, and he points out that these issues can drive resistance grounded in race, social class, and perceived interests of power elites. With this beginning, Fullan signals that this book will seriously address divisive political and normative issues, eschewing the neutral approach to change that has plagued many otherwise excellent analyses of school reform over the past several decades. Although some of the book’s passages do, in fact, engage these difficult issues, I would have welcomed a more convincing explanation of how his core proposals will substantially assist change agents in addressing the challenges of equity and power that he astutely identifies. One of the joys of Fullan’s writing is his ability to convey his love of research and ideas. His past work greatly strengthened the change literature by incorporatJOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR STUDENTS PLACED AT RISK, 5(4), 447–451 Copyright © 2000, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.