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Improving America's Schools: The Role of Incentives

reform process. Instead, they saw themselves as agents for social change and helped counterbalance influence from elite business groups. Foundations even worked cooperatively with activist groups, such as the National Coalition of Advocates for Students and the National Coalition of Education Activists, to push for real democratization of decision making. Unfortunately, even radical reformers in Chicago were limited by their need to show results in terms of rising test scores and by their failure to actively involve the Chicago Teachers’ Union. These case studies of the reinvention of public education are compelling reading, and their lessons need to be taken seriously by democratic progressives. This book makes me believe ever more strongly in the importance of forging a new democratic discourse on public school renewal that steps outside the myths and metaphors of corporate America. The basis for such a discourse on renewal remains unclear at this point, but Mitchell suggests it must be forged by including many more voicesincluding the voices of students, teachers, and community advocacy groups-and relying less on business/school partnerships.