Power and the Promise of School Reform

Now published by Teachers College Press, this classic text includes new photographs and a new Introduction by Jeffrey Mirel that brings the book up to date. Power and the Promise of School Reform remains the foremost volume to examine how grassroots movements operated during the early twentieth century to shape urban education in the United States.

Carefully researched and elegantly written, Power and the Promise of School Reform moves effortlessly from impassioned Socialist Party meetings to smoky union halls, from fervent gatherings of urban radicals to quiet teas with upper-class women reformers. Reese explores the ways in which these diverse community groups struggled to make local schools responsive institutions in a time of dramatic change.