Fighting to Save Our Urban Schools-- And Winning: Lessons from Houston

Don McAdams, one of a small group of activists elected to the Houston Independent School District Board of Education in 1989, provides a fast moving first-person account of successful reform in the nation’s seventh largest school district. With tact and wisdom, the author shows that school reform is seldom about reading, writing, and arithmetic. Rather, it is mostly about power, status, and money. This is a great story filled with conflict and surprising turns of fate. No one interested in politics, governance, and management of urban school districts can afford to miss Fighting to Save Our Urban Schools . . . and Winning!

Don McAdams is currently a Research Professor at and Director of the Center for Reform of School Systems, University of Houston, and is also serving his third four-year term as a member of the Houston Independent School District Board of Education.