Title: Dismantled
Author(s): Leanne Kang
Publisher: Teachers College Press, New York
ISBN: 9780807763827 Pages: 144 Year: 2020

Leanne Kang, author of Dismantled: The Breakup of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1980-2016, intended this book to be for all educational stakeholders (e.g., “parents, community activists, concerned citizens, policymakers, researchers, and so on,” p. 5) who are interested in understanding the history behind and legacies of contemporary urban education reform efforts that led to the dismantling of the Detroit Public Schools (DPS). Through the dual historical perspectives of special interest groups battling for political control of DPS and schooling—educational policy, specifically—institutionalizing and reproducing social inequality and racism, Kang speaks to those who both do policy and those for whom policy is done as a way to help all actors make sense of how battles over school governance that do not center communities can lead to the crumbling of an entire system. It becomes clear from Kang that reform cannot be enacted through a top-down approach.

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