Why Is It So Hard to Get Good Schools?

After almost 5 decades of working in and around public schools, Larry Cuban invites us to think along with him about why it is so hard to get good schools. He offers these reflections because his contact with tens of thousands of public school participants—teachers, policymakers, researchers, parents, and students—has convinced him that “I am not alone in coping with these thorny dilemmas…as each of us muddles toward the kinds of ‘good’ schooling that we seek for children.”

Providing a strong counter voice to today’s standards-based reform, Why Is It So Hard to Get Good Schools?:

• Features powerful ideas on teacher education, curriculum, and school administration in an accessible lecture style by Larry Cuban—an experienced teacher, administrator, and acclaimed author.
• Offers vignettes of four “good” schools (traditional, progressive, community-based, and democratic) that clearly differ from one another, illustrating that there is no one type of schooling that is inherently better than another.
• Discusses the centrality of teaching to substantial and lasting school improvement, helping us tackle the ongoing reform paradox of viewing teachers as both the problem in and solution to creating “good” schools.
• Illuminates the “messy linkages” between educational policy and classroom practice.

Based on Larry Cuban’s Julius and Rosa Sachs Lectures for 2001–2002, this volume is a must-read for everyone interested in improving our schools.

Larry Cuban is Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University. In addition to How Teachers Taught, his books include Teachers and Machines, Frogs into Princes: Writings on School Reform, Why Is It So Hard to Get Good Schools? and How Can I Fix It? Finding Solutions and Managing Dilemmas.

“As the consummate expert on the topic, Cuban draws upon history, philosophy, politics, and educational criteria to describe good schools and the struggles to get them. He provides a fascinating and highly readable account.”
— Henry M. Levin, William Heard Kilpatrick Professor of Economics and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University