Changing Schools from the Inside Out: Small Wins in Hard Times 3rd Edition

If you are looking for a new perspective for positioning your school in this time of tight resources, read the third edition of Bob Larson’s book. He has again produced an impressive treatise on change, grounded in the increasingly complex and technological world of public education today. With accuracy and clarity he dissects major innovative programs and projects over the past fifty years, the forces that undermined their goals, and their modest successes and frequent failures. He shows how schools grow and develop and require the cooperation of all within to effect true, substantive improvement. Larson offers to readers a mature, reasoned, and optimistic outlook, combined with practical ideas for use by educators in their local setting.

Larson (emer., Univ. of Vermont) effectively and conclusively enlightens policy makers, professors, school administrators, and change agent researchers by providing an exhaustive discussion of decades of research on change. The author reviews in great detail the variables and factors associated with success or failure in making change in public schools, including his most recent study on change in two high schools. Numerous ideas are explored, such as the realization that change is complex and complicated; there are problems associated with top-down change; schools need the collaborative efforts of all to make change succeed; and the essence of long-term meaningful change should be from the “inside out.” The author’s experience as a professor and researcher makes this is an excellent read for anyone interested in understanding the impact of meaningful and sustained change in America’s public school system.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers; upper-division undergraduate students and above.

Selected for review by the American Library Association.

When standards-based reform emerged in the 1980’s it was a radical idea. The new challenge for educators was to set high expectations for teaching and learning resulting in high student achievement for all students. The third edition of Bob Larson’s book clearly shows how leaders in education and policy must refine their thinking in this new era, so that every student will graduate from high school ready for college or a career. Toward that end, the book is filled with insights and examples about the forces affecting change, types of change, and practical strategies to effect new initiatives. Larson makes the case for the need to build capacity from ‘the inside out, ‘ which is the essential factor in sustaining real school improvement.