8 Political and financial support for school‐based and child‐centred reforms

This chapter concentrates on the nature and focus of education reform efforts in city school systems during the late 1980s and early 1990s. A thesis is developed that political, and closely related financial, support for continuing efforts to reform or restructure education depends on two primary factors. The degree of agreement about values and goals among stakeholders within and external to school systems appears to influence the likelihood of a given set of reforms. Adoption and implementation of reforms also depend on the level of intensity of action devoted by those groups. This framework is used to examine whether current reform activities in urban environments engender political and financial support that might be essential for future reform initiatives. The paper concludes that future reform initiatives will need to consider changes in the delivery of non‐educational services to garner sufficient political support for meaningful education reform. Yet there must be agreement among values and interests of diverse agencies and sufficient intensity of action of all groups to bring about meaningful change.