Urban School Reform
Lessons from San Diego

In 1998, U.S. district attorney for Southern California Alan Bersin was hired to run the San Diego City Schools. This June, he will depart San Diego as the nation's longest-serving big-city superintendent. During Bersin's tumultuous tenure, he achieved national prominence for his blunt challenge to the teachers' union and his ambitious efforts to reshape the nation's eighth-largest school system. Last September, AEI director of education policy studies Frederick Hess led a comprehensive effort to examine the Bersin reforms, and now the fruits of that effort are available in the new book Urban School Reform: Lessons from San Diego (Ed. Frederick Hess, Harvard Education Press).

Please join Bersin, Hess, and several contributing authors for a frank discussion of the practical lessons that San Diego holds for urban school reformers across the nation.

About the Author

 

Frederick M.
Hess



  • An educator, political scientist and author, Frederick M. Hess studies a range of K-12 and higher education issues. He is the author of influential books on education including “The Same Thing Over and Over,” “Education Unbound,” “ Common Sense School Reform,” “ Revolution at the Margins” and “Spinning Wheels,” and he pens the Education Week blog, Rick Hess Straight Up. His work has appeared in scholarly and popular outlets such as Teachers College Record, Harvard Education Review, Social Science Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, American Politics Quarterly, Chronicle of Higher Education, Phi Delta Kappan, Educational Leadership, U.S. News & World Report, National Affairs, The Washington Post, New York Times, The Atlantic and National Review. He has edited widely cited volumes on education philanthropy, stretching the school dollar, the impact of education research and No Child Left Behind.  He serves as executive editor of Education Next, as lead faculty member for the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program, on the review boards for the Broad Prize in Urban Education and the Broad Prize for Public School Charters as well as on the boards of directors of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, 4.0 SCHOOLS and the American Board for the Certification of Teaching Excellence. A former high school social studies teacher, he has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Rice University and Harvard University. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University as well as an M.Ed. in Teaching and Curriculum.


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  • Email: rhess@aei.org
  • Assistant Info

    Name: Lauren Aronson
    Phone: 202-862-5904
    Email: lauren.aronson@aei.org
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