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...

Urban school reformers from around the county can draw lessons from reform efforts undertaken in San Diego by Alan Bersin and Tony Alvarado.

On-line registration is now closed for this event. Late registrations may be accepted. Please contact lkimaid@aei.org to inquire.

Please join AEI scholar Frederick M. Hess for an off-the-record luncheon discussion of urban school reform on Monday, June 13. Mr. Hess will present his new book Urban School Reform:...

This new volume, edited by Frederick M. Hess, gives us the opportunity to identify what measures are necessary to reform an entire school system.

Students and families can finance higher education in three ways: grants, government-backed loans, or private loans. Contemporary research and debate typically focus on grants and federally supported loans. Meanwhile, despite its explosive growth, the private loan market remains minimally researched and poorly understood. This made sense a decade ago, when...

Perhaps the most important lesson from San Diego is how limited the possibilities are for radical improvement short of structural change to personnel systems,accountability, and leadership.

The San Diego experience illustratesthat even the boldest attempts to overhaul urban schooling are todayundermined by the same institutionalfailings that they are intended to address.

This new volume gives us the opportunity to identify what measures are necessary to reform an entire school system.