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Community Social Action for School Reformreviewed by Duane M. Covrig & Laura Purnell - 2004 Title: Community Social Action for School Reform Author(s): Howell S. Baum Publisher: State University of New York Press, Albany ISBN: 0791457605, Pages: 320, Year: 2003 Search for book at Amazon.com Baum’s book is a theoretically rich and detailed account
of his participation in community action groups that created small
but positive school reforms in
Southeast Baltimore
. He reviews the challenges, opportunities, and processes of
“constituting” and acting through such community action
groups.
This book is challenging to read because of its extensive
details. Several community action groups, processes, and projects
are chronicled “ad infinitum.” The details are probably
necessary to give an accurate picture of the struggle of community
members as they gained momentum and then experienced ambivalence
and resistance from an often unresponsive, besieged,
bureaucratically and professionally-controlled public school
system. However, the tediousness of these details (e.g. planning,
convening and running meetings, finding partners, learning about
people, organizing, managing interpersonal conflicts, developing
interagency collaborations, learning from failures, raising money,
increasing interest, channeling disagreements into comprehensive
plans, etc.) made for thick prose. Nevertheless, this density of
details could be viewed as a subtle way to reinforced a central
theme of the book: community action groups require much work.... (preview truncated at 150 words.)To view the full-text for this article you must be signed-in with the appropriate membership. Please review your options below:
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- Duane Covrig
The University of Akron, Ohio E-mail Author DUANE M. COVIG is Assistant Professor of Educational Administration at the College of Education of The University of Akron, Ohio.
- Laura Purnell
The University of Akron, Ohio E-mail Author LAURA PURNELL is Federal Project Director at the College of Education of The University of Akron, Ohio
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