Allure of Order High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling

"The success of The Allure of Order is how it challenges anyone involved in education reform to reexamine their most closely held concepts. At this critical period when the only consensus among U.S. educators, reformers, and policymakers is the need for change, The Allure of Order is a major guide for the sweeping decisions that must be made during the next several years. While analyzing both the history and the common strands of education reform movements, Jal Mehta also puts forward meaningful proposals to avoid repeating the past while building a system that truly empowers educators to perform at their highest levels. Documenting that the current 'rationalization of schools' has reached its limits, Dr. Mehta points us to an approach that produces greater learning outcomes by trusting educators, sharing ideas, and moving away from the concept of 'one best system."-Robert Wise, President, Alliance for Excellent Education
"In this detailed historical and political reanalysis of America's checkered history of school reform, Jal Mehta finds two major patterns: an impulse on the part of reformers and policymakers for the imposition of order and coherence on a set of institutions that lack the incentives and capacities to respond to these ideas, and a persistent lack of attention to the underlying problems of human values, knowledge, and skill that actually determine the value of schooling to individuals and society over time. His analysis leads to a vision of the future that will be harder to achieve but more likely to succeed, based on valuing human knowledge and skill over technical order in the learning sector." -Richard F. Elmore, Gregory Anrig Professor of Educational Leadership, Harvard Graduate School of Education