| This is a study of the politics of education in a large urban school district operating under a court-supervised school reform consent decree. Based principally on data collected for a broader eleven-city study of civic capacity in urban education, this dissertation provides an account of the durability of judicially supervised consent decrees in the school reform arena and explains why judicial intervention may be sought and sustained in the 1990's, often in the absence of evidence that schools are able to achieve a court's explicit reform objectives. A central conclusion is that court-supervised change may offer politically powerful benefits to client groups and school leaders alike and may address some of the most critical collective action problems facing education stakeholders in the urban setting. The court-supervised process in San Francisco is observed to (1) increase the amount of politically relevant information available in the public domain about school practices and outcomes; (2) creates incentives for client-group coalition building on controversial, multipolar issues; (3) assists school leaders in the management of institutional change; (4) and serves to create a forum for the making of credible, enforceable commitments among stakeholders with disparate interests who have often expressed mutual distrust. |
