Harvard Education Publishing Group

Learning from L.A. named Outstanding Academic Title by Choice magazine

January 05,2010
Learning from L.A.: Institutional Change in American Public Education by Charles Taylor Kerchner, David J. Menefee-Libey, Laura Steen Mulfinger, and Stephanie E. Clayton, has been named an Outstanding Academic Title of 2009 by Choice magazine.

According to Choice, Outstanding Academic Titles have been selected for their "excellence in scholarship and presentation, the significance of their contribution to the field, and their value as important—often the first—treatment of their subject. Comprising just over 9 percent of the titles reviewed by Choice during the past year, and less then 3 percent of the more than 25,000 titles submitted to Choice during the same period, Outstanding Academic Titles are truly the 'best of the best.'"

Learning from L.A. draws on a four-year study of the last 40 years of education reform in Los Angeles, capturing sweeping changes in American education. It puts forth a provocative argument: while school reformers and education historians have tended to focus on the success or failure of individual initiatives, they have overlooked the fact that, over the past several decades, the institution of public education itself has been transformed.

Choice is a publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association. The list is available in the January 2010 issue.