The Dark Side of School Reform directly engages some of the more difficult aspects of working as an educator in a public school. This book investigates what it means to teach, lead, and live during times of ongoing and intense change and offers insights which might help committed professionals better serve the needs of students as they seek to implement their own reforms in the ever-shifting organizations public schools have become. Features: · A qualitative case study that used a sociological conceptual framework to explore teachers' professional and personal lives as they implemented reform initiatives in a single public school over a two-year period · Important and specific problems associated with school reform efforts and offers practitioner-oriented solutions that may aid educators in their efforts to facilitate meaningful educational change. For teachers, school administrators, staff members, professors of education, graduate students, sociologists, and policymakers.

"In his qualitative account, peppered with some of the requisite sociological and educational vocabulary, Brooks serves as both mirror and interpreter, but more accurately as a lens through which we enter the reality of teachers' lives within a school continually caught between the lights and shadows of reform. The spectrum of teachers is visible, from neophyte to veteran (literally and figuratively), coach to department chair, bitter to hopeful, individual to team player, technophobe to technophile, withdrawn to engaged. Some 22 teachers are quoted, some at great length, transcribed from taped interviews." - Teacher Leaders Network

"Brooks recounts the experiences of a group of public high school teachers over a span of two years and how reform in their school affected their work and personal lives. Through interviews and observations and using a narrative structure, he describes effects these reforms had on the pace of the school day and year, changes in teacher duties, and maintaining policies and procedures." - Reference and Research Book News

"Recommended." - CHOICE