Since the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk, readers have been deluged with proposals for school reform. This work by UCLA management school "corporate renewal" professor Ouchi takes its place among them. Ouchi bases his theory on sound principles derived from his research into a variety of successful schools. Educational management systems should be entrepreneurial rather than bureaucratic, he says. Give principals real control over their budgets, empower parents as genuine participants in school decisions, and student achievement will soar, even in communities beset by poverty and high immigration rates, two usual indicators of school failure. Any useful management book must reduce complex issues to bullets, and this one is no exception: Ouchi's arguments, encapsulated in his "Seven Keys to Success," claim to "revolutionize" schools and lead to vastly improved student academic achievement. "Revolutionary" may be too strong a word here, and in fact, some of the pedagogical practices Ouchi highlights are dubiously retrograde (e.g., third graders "reciting the days of the week, the months of the year, and the number of days in a week, month, and year"). However, Ouchi doesn't prescribe any of these rituals; he merely advocates for the empowerment of school communities to choose what's best for their particular students. Of interest to school leaders and policy makers, the book also has a section devoted to what parents and community members can do to improve not just their school but their school district, where fundamental change is essential. (Sept.)
