Challenging the One Best System: The Portfolio Management Model and Urban School Governance (Education Politics and Policy) - Softcover

In Challenging the One Best System, a team of leading education scholars examines the design and enactment of the portfolio management model in three major cities: New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Denver. The authors identify five interlocking mechanisms at the core of the model—planning and oversight, choice, autonomy, human capital, and school supports—and show how these are implemented differently in each city.

Using rich qualitative data from extensive interviews, the authors trace the internal tensions and trade-offs that characterize these systems and highlight the influence of historical and contextual factors as well. Most importantly, they question whether the portfolio management model represents a fundamental restructuring of education governance or more incremental change, and whether it points in the direction of meaningful improvement in school practices.

Drawing on a rigorous, multimethod study, Challenging the One Best System represents a significant contribution to our understanding of system-level change in education.

“A very deep dive into the implementation and theories of action that can enhance or deflate a new vision of the basic structure of the United States school system.”
—Michael W. Kirst, professor emeritus, Stanford Graduate School of Education

Katrina E. Bulkley is professor of educational leadership at Montclair State University. Julie A. Marsh is a professor of education policy at the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California and faculty director of Policy Analysis for California Education. Katharine O. Strunk is a professor of education policy and, by courtesy, economics, and the Clifford E. Erickson Distinguished Chair in Education at Michigan State University. Douglas N. Harris is professor and chair of the Department of Economics and the Schlieder Foundation Chair in Public Education at Tulane University. Ayesha K. Hashim is assistant professor of policy, leadership, and school improvement at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Education. Jeffrey R. Henig is a professor of political science and education at Teachers College, Columbia University and editor of Harvard Education Press’s Education Politics and Policy series.