Book Reviews: Detroit’s Demise
Abstract
Detroif s Demise The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1907-1981. Jeffrey Mirel. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993. 456 pp., $42.50 ISBN 0-472-10118-8. associate professor in the Department of Leadership and Educational Policy Studies at Northern Illinois University, Mirel began his study of Detroit public schools while pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Michigan. His dissertation, "Politics and Public EducaReview by C. H. EDSON tion in the Great Depression: Detroit, University of Oregon 1929-1940'' (1984), has been greatly n the early 20th century, urban expanded in this volume, which begins schools were the ' 'Jewel in the with reforms in school governance and Crown" of the American public school classroom practice during the progressystem. City schools enjoyed unri- sive era and ends with the "disastrous" valed reputations for administrative ef- experiments with busing and decenficiency, innovative instructional pro- tralization in the 1970s. grams, and educational quality. In Mirel eschews popular notions of urmany ways, urban school systems epi- ban school decline. Contrary to conventomized the buoyant optimism of the tional wisdom, the author flatly rejects late Victorian age. Educators claimed, the reductionist and racist assertion that and much of the public agreed,