Learning Policy. (Book Reviews).

One of the enduring conundrums of educational administration theory is how to affect professional practice through policymaking. This is no small issue at the school district level. At the state level, it is a gargantuan problem because so little sound research exists to guide strategy.

David K. Cohen, the John Dewey Professor of Education and a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, and Heather C. Hill, his research associate, summarize the conclusions of an eight-year, $3 million dollar research study designed to analyze California's decade-long effort to improve mathematics teaching and learning.

Though the authors speak with approval about how key elements in the reform program were aligned, they document the many factors that prevented any wholesale success of the effort--a loosely coupled state system of education, scarce financial resources, political debates about the best way to teach mathematics, lack of available textbooks congruent with the goals of the program, assessment challenges and other factors.

The study summarizes statistical evidence that a policy initiative about curriculum change, if buttressed by key components of professional development, can lead to improved learning.

This book, though designed as a study of a math innovation, is actually relevant to any policy-driven educational change. The authors' balanced comments about the way teachers serve as "policy brokers" in adopting, adapting and rejecting components of a comprehensive change initiative are fair and balanced.

(Learning Policy: When State Education Reform Works by David K. Cohen and Heather C. Hill, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 2001, 240 pp. with index, $30 hardcover)