This handbook is a resource for parents, community members, teachers, and administrators who want to make a difference in their urban schools. Breault and Allen provide a way for stakeholders to see the roles they can play in building civic capacity for change in urban schools and communities. It also offers critical background information to help stakeholders recognize the complexity and necessity of their efforts.

The authors organized this book around the need for beginning, continuing, and enacting conversations to emphasize the need for stakeholders to build relationships with one another in order to advocate for and act on behalf of urban students and communities. While this book eschews prescriptive and simplistic solutions, it does offer ways in which stakeholders create and support an infrastructure for change in their schools and communities. For example, this book helps stakeholders navigate the bureaucracy of urban school districts, build collegial communities of inquiry within schools, develop systematic ways of gathering important data schools and communities, organize the energy and efforts of those who want to get involved, seek out, and utilize various resources, and then use the infrastructure of knowledgeable and collegial stakeholders to bring about change. The authors realize how daunting these challenges may seem for stakeholders who want to make a difference in their schools and communities. In response, they offer images of positive changes including schools, parent associations, and networking strategies used in urban communities today as glimpses of what is possible through hard work, collaboration, and an imaginative spirit.

Donna Adair Breault is Associate Professor of Curriculum and Educational Leadership at Georgia State University. Her research focuses on Deweyan inquiry and the role it plays in curriculum, educational research, and the creation and support of public space for action and advocacy. Her scholarship includes the co-edited book, Experiencing Dewey: Insights into the Classroom as well as articles in Educational Theory, The Journal of Thought, Educational Forum, Educational Studies, and Planning and Changing among others.

Louise Anderson Allen is Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at South Carolina State University. A former classroom teacher, school and central staff administrator in the public schools of Charleston, South Carolina, Allen was awarded the first postdoctoral fellowship given by the Avery African-American Research Center at the College of Charleston. Her most recent publications appear in the Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education, Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and the International Journal of Urban Educational Leadership. She is also the author of A Bluestocking in Charleston: The Life and Career of Laura Bragg and is a co-author of the 2nd edition of Turning Points in Curriculum: A Contemporary American Memoir.