For scholars and policy makers focused on reforming urban schools, Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons From Chicago may represent the most important research over the past decade of debate. This book by Anthony S. Bryk, Penny Bender Sebring, Elaine Allensworth, Stuart Luppescu, and John Q. Easton is especially noteworthy because it is urban students whom we educators have most frequently failed in the past. Our failure is even more important because more than 50% of students of color live in urban areas (U.S. Census Bureau, 2006), and students of color are nationally the fastest growing demographic group (National Center for Education Statistics, 2009). As a nation, we are not succeeding with an expanding student population on whom our future economic and social well-being depend (Darling-Hammond, 2010)...