ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines four interrelated crisis tendencies in urban education that have motivated crisis management efforts by elite groups during the basic skills era. The first and most publicized crisis tendency in urban education is associated with a failure to effectively teach students the literacy skills and work dispositions workers. Legitimation crisis tendencies result from a failure to effectively explain the continuation of gross inequalities of achievement between urban and suburban schools and the tendency for urban schools to specialize in preparing students for second-class status. Fiscal crisis tendencies in urban education have continued to threaten system reform efforts, and lead to the collapse of public education and the privatization of schooling. Finally, crisis tendencies in urban education are related to the "problem of order" in urban schools and classrooms and the failure to effectively contain or defuse student discontent, resistance, and rage.
