Although the law has been the vehicle for launching school-reform efforts, little attention has been paid to the ways in which legal mechanisms enable or constrain effective school reform; however, law-based school reforms (lawsuits, regulations, statutes, and collective-bargaining provisions) have not changed the fundamental character of the nation's schools. An introduction provides an overview of the history of school reform over the past 2 decades. Part 1 explores how unions and collective bargaining hinder school reform. Part 2 examines some of the legal mechanisms that hold the teaching profession accountable in some fashion to the public. Part 3 asks whether schools are ultimately designed to be workplaces for the benefit of adults or learning places where students' needs come first. One of the chapters discusses the inadequacy of legal remedies for sexual abuse in the schools. Part 4 of the book discusses the limitations of laws, courts, and legislatures in improving conditions in the nation's schools and it reviews three major legal reform initiatives: school-desegregation litigation, the school-funding lawsuits, and the charter-school movement. A table of cases and an index are included. References accompany each chapter. (LMI)