I found this book long on exhortation and short on guidance.  But it does contain several useful insights, and it is a very good literature review, with references both to very current works on school reform and to some contemporary management writings from the business world.

I would have gotten more out of this book if it had more descriptions of how its prescriptions, or at least parts of them, had been accomplished somewhere.  Of course, I suspect this lack is a reflection of the fact that the author's prescriptions are ahead of the curve; they prescribe a system organized around teacher-led instructional improvement.  But, as Dr. Fullan does an excellent job of explaining, most systems, especially larger ones, are mired in top down efforts, and he points out the limited and short-term possibilities of such efforts, and some of the reasons why they are the currently popular approach.

Finally, I found it disconcertin that Dr. Fullan uses "moral imperative" throughout the book without a complete discussion of what he means by it and why he chose that term.  He comes closest to defining it in Chapter 3 when he identifies the the moral imperative "of the highest order" (what does that mean?) as:

I qet queasy when the "achievement gap" is discussed without reference to demographic characteristics, and Dr. Fullan is very prone to do this.  When the concern is that the "high achievers" of one group of students (African-Americans, for instance) consistently score lower than the high achievers of another group, it's a reasonable question for the system to address.  But, when the discussion is of the overall gap between the highest achieving students and the lowest achieving ones, I get concerned because the easiest way to "fix" this "gap" is to hold the high- achieving students back by depriving them of the educational opportunities from which they can benefit.  Quality work for every student, every day. Period.  No student should spend a day in school where their opportunity to learn is intentionally hindered by adults. Unfortunately, Dr. Fullan mentions the "achievement gap" a number of times, but only once puts it specifically in a demographic context.