The universality of the problematics with urban education, together with the importance of understanding the context of improvement interventions, brings into sharp focus the importance of an undertaking like the International Handbook of Urban Education. An important focus of this book is the interrogation of both the social and political factors that lead to different problem posing and subsequent solutions within each region.

Steve "Sneeze" Wyatt attempts to thwart his parents' plan to have him skip eighth grade, but he has bigger problems when his friends disapprove of his new list and Mrs. "Fierce" Pierce threatens to keep him from the Invention Convention.