Making Schools Smarter: A System for Monitoring School and District Progress - Softcover

Leithwood, Kenneth; Aitken, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803962924 ISBN 13: 9780803962927

Publisher: Corwin, 1995

Synopsis

"As a former school principal, I am impressed with this set of monitoring tools. The book describes these systematic and reliable tools, shows how they apply to both leadership and administrative concerns in schools and in districts, and helps generate information needed for restructuring, improvement, and accountability." Naftaly S. Glasman, University of California, Santa Barbara "For our school district, this book is an excellent and unparalleled opportunity to learn about its entire operation in order to make needed changes for growth and improvement." Donna Michaels, Superintendent Greater Victoria School District, British Columbia "Shifting the emphasis from an evaluation of personnel to an emphasis on professionals seeking data about the effectiveness of their practices and programs is what this book is about. The information monitoring system presented here has provided us with an effective means to assess the effects of their programs and to implement improvement." Tarry Grieve, Superintendent of Schools Kamloops School District, British Colombia "This highly readable book reflects the most up-to-date knowledge that we have about how to make schools perform better." Karen Seashore Louis, Professor and Associate Dean University of Minnesota Leithwood and Aitken have created a handbook for a system of collaborative assessment, strategic planning, and accountability in schools and districts. This book supplies not only the instruments to obtain data on how well schools and districts are achieving their purposes but also a means by which to establish achievable standards of expectation. The authors′ research included studies of Canadian and American schools and involved the participation district personnel, teachers, students, parents, and board members. The authors used a real school to help them develop their model of an "ideal school" for the year 2000. Using this experiment as a basis, they describe specific features to be found in an ideal school and present ways to measure comparable features of existing schools and districts. They provide guidelines for using data generated in these assessments to help move schools toward the ideal. Making Schools Smarter is a comprehensive process by which a district or a school can learn about its entire operation in order to initiate change based on solid data. Because the authors′ ideal school is a "learning organization," movement toward the ideal helps schools "get smarter" and enhance their collective capacities to serve students better. This is an excellent resource for administrators and superintendents, as well as for students and teachers of educational leadership and school restructuring.

About this title

About the Author

Dr. Leithwood is Emeritus Professor at OISE/University of Toronto. His research and writing is about school leadership, educational policy and organizational change. He has published extensively on these topics. For example, he is the senior editor of both the first and second International Handbooks on Educational Leadership and Administration (Kluwer Publishers, 1996, 2003). His most recent books include How School Leaders Contribute to Student Success (2017, Springer), Linking Leadership to Student Learning (2012, Jossey Bass), Leading School Turnaround (2010, Jossey Bass), Distributed leadership: The state of the evidence (2009, Routledge), Leading with Teachers’ Emotions in Mind (2008, Corwin), Making Schools Smarter (Corwin, 3^rd edition, 2006) and Teaching for Deep Understanding (Corwin, 2006). Among his awards, Professor Leithwood is the inaugural recipient of the University of Toronto’s Impact on Public Policy award, AERA (Division A) 2011 Outstanding Leadership Researcher Award, the 2012 Roald F.  Campbell Lifetime Achievement Award from the University Council for Educational Administration and the Ontario Principal Councils’ Outstanding Contributions to Education Award for 2016. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. With colleagues, he has completed one of the largest studies of its kind about how state, district and school-level leadership influences student learning.

Edition details

• Publisher: Corwin
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803962924
• ISBN 13: 9780803962927
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 216