A Guide to Renewing Your School: Lessons from the League of Professional Schools

Sponsored by the League of Professional Schools

"Understanding school reform is a daunting task. A Guide toRenewing Your School goes a long way in communicating essentialinformation about reform in a clear-cut manner."
--Childhood Education

In Renewing America's Schools, Carl D. Glickman--founder of theLeague of Professional Schools--made the case for basing schoolimprovement efforts on democratic values and principles. Heproposed a three-part framework for reform that would enableschools and communities to create successful change in theirschools and discussed how states and districts could support theirefforts. In this companion volume, the authors provide detailedinstructions on how Glickman's framework can be implemented at theschool level.

A Guide to Renewing Your School is based on years of practicalexperience, numerous case examples, and empirical studies from theLeague of Professional Schools, a reform network based in Georgia.This hands-on book guides school practitioners through theessential steps of a reform process: (1) designing a covenant toguide teaching and learning, (2) creating a shared governanceprocess to promote democratic leadership and decision making, and(3) implementing action research to assess the reform process. Theauthors also address the challenges of change, such as how tocreate a school climate that will foster implementation of theframework and how to determine the type of facilitation and staffdevelopment needed to sustain this work. Filled with samplecovenants, charters, mission statements, worksheets, forms, andother tools, A Guide to Renewing Your School presents not only acoherent framework, but useful strategies for promoting school-widerenewal and improvement.

Lew Allen, Maude Glanton, Frances Hensley, Martha Livingston, and Dale Rogers are codirectors of the League of Professional Schools, which is part of the College Education at The University of Georgia.