Leadership Lessons from Comprehensive School Reforms

"Leadership Lessons From Comprehensive School Reform addresses a topic that has received far too little attention in the comprehensive school reform movement: the role of school and district leaders in the reform process. This volume shows how much we′ve learned about how leaders shape comprehensive reform and how the reform process must shape leadership."
Robert Slavin, Co-Director
Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk
Johns Hopkins University

"This volume provides the most thorough, balanced, and informative source available on comprehensive school reform. In addition to insights regarding implementation of many of the most prominent CSR models, the book is a primer on ′distributed leadership,′ providing perspectives on the interplay of principals, teacher leaders, central office administrators and model developers engaged in school and district reform."
James Lytle, Superintendent
Trenton, New Jersey Public Schools

"This book offers well-grounded insights about the leadership practices of educators involved in the implementation of Comprehensive School Reform models. Leaders and leadership scholars will find it a rewarding read. I recommend it highly."
Kenneth Leithwood
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Ontario, Canada

Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) is proving to be one of the most promising avenues for improving student achievement. The authors have found that leadership is frequently acknowledged to be a prime factor in the successful implementation of comprehensive school reform. Murphy and Datnow have gathered together a group of CSR insiders and researchers to examine the issue of leadership in CSR for the first time.

Contributors and CSR models include:

• Expeditionary Learning Schools
• Modern Red Schoolhouse
• Co-Nect
• Success for All
• New American Schools
• Chicago Annenberg Challenge
• Bay Area School Reform Collaborative
• Accelerated Schools
• Coalition of Essential Schools
• Comer School Development Process

Joseph F. Murphy is the Frank W. Mayborn Chair and associate dean at Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University. He has also been a faculty member at the University of Illinois and The Ohio State University, where he was the William Ray Flesher Professor of Education.

In the public schools, he has served as an administrator at the school, district, and state levels, including an appointment as the executive assistant to the chief deputy superintendent of public instruction in California. His most recent appointment was as the founding president of the Ohio Principals Leadership Academy. At the university level, he has served as department chair and associate dean.

He is past vice president of the American Educational Research Association and was the founding chair of the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC). He is co-editor of the AERA Handbook on Educational Administration (1999) and editor of the National Society for the Study of Education (NSSE) yearbook, The Educational Leadership Challenge (2002).

His work is in the area of school improvement, with special emphasis on leadership and policy. He has authored or co-authored 18 books in this area and edited another 12. His most recent authored volumes include Understanding and Assessing the Charter School Movement (2002), Leadership for Literacy: Research-Based Practice, PreK-3 (2003), Connecting Teacher Leadership and School Improvement (2005), Preparing School Leaders: Defining a Research and Action Agenda (2006), and Turning Around Failing Schools: Lessons From the Organizational Sciences.