Turning Around Failing Schools: Leadership Lessons from the Organizational Sciences

"This book provides critical understandings on the causes of organizational decline, a comprehensive conception of the turnaround process, and powerful insights for transforming failing schools into the kind we all want for our children."
―Kenneth Leithwood, Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

"Murphy and Meyers do a first-rate job of mapping the territory of school turnarounds and identifying the options for educators to consider and researchers to investigate."
―Daniel L. Duke, Professor of Educational Leadership and Research
University of Virginia

The guide to successfully restructuring schools in trouble!

This insightful resource integrates research, strategies, and lessons from business, government, and not-for-profit organizations that have transformed their substandard performance into a proactive approach for renewal. The authors provide:

• A comprehensive overview of the literature on organizational deterioration
• An in-depth examination of the causes and symptoms of degeneration
• A two-part model for preventing educational collapse and crafting an effective turnaround
• A review of the efficacy of educational reform initiatives

This indispensable text is ideal for district administrators, superintendents, policy makers, and individuals with an interest in organizational accountability and meaningful school reform.

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.

Coby V. Meyers is a doctoral student in the Leadership, Policy,
and Organizations program at Vanderbilt University. His current
research interests include school improvement, sociology of education,
and Islamic school education. Previously, he taught middle
school and high school English at an Islamic school in the Chicago
suburbs.