Rural schools, especially smaller ones, offer enormous opportunities for teachers to get to know their students and to cultivate their academic talents. However, students with potential in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) face specific obstacles to having their talents fully realized in rural schools. Joni Lakin, Tamra…

Continuous improvement is "an embedded behavior within the culture of a school that constantly focuses on the conditions, processes, and practices that will improve teaching and learning." The phrase has been part of the lexicon of school improvement for decades, but real progress is rare. Based on its observations of about 5,000…

To build and maintain a genuine partnership between the school and those it serves requires sophisticated leadership. Leaders can develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to create effective community schools, and they should do so purposefully, choosing to learn, model, and practice successful strategies in all aspects of their work. Such…

Leadership is increasingly recognized as an important factor in moving schools forward, yet we have been relatively random in how we prepare and support them. Four obstacles often block or diminish their effectiveness. Avoiding or overcoming each of these requires an underlying set of skills and knowledge that we believe can be learned and…

The author looks through Albert Bandura's self-efficacy lens onto the effects it likely has on school principals' effectiveness. Self-efficacy should be viewed as a principal's belief in his or her capabilities to structure a particular course of action in order to produce desired outcomes. Principal self-efficacy has been linked with effective…

Studying more than 400 educational leaders, the authors propose a new model for leadership and management rooted in the belief that there is latent intelligence inside schools and educational organizations. Their findings suggest two dramatically different types of leaders, Multipliers and Diminishers. The five disciplines that distinguish…

Empowering teachers to use data effectively as part of a process of instructional improvement calls for schools and districts to engage in systematic collection and analysis of evidence as part of an ongoing school improvement cycle. In research and practice, the author has identified four steps school leaders--supported by central office--must…

There's been much commitment and extensive legislation intended to make schools inclusive for all students but not much real progress in improving student outcomes. The authors review and assess several schools that have succeeded at making schools inclusive and effective for all students, including those with disabilities and draw some inferences…

The best way to raise achievement levels is to improve teaching; and that goal is most easily reached through a school-wide system that starts with strong, effective leadership and raises expectations for teachers and their students. Collaboration, shared goals, and the adoption of Professional Learning Communities is crucial, the author says; so…

Responding to the need for game-changing innovation that will catapult student achievement, some school districts seek assistance from school development organizations that specialize in helping schools. But such work presents problems when schools try to adopt and adapt innovation and outside partners face challenges in encouraging schools to…

To strategically manage human capital in education means restructuring the entire human resource system so that schools not only recruit and retain smart and capable individuals, but also manage them in ways that support the strategic directions of the organization. These management practices must be aligned with a district's education improvement…

After providing technical assistance to the federal Smaller Learning Community Program grantees, the authors developed five lessons for successful programs: 1) A strong vision of improved instruction needs to drive high school reorganization; 2) A strong vision of improved instruction focuses on strengthening the instructional core; 3)…

Creating change school requires courage. Great teachers can't be satisfied with managing change; they must be prepared to lead change, argues Thomas Guskey, keynote speaker at the 2008 Phi Delta Kappa Summit on High-Performing Educators and a professor of education at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Kentucky.

Leadership in education is much like leadership in business and government. Three problems in particular make education seem different, including the almost constant pressure, the politics of the job, and state and federal regulations. But these are similar to problems faced by leaders in other organizations. However, education leaders must take…

How schools are organized and interact with the local community can dramatically alter the odds for improving student achievement. There are five essential supports for school improvement: a coherent instructional guidance system, the professional capacity of its faculty, strong parent-community-school ties, a student-centered learning climate,…