As public education undergoes profound changes, school superintendents must join the dialogue surrounding this evolution in schools. Strategies for doing this are presented here. The book focuses on connecting the practical with the intellectual in ways that will make sense to people who are daily inundated with practical problems. It supports the idea of thinking one's way through problems without falling back on unexamined beliefs that have often made it easier to make decisions in the past. The following chapters are included: (1) "This Is Now; Then Is Then" (Robert R. Spillane and Paul Regnier); (2) "The Main Thing--Academic Learning" (Denis P. Doyle); (3) "The Other Things" (Louis Grumet); (4) "Research and Innovation: Let the Buyer Beware" (J. E. Stone and Andrea D. Clements); (5) "The Sine Qua Non--Budgeting and Personnel" (Rosemarie v. Rosen); (6) "Nuts and Bolts" (Gioia Caiola Forman); (7) "People are Everything" (Marlene C. Holayter); (8) "The Community--You Work for Them and They Pay the Bills" (Robert R. Spillane and Paul Regnier); (9) "School Boards--Partners in Policy" (Jacqueline P. Danzberger); (10) "Communications: Illusions and Realities" (Dolores Boylston Bohen); (11) "Hardware, Software, Vaporware, and Wetware" (Michael S. Radlick); and (12) "Issues for the Futures" (Robert R. Spillane and Paul Regnier). (An index is included.) (RJM)