There is no calling, no more vital responsibility, than the education of our nation's and world's future leaders. Independent and faith-based schools succeed and thrive in the presence of visionary leadership. In its absence, schools struggle and often fail to achieve their mission. The success story for schools is the strength of the leadership found in the relationship between the head of school, the board chair, and all trustees. It is through this relationship, partnership, and acceptance of roles and responsibilities where this health and this success can be found.

The Essential School Board Book highlights effective practices that are common to high-functioning boards around the country--boards that are working successfully with their superintendents and communities to improve teaching and learning.

Children in today's world are inundated with information about who to be, what to do and how to live. But what if there was a way to teach children how to manage priorities, focus on goals and be a positive influence on the world around them? The Leader in Meis that programme. It's based on a hugely successful initiative carried out at the A.B. Combs Elementary School in North Carolina. To hear the parents of A. B Combs talk about the school is to be amazed. In 1999, the school debuted a programme that taught The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleto a pilot group of students. The parents reported an incredible change in their children, who blossomed under the programme. By the end of the following year the average end-of-grade scores had leapt from 84 to 94. This book will launch the message onto a much larger platform. Stephen R. Covey takes the 7 Habits, that have already changed the lives of millions of people, and shows how children can use them as they develop. Those habits -- be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek to understand and then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw -- are critical skills to learn at a young age and bring incredible results, proving that it's never too early to teach someone how to live well.

Managing School Districts for High Performance brings together more than twenty case studies and other readings that offer a powerful and transformative approach to advancing and sustaining the work of school improvement. At the center of this work is the concept of organizational coherence: aligning organizational design, human capital management, resource allocation, and accountability and performance improvement systems to support an overarching strategy. This central idea provides a valuable conceptual framework for current and future school leaders. The case studies presented in Managing School Districts for High Performance grow out of the Public Education Leadership Project (PELP), a unique partnership between the Harvard Business School, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a network of urban school districts. This rich array of cases explores the managerial challenges districts face as they seek to ensure rich learning opportunities and high achievement for all students across a system of schools. "This book of insightful case studies fills a void long felt by educational administrators in search of practical, real-world training tools. It will serve as a catalyst for the tough conversations district leaders need to have about achieving high-quality outcomes for all students. The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems has used many of these cases with great success, and we are excited that they are now compiled into a single collection." -- Dan Katzir, Managing Director, The Broad Foundation "This volume is not a treatise about how schools and districts should work. Rather, it provides a deep immersion in the real dilemmas involved in advancing school district reform. Anyone who works through these cases cannot help but come away with a more informed vision for change, a more reflective orientation about the interrelationships among the multiple tasks involved, and a more prudent grasp of what it takes to educate all children to high academic standards. The course of study presented by Managing School Districts for High Performance should be required professional education for anyone charged with advancing a coherent agenda of school improvement in our diverse, demanding, and rapidly changing society." -- Anthony S. Bryk, Spencer Professor of Organizational Studies, Stanford University "This set of case studies offers practitioners, policymakers, and scholars the opportunity to learn from the collective wisdom and real-life experiences of educational leaders involved in systemic transformation. Implementing coherent reform strategies designed to improve and sustain student performance often takes place in a vacuum. As a former urban superintendent, I believe that these selected educational case studies provide a compelling forum for shared experiential teaching and learning." -- Arlene Ackerman, Christian A. Johnson Professor of Outstanding Educational Practice, Teachers College, Columbia University "This collaboration between the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education provides a set of analytical tools to address the most complex and challenging issues facing urban public schools. The contemporary case studies document actual choices and constraints and point to patterns and similarities across organizations, from urban schools to corporate environments." -- Carol Johnson, Superintendent, Boston Public Schools Stacy Childress is a lecturer at Harvard Business School. Richard F. Elmore is the Gregory R. Anrig Professor of Educational Leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Allen S. Grossman is the MBA Class of 1957 Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School. Susan Moore Johnson is the Pforzheimer Professor of Teaching and Learning at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Many nonprofits never take full advantage of their board members. Extraordinary Board Leadership: The Keys to Governing deals with an incredibly important topic - "high-impact governing" - which is at the heart not only of a nonprofit's effectiveness, but also the key to a positive, productive, and enduring board-CEO partnership. This text offers practical, hands-on guidance, which is based on in-depth real-life experience and can be put to immediate use. It goes beyond the old-fashioned "policy governance" approach - beyond the rules - in dealing with the board-CEO-executive staff partnership. The 2nd edition of this successful book includes more case studies and new information aimed at public governing bodies, as well as more tables and charts to accompany a fresh new text design.

This volume shows how school districts can and do make essential contributions to the renewal and enhancement of American education. It expands the conversation on what school districts are, what they do, and how they can enhance the quality of teaching and learning in US schools.

Bridge the great divide between distanced administrative duties and daily classroom impact. This book introduces a top-down power mechanism called defined autonomy, a concept that focuses on district-defined, nonnegotiable, common goals and a system of accountability supported by assessment tools. Defined autonomy creates an effective balance of centralized direction and individualized empowerment that allows building-level staff the stylistic freedom to respond quickly and effectively to student failure.

Our fourth book in the International Research on School Leadership series focuses on school leadership in an era of high stakes accountability. Fueled by sweeping federal education accountability reforms, such as the United States’ No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (R2T) and Australia’s Performance Measurement and Reporting Taskforce, school systems around the world are being forced to increase academic standards, participate in high-stakes testing, and raise evaluation standards for teachers and principals. These results-driven reforms are intended to hold educators “accountable for student learning and accountable to the public” (Anderson, 2005, p. 2, emphasis in original). While policymakers and the public debate the merits of student achievement accountability measures, P-12 educational leaders do not have the luxury to wait for clear guidance and resources to improve their schools and operating systems. Instead, successful leaders must balance the need to create learning communities, manage the organizational climate, and encourage community involvement with the consequences testing has on teacher morale and public scrutiny. The chapters in this volume clearly indicate that as school leaders attend to these potentially competing forces, this affects their problem-solving strategies, ability to facilitate change, and encourage community involvement. We were delighted with the responses from colleagues around the world who were eager to share their research dealing with how leaders are functioning effectively within a high-accountability environment. The nine chapters in this volume provide empirical evidence of the strategies school leaders use to cope with problems and negotiate external demands while improving student performance. In particular, the voices and actions of principals, superintendents, and school board members are captured in a blend of quantitative and qualitative studies. The breadth of studies is impressive, ranging from case studies of individual principals to cross-district comparisons to national data from the National Center for Education Statistics. To highlight important findings, we have organized the book into five sections. The first section (Chapters 2, 3, and 4) highlights the problem-solving strategies used by principals and superintendents when pressured to turn around low-performing schools. In the second section (Chapters 5 and 6), attention is devoted to ways in which school leaders act as “buffers” by reducing the impact of external demands within their local school contexts. Next, Chapters 7 and 8 explore creative ways in which financial analyses can be used to assess the cost effectiveness of programs and services. Chapters 9 and 10 examine how principals enact their instructional leadership roles in managing curriculum reforms and evaluating teachers. Finally, in the last section (Chapter 11), Kenneth Leithwood synthesizes the major themes and ideas emerging across these chapters, paying particular attention to practical issues influencing school leaders in this era of school reform and accountability as well as promising areas for future research.

Improving School Board Effectiveness offers a clarifying and essential look at the evolving role of school boards and how they contribute to efforts to improve student learning. At its heart is the concept of Balanced Governance, a principle that most generally "balances the authority of a superintendent to lead a school district with the necessary oversight of a locally engaged and knowledgeable board." Improving School Board Effectiveness is a helpful and practical book that will prove indispensable for school board members, school and district administrators, and everyone with a stake in school improvement and reform. "A must-read for anyone interested in the complex challenges school boards face, especially regarding the question of how board members can contribute to the central goal of improving student outcomes." --From the foreword by Willard R. Daggett, founder and chairman, International Center for Leadership in Education "Alsbury and Gore have done an outstanding job of pulling together research that highlights how school boards matter. Their book provides practical examples for improving school governance at the local level. Improving School Board Effectiveness is an essential read for school board members, superintendents, and those working to improve public education governance." --James B. Crow, executive director, Texas Association of School Boards "Improving School Board Effectiveness is a valuable book for superintendents as well as school boards. It explores the crucial relationship between school boards and superintendents, indicating ways to build a trusting, mutually accountable partnership to advance student achievement." --Bert L'Homme, superintendent, Durham Public Schools, North Carolina Thomas L. Alsbury, a former schoolteacher, principal, and administrator, is a professor of educational leadership at Seattle Pacific University as well as a founder and president of Balanced Governance Solutions. Phil Gore, a former school board member, is the division director for leadership team services with the Texas Association of School Boards. Willard R. Daggett is the founder and chairman of the International Center for Leadership in Education.

"An empathetic but hard-hitting book about effective school boardleadership. It should be required reading for superintendents,school board members, and all elected leaders." --Anne L. Bryant, executive director, National School BoardsAssociation "The chances for providing an even better education for studentsincreases geometrically when school boards and superintendents worktogether in common purpose. This book can help build the capacityof boards to support district-level improvement with wisegovernance and leadership." --Paul Houston, executive director, American Association of SchoolAdministrators School boards are under fire and overworked, but they are here tostay. Here is a practical guide to improving their operation.Filled with real-life examples of sound board action, EffectiveSchool Boards presents a useful model for boards who want to make adifference in improving education and leading wisely. In this book,Eugene Smoley analyzes information received from extensiveinterviews with school board members about the key elements ofhighly functional boards and offers advice and insights to helpboards make better decisions, act collaboratively, relate to theircommunities, and plan strategically. He outlines three stages ofboard improvement--self-assessment, monitoring, anddevelopment--highlighting how boards can partner with districtsuperintendents to lead change. Practical tools for improvementinclude a self-evaluation questionnaire, a sample format forretreats and conferences, and concrete suggestions to assist schoolboard members, superintendents, concerned citizens, businessleaders, foundations, and anyone who cares about how today'sschools are governed.