Creating Great Schools: Six Critical Systems at the Heart of Educational Innovation
by Phillip Schlechty ($25.00)

From the Inside Flap

Today's educational leaders are under siege. They are accountable for more but hindered by a system that encourages business as usual. Myriad experts offer dream scenarios of how things ought to be, but ultimately their "solutions" offer little hope for long-term success.

In Creating Great Schools, Phillip C. Schlechty—one of the nation's best-known experts on school leadership and change—offers a hands-on primer that will help arm school leaders with the tools they need to buck the system from within. Creating Great Schools shows educational leaders how they can sustain continuous innovation and improvement in order to create truly great schools.

Schlechty outlines the six critical systems that define the norms and expressions of a school's organizational culture—recruitment and induction, knowledge transmission, power and authority, evaluation, direction, and boundary—and shows what it takes to lead effective systemic change in order to sustain new values and direction. The book is filled with effective strategies and offers guidelines for introducing the "disruptive innovations" that are necessary to change the fundamental norms of an educational organization and truly revitalize a school. He also offers suggestions for working through the thorny issues that arise from the efforts to introduce new norms and provides school leaders with valuable insights into the critical rules, roles, and relationships in schools.

Creating Great Schools is based on Schlechty's decades of work with schools and districts all over the country. His practical wisdom provides leaders with the information and tools they need to transform their schools into outstanding learning institutions.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Author

Part One: The Need for Change

1. From Compliance to Engagement
2. Understanding the Normative System
3. Patterns of Commitment, Engagement, and Compliance

Part Two: Six Critical Systems

4. The Recruitment and Induction System
5. The Knowledge Transmission System
6. The Power and Authority System
7. The Evaluation System
8. The Directional System
9. The Boundary System

Part Three: New Norms, New Values, New Directions

10. The Changing Context
11. The Future of Public Education in America

Appendix A: Creating Engaging Schoolwork

Appendix B: Creating a Learning Community to Transform Schools

Bibliography

Index