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In Creating Great Schools, Phillip C. Schlechty—one of the nation’s best-known experts on leadership and change in schools—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 the school’s organizational culture—recruitment and induction, knowledge transmission, power and authority, evaluation, direction, and boundaries—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 offers suggestions for working through the thorny issues that arise from the efforts to introduce new norms and provides school leaders with valuable insights of the critical rules, roles, and relationships in schools. more details

If student performance is to be improved, says Phillip Schlechty, there are at least three ways to approach the problem: 1) work on the students, 2) work on the teachers, or 3) work on the work. Unfortunately, the first two have thus far produced unimpressive results. The key to improving education, Schlechty believes, lies in the third alternative: to provide better quality work for students-work that is engaging and that enables students to learn what they need in order to succeed in the world. more details

In this visionary book, renowned educator Phillip Schlechty argues for change-adept school systems. He not only challenges educational administrators, teachers, teacher leaders, legislators, and policymakers to recognize the need for transformation, but also shows how they can grow into skillful leaders of lasting change. Shaking Up the Schoolhouse begins with an incisive discussion of the dangers and opportunities in reworking school systems. Drawing from decades of experience and from actual cases, the author describes the essential characteristics of change-adept organizations. He then presents a practical framework for helping teachers to overcome obstacles in the learning experience, from reviewing the competition to improving student engagement through more effective standards. more details

Phillip Schlechty argues that schools must change or become obsolete, and that central to this change is a radical rethinking of old rules, roles, and relationships. The author leads parents, teachers, board members, school administrators, and community leaders through the difficult process of improving schools. He shows how to implement reform by developing a mission statement, setting goals, assessing results, and creating the support for change. Defining this work as a process of altering systems of rules, roles, and relationships that govern behavior in groups, Schlechty points out that reinventing schools must be looked on as a continual process. The book draws on Schlechty's experience in boardrooms and legislative halls and from his hands-on work implementing school reform. Included are samples of actual mission statements and strategic plans of successful school districts. More details

While the economy and the work force have changed drastically in the last century, public education has lagged far behind. In order to prepare our children for a future of constant change, the structure and fundamental purpose of our schools must be reexamined. more details