Tools for Change

Below you will find free articles, case studies, and position papers to help you think about, understand, and articulate the need for change in your community. We offer many useful tools to school and district leaders; however, we know that leadership, more than our tools, is the key to transforming schools. Until leaders use the tools we provide and encourage others to use them, these tools have little meaning. Here we provide free access to some of our tools and encourage you to share and discuss them with others interested in school change.

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Available Tools

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Schlechty Center on Change

This document outlines the Schlechty Center's framework for the transformation of schools from organizations in which the core business is producing compliance and attendance to organizations in which the core business is nurturing attention and commitment.

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Schlechty Center on Engagement

This document explores the Schlechty Center's concept of engagement, examining both five levels of student engagement and the Design Qualities teachers may attend to in order to increase the likelihood of students' being engaged.

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Schlechty Center on Design

This document from the Schlechty Center focuses attention on ways schools can utilize design to provide engaging learning experiences for students and on ways districts can use design to transform themselves from bureaucracies into learning organizations.

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Student Engagement and Its Relation to Quality Work Design: A Review of the Literature

This literature review by Betty Bowen of Forsyth County Schools in Georgia examines the research supporting Phillip C. Schlechty's position on the relationship between quality work and student engagement.

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Images of School chart

This chart, developed by Phillip Schlechty, contrasts the metaphor of a learning organization with bureaucratic metaphors making it possible to discuss and understand some relatively threatening aspects of existing operations.

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Schlechty Center System Capacity Standards

These 10 Standards are the foundation of the Schlechty Center's assessment of a district's capacity to support transformation.

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Changing the Quality of Student Experiences: The Fife Way

Fife Public Schools, outside of Tacoma, Washington, has over the past 10 years realized dramatic changes from the classroom to the boardroom. In this case study, the Schlechty Center chronicles the nature of these changes with special attention to how all changes are connected to students and the experiences the district provides them.

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Transforming Roles and Relationships: One District’s Choice to Pursue Greatness

 

Today, Orange Schools’ values, its commitments to students and staff, its sense of purpose and focus, as well as the relationships between teachers and principals, between students and the adults in the district, between staff and the school board, and between the superintendent and other leaders across the district, are markedly different than what they were in 1997. The Schlechty Center tells the story of this northeastern Ohio school district's transformation in this case study.

 

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A Collegial Conversation — Talking About Instruction Helps Teachers Find New Ways to Engage Students

The Schlechty Center encourages the use of protocols, structured processes for disciplined conversation about student work or work designed for students. This paper explains how a “collegial conversation” provides opportunities for designers to gain positive feedback and ideas for work in progress.

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From Community Institutions to Government Agencies: The Transformation of America's Schools

This paper by Phillip C. Schlechty contends that America’s schools are being transformed from vital community institutions into government agencies and that, rather than serving as centers of civic life, schools are becoming instruments of state and national policy—more concerned with economic development than with the transmission of culture and more oriented toward issues associated with international competitiveness than with concern about national character.

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Inspiring Leaders of Leaders

This document was created by a subgroup of members of the Superintendents Leadership Network in April 2004. It addresses the relationship between the superintendent and principal.

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Engaging the Board

This document was created by a subgroup of members of the Superintendents Leadership Network in April 2004. It addresses the relati onship between the superintendent and school board.

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Leading With Vision

This document was created by a subgroup of members of the Superintendents Leadership Network in April 2004. It addresses the superintendent's vision for the district.

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Building District Capacity

This document was created by a subgroup of members of the Superintendents Leadership Network in April 2004. It addresses the role of those district-level leaders in the central office and the superintendents's role in causing this role change to occur.

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Premium Tools

We understand that making the conscious choice to transform districts into learning organizations will require not only vision and courage but also support and tools. It is for this reason that the Schlechty Center has developed a suite of tools to aid school leaders through the redefinition of key leadership roles. In addition, the major Schlechty Center ideas, frameworks, and tools developed over the years are brought together and organized in a single document, A Strategy for District Transformation, to give leaders a comprehensive view of the work of transformation, including guidance in charting their district's progress on the journey.

Contact Diane Chambers at 502.895.1942 or info@schlechtycenter.org to purchase our premium tools.

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