Managing School Districts for High Performance: Cases in Public Education Leadership
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 UniversityThis 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 UniversityThis 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