All children can learn. When principals and faculties fully embrace this core belief and demonstrate it to students, parents, and each other, significant improvements in academic performance can result. However, while it is certainly true that all children are capable of academic success, it is also true that learning occurs at different rates.…

Provides time management strategies for principals who also teach. Advises organizing schedules, files, and materials, delegating routine tasks, coordinating forms and aadministrative structures, communicating directly and through conversational memos, building a cooperative staff, planning for systematic performance evaluation, and other hints.…

Although education cannot remedy nonacademic ailments such as racial prejudice, schools can certainly resolve learning problems deriving from miseducation. This article argues that rotating elementary students from one teacher and classroom to another for different subjects is an emerging practice exposing young children to needless risk. (MLH)

Although parallel block scheduling continues to benefit student learning, it is challenged to meet the needs of new educational programs, particularly whole language and interdisciplinary instruction. Two illustrated blocks show how teachers can effectively divide their time between whole-group and small-group instruction and integrate science and…

One state curriculum guide too many produced the Principal's Advisory Council on School Improvement (PACSI), a Huntington, New York, principal's "kitchen cabinet" to handle curriculum overflow. In two years, PACSI developed three solutions: grade level objectives and suggested time allocations; monthly curriculum calendars; and…

Genuine school reform demands the redistribution of staff, space, and time within individual schools. Parallel block scheduling lets each teacher work with smaller groups of students daily. Sample scheduling and reading placements are provided. Includes 10 references. (MLH)

Careful planning can help principals manage two schools without eroding their sanity. Two-school principals should use color-coding to keep meetings straight, devise a work schedule that accommodates both schools, develop a workable off-campus communication system, eat lunch with students, and create a card-and-candy student-recognition system.…

Structure plays an important role in current efforts to transform traditional classrooms into collaborative, self-directed learning communities. Teachers work with students to create a sense of order based on shared understandings. The resulting structure has three characteristics: a well-organized classroom environment, predictable daily…

The first Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools (CREM) report describes the structures and practices currently used at all school levels for staffing, grouping, and scheduling. The report assesses the effects of departmentalization, tracking, ability grouping, and grade spans on student learning and development. (MLH)

Middle school scheduling is a major instructional activity reflecting understanding of human growth and development, agreed-on school objectives and purposes, and available human and physical resources. (Author/JM)

Challenged to increase leadership opportunities for teachers, an El Paso elementary school principal appointed two master teachers to a vice-principal vacancy, increased teacher collaboration time, and experimented with vertical-team representation, teacher input for hiring decisions, and creative scheduling. Only the principal can actually…

Discusses the many applications of microcomputer use by school administrators. The discussion is geared to "recalcitrant" administrators who have not begun to use computers in their work. Includes a sidebar listing of administrative software and another on computer use in education. (MD)

Today's elementary principals must address three major issues related to scheduling: providing quality time for teaching and learning; dealing with class size; and varying learning time for students who learn at different rates. Parallel block scheduling offers a flexible, cost-effective strategy for achieving these ends. (MLH)

Describes the founding of Washington, D.C.'s Brookland School, a preschool-to-grade-eight facility that embodies the middle school philosophy. (Author/JM)

Unsuccessful at easing teachers into heterogeneous grouping practices, an Indiana principal used a small grant allowing teachers to view thematic instruction, cooperative learning, and flexible-scheduling innovations at sister schools. For a modest cost (substitutes, lunch, and mileage), teachers made greater attitude changes in one year than…