With more students returning to in-person instruction, school systems can begin to shift their focus from surviving the crisis to helping students recover. Above all else, that means accelerating students back to grade level--not by rushing through the curriculum, but by using proven strategies that help students engage with the most critical work…

Purpose: This study aims to explore whether hierarchical position and organizational size affect perceptions of a learning organization (LO) during reform implementation. Design/methodology/approach: An electronic survey was distributed in four Norwegian police districts at an early stage of reform implementation. One of the objectives of the…

Systems, structures, and practices perpetuate disparities because they reinforce barriers that sort and separate students based on assumed success or failure. When students are disadvantaged in this way, the implicit message is that their learning doesn't matter. The counterpoint to these discriminatory systems is an asset-based approach, which is…

Purpose: Researchers and scholars have called for greater attention to collaboration among and between educational leaders in districtwide reform. This work underlines the important social aspect of such collaboration and further investigates the type of professional interaction among/between district and school leaders particularly around the…

In a recent publication, Senge ("All systems go: the change imperative for whole system reform." Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, 2010, x) stated "at no time in history has there been a more powerful need for a new vision of the purpose of education." Increasingly citizens, academics and practitioners are calling for radical…

This two-part "Implementation Guide" will help to deepen your understanding and sharpen your ability to implement each of the strategies discussed in "Leading School Change: Nine Strategies to Bring Everybody on Board" (ED509821). Part One offers discussion questions and activities which focus on each of the nine strategies. They can be completed…

From 1998 to 2008, the Dallas County Community College District (DCCCD) offered its employees a variety of options for formation, a type of reflective practice. The district encompasses 10 locations, seven of them independently accredited colleges. Formation is based primarily on Parker Palmer's model for Circles of Trust as described in "A…

Problems with implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) can be assessed in light of change management theory. Viewing stakeholders collectively as a corporate entity supports employing change management strategies to make the NCLB work. Examining ways that organizational controls and change management can work together points to…

When Palmdale School District and Pivot Learning Partners entered into their first contract in 2006, neither organization foresaw the magnitude and complexity the relationship would take over time. Pivot Learning Partners (formerly known as Springboard Schools) is a non-profit service provider that first entered the Palmdale School District…

Can Total Quality Management (TQM) improve the performance of school systems in meaningful ways? This paper evaluates the soundness of TQM as an improvement program for education by comparing its philosophy and prescriptions with the mounting theoretical and empirical wisdom on introducing and sustaining large-scale organizational change and more…

This report describes how staff at the school, cluster, and central offices have responded to the Philadelphia district's new student support ethos. This report does not present student outcome data or measure the quantity or quality of services because the evaluation teams believed it was too early in the implementation of the initiative to…

Findings of a case study that examined restructuring and organizational change in a California school district over a 12-year period are presented in this paper. The research draws upon the conceptual framework of "adaptive realignment," a process in which an organization continually responds to external and internal changes as they occur. Data…

Discusses 10 major school change strategies engaging the author's energy, beginning with training in group dynamics in the 1950s through today's emphasis on school restructuring. Other strategies included innovation diffusion and transfer, organizational self-renewal, knowledge transfer, creation of new schools, supported implementation, local…

It is frequently asserted that schools and local authorities should become "learning organisations" as a pre-condition for school improvement, but there is very little evidence about the specific processes and activities involved in such a transformation. This paper analyses the initial stages of the implementation by a Scottish local…

This paper presents findings of a study that documented the initiation and early implementation of 22 projects participating in the Educational Partnerships Program, which is sponsored by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI). This study of the first year in a proposed 5-year program, sought to identify partnership structures…