The role of parents in school-based management is extremely important. All public schools in North Carolina are required to have school-improvement teams, which are usually composed of the principal, teachers, and parents. This handbook was designed to help parents and principals understand and define the parents' role on the school-improvement…

Provides a narrative account of the development of a solutions-focused approach to school improvement. Describes the process whereby an urban primary school harnessed the collective energies of all staff (teachers and support staff) to bring about improvement, and considers the role of democratic leadership in reconceptualizing the school as a…

Through participation in a Kettering Foundation project, the Lawrence North High School in suburban Indianapolis (Indiana) has successfully implemented a number of the management practices that apparently underlie the productivity of Japanese businesses. Led by the principal, the school has committed itself to four basic concepts from the Japanese…

Describes how one middle school implemented shared decision making successfully. Presents questions that staff asked themselves, including how stakeholders' interests are represented, the type of communication network to use, changes in teachers' and principal's roles, keeping the focus on student learning, the type of staff developments needed,…