A firm grounding in change theory can provide educational leaders with an opportunity to orchestrate meaningful organizational improvements. This article provides an opportunity for practicing leaders to review four major theories of organizational change--continuous improvement, two approaches to organizational learning, and appreciative inquiry.…

The administrative bonus model described here assumes that educational delivery systems can be improved by improving people. That is, a people-improvement program is a better buy than the adoption and innovation syndrome of the fifties and sixties. This plan restores the principalship to its rightful place in the line of authority, power, and…

The results relating to staff development, contained in a Rand Corporation survey on change agents, are summarized in this paper. The researchers discovered that successful staff development program implementation was characterized by three major components: local materials development, online planning, and concrete, ongoing training. Their…

Describes a North Carolina elementary principal's efforts to turn around two schools by adopting the Dunn and Dunn Learning Styles Model. The first school succeeded by recruiting all teachers, using small-group techniques, redesigning classroom space, and developing hands-on math materials for each grade level. Both teacher and administrator…

To implement School Based Management (SBM) in Charleston County, South Carolina, the school district was reorganized to include a management team to make shared decisions on all phases of district activities. Local schools were required to develop short and long range plans that encouraged needs assessment, goal identification, strategy…

An essential part of the school review process is self evaluation, which is fundamental to individual and organizational health and growth. Self evaluation is "coming clean" with ourselves--looking critically at what we are trying to do, how we are doing it, and to what extent it is being done. Self evaluation is important both as an…

This paper concerns the process of developing model urban education programs and is based on the experiences of the state funded Urban Education Pilot Project (UEPP) being carried out in one Cincinnati, Ohio, inner city public high school attendance area. First, key premises used by the UEPP are outlined. These include: (1) principals are the…

This study examined the efficacy of Techniques of Responsive Intervention to Validate Effective Teaching (TRIVET) as a model for training administrators and teachers to provide instructional leadership through effective classroom appraisal. The study dealt with the first of a multi-step process to have principals and teachers impact what happens…

This paper describes two conceptual models for addressing long-range development needs of principals. The first, a job competency model for managing productive schools, presents a comprehensive view of the central job tasks of the principal for stretching the school's capacity to influence achievement norms. Changing the school's work norms…

School culture has recently emerged as a framework for the study and interpretation of the structure and development of schools. A work culture productivity model is described, and the development of a culture instrument is reported. The concept of school work culture, a subset of systems culture, refers to the collective work patterns of a…