The Essential School Board Book
The Essential School Board Book

Author: Nancy Walser

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13:

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The Essential School Board Book highlights effective practices that are common to high-functioning boards around the country--boards that are working successfully with their superintendents and communities to improve teaching and learning.

Besieged
Besieged

Author: William G. Howell

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2005-04-01

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 0815797699

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School boards are fighting for their survival. Almost everything that they do is subject to regulations handed down from city councils, state boards of education, legislatures, and courts. As recent mayoral and state takeovers in such cities as Baltimore, Chicago, and New York make abundantly clear, school boards that do not fulfill the expectations of other political players may be stripped of what few independent powers they still retain. Teachers unions exert growing influence over board decision-making processes. And with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal government has aggressively inserted itself into matters of local education governance. B esieged is the first full-length volume in many years to systematically examine the politics that surround school boards. A group of highly renowned scholars, relying on both careful case studies and quantitative analyses, examine how school boards fare when they interact with their political superiors, teachers unions, and the public. For the most part, the picture that emerges is sobering: while school boards perform certain administrative functions quite well, the political pressures they face undermine their capacity to institute the wide-ranging school reforms that many voters and local leaders are currently demanding.

Curriculum 21
Curriculum 21

Author: Heidi Hayes Jacobs

Publisher: ASCD

Published: 2010-01-05

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1416612246

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"What year are you preparing your students for? 1973? 1995? Can you honestly say that your school's curriculum and the program you use are preparing your students for 2015 or 2020? Are you even preparing them for today?" With those provocative questions, author and educator Heidi Hayes Jacobs launches a powerful case for overhauling, updating, and injecting life into the K-12 curriculum. Sharing her expertise as a world-renowned curriculum designer and calling upon the collective wisdom of 10 education thought leaders, Jacobs provides insight and inspiration in the following key areas: * Content and assessment: How to identify what to keep, what to cut, and what to create, and where portfolios and other new kinds of assessment fit into the picture. * Program structures: How to improve our use of time and space and groupings of students and staff. * Technology: How it's transforming teaching, and how to take advantage of students' natural facility with technology. * Media literacy: The essential issues to address, and the best resources for helping students become informed users of multiple forms of media. * Globalization: What steps to take to help students gain a global perspective. * Sustainability: How to instill enduring values and beliefs that will lead to healthier local, national, and global communities. * Habits of mind: The thinking habits that students, teachers, and administrators need to develop and practice to succeed in school, work, and life. The answers to these questions and many more make Curriculum 21 the ideal guide for transforming our schools into what they must become: learning organizations that match the times in which we live.

School Boards
School Boards

Author: Institute for Educational Leadership (Washington, D.C.)

Publisher:

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13:

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This report presents findings of a 1985 national study of the local school board. Information was gathered from case studies in nine major metropolitan areas, questionnaires administered to over 200 school board chairpersons, and literature on board governance. Chapter 1 offers an overview and questionnaire results. Chapter 2 summarizes major findings. The historical role of school boards is discussed in chapter 3. Chapter 4, on the working board, interprets challenges faced in developing operating structures. The board-superintendent relationship is explored in chapter 5. The report probes, in chapter 6, issues confronting boards. Board members' and citizens' satisfactions and dissatisfactions with board service and practices are analyzed in chapter 7. The need for increased attention to board development for individuals and for boards is stressed in chapter 8, along with recommendations. The final chapter presentes 15 indicators of an effective board. Major findings are that citizens support the ideal of local governance of education through school boards, but not necessarily the board of their own community. Despite this approval, the public knows little about boards' functioning. States' increased visibility in education creates further confusion about responsibilities. Difficulties are forecast as student populations diversify and management becomes more complex. Local governance needs informed support from communities. Thirty-nine references are included. (CJH)

Team Leadership
Team Leadership

Author: Michal Rosenberger

Publisher: R&L Education

Published: 1998-07-28

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1461733243

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Local school boards are responsible for the two most important issues in most people's lives: their children and their money. Why do these governing bodies fail to develop into high-performance teams? This book answers this question and provides techniques for districts to solve their underlying governance problems. Discusses the complexities of group dynamics, strategies for effective team governance, leadership functions of the local board and their role in school improvement, and the complexities of school politics.