Making Schools Smarter: Leading with Evidence - Paperback

by Kenneth Leithwood (Author), Robert Aitken (Author), Doris Jantzi (Author)

Proven tools for data-driven school improvement!

From strategic planning and accountability to restructuring goals, school leaders face a myriad of organizational tasks, each one vying for immediate action. Where to begin and where best to allocate resources become critical questions as the issue of organization becomes more prevalent. The third edition of a powerful bestseller, Making Schools Smarter provides the refined and updated tools to create a workable model for reshaping today′s school districts for positive outcomes.

This practical guide addresses and helps resolve significant issues in district and school leadership, including:

• Determining a comprehensive and real image of future schools and districts as professional learning communities
• Highlighting critical changes for achieving missions and goals
• Providing school leaders with much-needed tools to demonstrate and improve accountability

With No Child Left Behind and increased accountability as powerful reminders of what′s at stake, Making Schools Smarter gets to the heart of the argument that smarter schools mean enhanced learning for all.

Back Jacket

Leithwood and Aitken have created a handbook for developing a system of collaborative assessment, strategic planning, and accountability in schools and districts. This book supplies not only the instruments to obtain data on how well schools and districts are achieving their purposes but also a means by which to establish achievable standards of expectation. The authors' research included studies of Canadian and American schools and involved the participation of district personnel, teachers, students, parents, and board members. The authors used a real school to help them develop their model of an "ideal school" for the year 2000. Using this experimental model as a basis, they describe specific features to be found in an ideal school and present ways to measure comparable features of existing schools and districts. They provide guidelines for using data generated in these assessments to help move schools toward the ideal. Making Schools Smarter presents a comprehensive process by which a district or a school can learn about its entire operation in order to initiate change based on solid data. Because the authors' ideal school is a "learning organization", movement toward the ideal helps schools "get smarter" and enhance their collective capacities to serve students better. This is an excellent resource for administrators and superintendents, as well as for students and teachers of educational leadership and school restructuring.

Author Biography

Dr. Leithwood is Emeritus Professor at OISE/University of Toronto. His research and writing is about school leadership, educational policy and organizational change. He has published extensively on these topics. For example, he is the senior editor of both the first and second International Handbooks on Educational Leadership and Administration (Kluwer Publishers, 1996, 2003). His most recent books include How School Leaders Contribute to Student Success (2017, Springer), Linking Leadership to Student Learning (2012, Jossey Bass), Leading School Turnaround (2010, Jossey Bass), Distributed leadership: The state of the evidence (2009, Routledge), Leading with Teachers' Emotions in Mind (2008, Corwin), Making Schools Smarter (Corwin, 3^rd edition, 2006) and Teaching for Deep Understanding (Corwin, 2006). Among his awards, Professor Leithwood is the inaugural recipient of the University of Toronto's Impact on Public Policy award, AERA (Division A) 2011 Outstanding Leadership Researcher Award, the 2012 Roald F. Campbell Lifetime Achievement Award from the University Council for Educational Administration and the Ontario Principal Councils' Outstanding Contributions to Education Award for 2016. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. With colleagues, he has completed one of the largest studies of its kind about how state, district and school-level leadership influences student learning.