Staff and students at an Illinois high school recently decided to challenge all previously held assumptions about all school operations. For this group, school was best viewed as culture (not bureaucracy) dependent on collaboration, shared leadership, and flat organizational structure. Group identified communication styles matching their approach,…

Educators considering the adoption of school-based management are advised to reflect carefully before jumping on the shared decision-making bandwagon. To aid this reflection, a checklist with 29 pertinent questions is provided. If school leaders proceed without realistic expectations or knowledge about the organizational changes involved, the…

To discover who is in charge and ascertain principals' perceptions of their own decision-making autonomy, a short questionnaire was sent to a random sample of 2,559 elementary and secondary school principals in the 11 southeastern states. Respondents believed they have enough autonomy over instructional personnel, subject matter, and instructional…

The NASSP Taking the Initiative program was created to help principals and school leadership teams develop essential skills, such as the ability to give meaningful feedback, think creatively, function as a team member, gather resources, deal with resistance to change, and launch an initiative. This article describes the program's success in a…

A former National Teacher of the Year discusses leadership's joys and difficulties. Teacher leaders must speak up about conditions limiting their effectiveness and policies restraining their positive momentum. This means engaging in continuous professional development and comporting themselves as professional educators who know what is best for…

The philosophy of education is presented in seven areas as an everyday guide to action and decision-making. (Author/MLF)

Drawing on literature concerning department chairs' role as either administrators (line personnel) or teachers (staff personnel), this essay concludes that both roles are important and that well-developed human relations skills and managerial skills are equally necessary. (MJL)

Effective education depends on cooperative efforts at all levels of schooling and a bold insistence on progressive organizational power structures. (JW)

I/D/E/A's Individually Guided Program pulls together promising practices and new concepts to make a school "everything it could be", claims the author of this article. He describes the elements of this program and how a school can consider adopting it. (Editor)

Making several changes in concert was one reason, this writer maintains, why an Ohio middle school made forward strides in providing successful innovative programs for its emerging adolescents. (Editor)

The author expresses his concern about the effectiveness of teacher negotiations. He asks many basic questions about the process, and urges administrators to key roles in decision making. (Editor)

Reviews the principal's role in instructional accountability, management systems, communications, remedial programs, teacher inservice programs, teacher recruitment, and testing. (Author/WD)

Meaningful and lasting school improvement can only occur in an appropriate climate and must be characterized by commitment, solid research about collaborative working styles and outcome-based education, and stable leadership. Leaders in the school improvement process should be constantly prepared to deal with the unexpected. Includes three…

The necessary conditions for successful shared decision making include school board and administrative affirmation, tolerance for diversity, teacher and administrator training, and collegial support. Involving teachers in decision making requires four implementation phases: readiness, experimentation, refinement through trial and error, and…

Based on 2 years' experience with 30 principals learning and applying a school-based, school-defined improvement procedure, this article discusses 3 sources of resistance to shared decision making presented in a principals' center environment: certain principals' personality characteristics, teaching staff composition in certain schools, and…