A Guide to Renewing Your School Lessons from the League of Professional Schools

Sponsored by the League of Professional Schools "Understanding school reform is a daunting task. A Guide to Renewing Your School goes a long way in communicating essential information about reform in a clear-cut manner." --Childhood Education In Renewing America's Schools, Carl D. Glickman--founder of the League of Professional Schools--made the case for basing school improvement efforts on democratic values and principles. He proposed a three-part framework for reform that would enable schools and communities to create successful change in their schools and discussed how states and districts could support their efforts. In this companion volume, the authors provide detailed instructions on how Glickman's framework can be implemented at the school level. A Guide to Renewing Your School is based on years of practical experience, numerous case examples, and empirical studies from the League of Professional Schools, a reform network based in Georgia. This hands-on book guides school practitioners through the essential steps of a reform process: (1) designing a covenant to guide teaching and learning, (2) creating a shared governance process to promote democratic leadership and decision making, and (3) implementing action research to assess the reform process. The authors also address the challenges of change, such as how to create a school climate that will foster implementation of the framework and how to determine the type of facilitation and staff development needed to sustain this work. Filled with sample covenants, charters, mission statements, worksheets, forms, and other tools, A Guide to Renewing Your School presents not only a coherent framework, but useful strategies for promoting school-wide renewal and improvement.

LEW ALLEN, Maude Glanton, Frances Hensley, Martha Livingston, and Dale Rogers are codirectors of the League of Professional Schools, which is part of the College Education at The University of Georgia.