Cultural Leadership: The Culture of Excellence in Education

This essential resource positively addresses the practical approaches needed to lay the foundation upon which Americans will work together to build world class schools by providing the needed blueprints of reform. This revolutionary book is the most comprehensive account available of the latest, most successful approaches to leadership, planning, and educational reform. Cultural The Culture of Excellence in Education shares the ideas, insights, and experiences of close to 70 researchers, 40 superintendents, 80 principals, 30 school board members, and 60 teachers. They tell how to contribute to the success of education and show clearly how to develop a culture that allows, encourages, and insists that education staffs continually improve their schools. Numerous examples illustrate each topic in practice, and quotes from theorists on the practice and from practitioners on how they implemented the practice document examples from some of the latest and most prominent programs in America. Concepts like world class schools, excellence, participation, site-based management, empowerment, America 2000, visionary leadership, reform and restructuring, school/business cooperation, innovation, planning, staff development, Total Quality Management, vertical approaches, learning organizations, discipline, and many other topics are placed in a context using real world experience and combinations of original research and theory. Presenting findings from one of the largest studies of excellence from an administrative perspective completed in the U.S., the Danforth Foundation's School Administrators Fellowship Program, this volume provides a focus on visionary and cultural leadership that prepares educational administrators to lead the needed reform movement in education. The book is based on careful observation of successful experiences, in a large number of districts, which persuasively supports the extensive body of theory and research the authors have developed. A "must read" for every educational leader practicing education today, this is one of those rare books that makes new and significant discoveries about leadership in general, even though the original research is set in education. In the hands of effective policy makers and educators, it has the potential to significantly improve American education.