How to Turn a School Around: What Principals Can Do. - Review - book review

School Administrator, Jan, 2000 by George E. Pawlas

Anyone interested in improving the educational effectiveness of a school will find How to Turn a School Around: What Principals Can Do a valuable resource because it is based on the authors' experiences and the key findings from school change literature.

Each author is directly involved in public education, either through a leadership position in a school district (Perez, Jacquez) or as a university faculty member (Milstein, Wood).

By incorporating their firsthand experiences, the authors offer some useful strategies that apply equally well to urban and rural schools as they go about the task of improving student learning. Their collective knowledge and experiences are presented as the faculty of the fictitious Kennedy High School wrestles with developing a collective vision, providing professional development, involving stakeholders in decision making and encouraging support for lasting change.

How to Turn a School Around, jointly published by the National Association of Secondary School Principals and Corwin Press, is the latest book in the Principals Taking Action Series.

(How to Turn a School Around: What Principals Can Do, by Anna L. Valdez-Perez, Mike M. Milstein, Carolyn J. Wood and David Jacquez, Corwin Press, 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, Calif. 91320, 1999, 112 pp., $18.95 softcover)