Excerpt from the Book
(For printable version, click [here].)The principalship is notably one of the most stressful jobs in the workforce. Widespread criticism from the media, national headlines about random acts of violence, the push for the use of public funds for school vouchers, a shortage of qualified teachers, and a widening gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots" compound the problems faced by educators on every front. How then does one promote success where it seems that a self-fulfilling prophecy exists concerning high-poverty school populations and a decrease in parental involvement? It is not easy, but this book shows how it has been done.
As principal of a high-performing school located in an area characterized as low economic in a large urban school district, there were several factors that were used for creating a culture to breed great expectations and success. As a result of our gains, we were featured in the book by Samuel Casey Carter entitled No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools published by The Heritage Foundation. After years of receiving a multitude of calls from principals, teachers, and administrators who wanted to know more about what was done that caused us to become successful, I decided to assemble some of the organizational activities and strategies that were used. The result is this practical handbook designed to (1) share some of the strategies that we feel resulted in the development of effective teachers and successful students attaining high achievement test scores (2) provide principals with ideas to help lead their schools to better success (3) provide teachers with documented effective instructional expectations (4) provide parents, community, business and industry with a description of practices to look for in a well-run school, and (5) identify to business and community groups what they can do to help build stronger schools. If the ideas contained within result in just one person incorporating them and a school making gains, then the efforts in writing this book will have been worthwhile.
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