Developing and updating school improvement plans is an annual ritual for virtually all school principals and their school improvement committees. Still, large numbers of schools continue to produce disappointing outcomes. The authors believe that part of the problem is the result of plans that focus on the wrong targets and that rely on ineffective strategies for improvement. To help principals and their school improvement committees develop and implement plans with a greater likelihood of success, the authors offer a step-by-step process for school improvement planning. They go on to pinpoint specific school improvement goals, including raising reading and mathematics achievement, building robust school cultures, addressing the needs of English language learners, improving instruction, and reducing absenteeism and dropouts. For each goal, a variety of objectives and proven strategies is presented along with sample school improvement plans. The book addresses the differences in planning to turn around a low-performing school, planning to sustain improvements over time, and planning to move a good school to a great school.

This book is a reference primarily for school planners within the United States tasked with designing, implementing, and maintaining a safe school plan. Every school should have an effective, locality-specific emergency plan in place and this guide helpsyou do just that. Written by three experts with decades of experience in the school safety field, this guide takes you step-by-step through prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery, providing easy-to-use advice and checklists, as well as samples from safe-school planning documents currently in use.

Security expert Kenneth S. Trump outlines school security issues and provides nuts-and-bolts strategies for preventing violence and preparing for crises. Includes author's companion website.

The School Portfolio Toolkit is a book that includes over 300 tools, strategies, templates, and examples for use in building school portfolios and for planning, implementing, and evaluating continuous school improvement. The Toolkit was written to support school personnel with the mechanics of putting together a school portfolio, as well as to offer processes and strategies to move whole school staffs into and through continuous improvement. The tools in the Toolkit will help staffs create, implement, and maintain school portfolios and begin the journey of continuous improvement. Each chapter deals with one topic related to the school portfolio and comprehensive school improvement, with related documents and tools. The School Portfolio Toolkit book provides templates, tools, examples, and strategies that will help you analyze your school's data, create a vision that is truly shared by the school staff, build a continuous school improvement plan to implement the school vision, formulate a leadership structure to implement the vision, involve parents, community, and business in implementing the vision, embed up to forty different powerful professional development designs into your school plan, evaluate your continuous school improvement work, and create a School Portfolio that will organize and serve as a framework for the continuation of this work

This work sets out the broad guidelines for effective strategic planning. It investigates key features necessary for success and provides suggestions for the development of a strategic plan that is relevant for the individual school.

Actions to increase effectiveness of schools in a rapidly changing world Schools, in order to be nimble and stay relevant and impactful, need to abandon the rigid structures designed for less dynamic times. The NEW School Rules expands cutting-edge organizational design and modern management techniques into an operating system for empowering schools with the same agility and responsiveness so vital in the business world. 6 simple rules create a unified vision of responsiveness among educators Real life case studies illustrate responsive techniques implemented in a variety of educational demographics 15 experiments guide school and district leaders toward increased responsiveness in their faculty and staff

What is school district master planning? This book explains how this planning is done, using a proven process, not theories. The process helps you avoid cost overruns, public outrage, repeated redistricting, and classrooms built in wrong places that all represent poor planning. Planning tools, steps and process check lists are discussed in rich detail, using actual case studies and the planning triangle of programs, demographics and facilities. Process roles are explained for district staff, consultants,and the public at each step. Steps are clearly explained for acquiring, analyzing, and applying critical data to drive planning to redistrict, build, close, renovate or expand schools. Steps are carefully explained for developing the comprehensive masterplan and getting it implemented on time and within budget. This book pulls no punches as to what usually goes wrong and why, along with what must be done, step by step, to avoid such mistakes. It is a guide to developing a district master plan that will work out for the long term and promote public support for public education.