Navigating Comprehensive School Change A Guide for the Perplexed

This book, an accessible resource for busy practitioners, is a unique hybrid of two genres. As a "tourist guide", it shows you: - how to prepare for the journey - what to pay attention to upon arrival - how to deal with the unexpected. As a "consumer report", it helps you: - identify some of the best tools and sources about change - access useful information about the change process - find information about the strengths and challenges of various strategies. Thorough and comprehensive, it offers essential information about how to: - form leadership teams - identify high stakes problems - build commitment - create a school-wide vision and establish school-wide goals - handle setbacks - maintain the vision and sustain change. - evaluate and assess comprehensive school change. Also included is a section called "Ports of Call" which provides sources of information to help you implement comprehensive school reform at your site. From Michael Fullan's Foreword . . ."Chenoweth and Everhart take the big concepts of change and work them through operationally at the level of day-to-day practice. We learn how to form leadership teams, the importance of focusing on capacity-building and reculturing, how to build commitment while dealing with dissatisfaction, problem-solving during implementation, how to keep going, and how to go beyond standardized testing in developing a range of alternative assessment strategies.