Summary
Contents
Subject index
The book will be an analog to the volume Corwin published in 2011, Essential Lessons for School Leaders. Specifically, there will be between 100 and 125 lessons, each of which will be highlighted on a separate page. For example: prevention trumps remediationcontext always matters. School improvement is about layering small gains. Most of these will be framed as laws, as was the case in the Lessons for Leaders volume. One difference is that this book will begin with a 13-page fable, ‘The Mournful Tale of the Death of Mr. School Improvement,’ in which many of these laws fail to play out. Murphy may also generate a closing fable where lessons are seen not in breach but in practice.
Essential Lessons
Essential Lessons
The Law of the Uninvited Guest
At its best, school improvement will provide a school with real benefits. A variety of good things will walk in the front door. But goal achievement always means that there is the potential for bad things to walk in the back door as well. If these unintended consequences can be anticipated, they can either be barred from entry or defanged. Absent such work, they can cause a good deal of mischief. One has to look no further than the most visible reforms of the last decades—standards and accountability—to see that most of the profession ignored this lesson. We not only failed to lock the back door but left it open as well. In came a singular ...
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