Sustaining Change in Schools: How to Overcome Differences and Focus on Quality

Our democracy depends on strong public schools that produce successful lifelong learners. And strong public schools depend on strong partnerships between schools and communities. This guide describes how these partnerships can be created and sustained from the classroom to the boardroom by following these five steps:

1. Understand and align the personality of your school district with the overall personality of your community.
2. Ask quality questions that promote a commitment to a common purpose.
3. Make quality a habit by creating organizational structures that celebrate differences within acceptable community standards.
4. Focus on success as a means of renewing schools from within rather than imposing solutions from the outside.
5. Manage tasks so that your stakeholders learn to appreciate different personalities as a necessary part of your problem solving process.

Central office administrators, school board members, principals, and teacher leaders will find these five practical steps useful in creating and sustaining quality schools.

Currently the superintendent of a school district in Colorado, Johnson is a 35-year veteran of education and has written and conducted numerous workshops about the use of temperament as a leadership tool in large organizations. He outlines a change process that evolved over a 25-year period across four school districts and three states, which was used by his school district to move their community closer to quality schools. The text describes the five- step process, using practical examples and presenting practical tools for promoting and sustaining quality schools over time and across groups and communities. For central office administrators, school board members, principals, and teacher leaders. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR