Culture Re-Boot

Your start-up menu for super-charged culture change

There′s an invisible thread woven through your school that defines everything from dress codes to student success. It′s your school culture, and reshaping it will yield highly visible improvements for teachers and students. Leslie Kaplan and William Owings guide you in improving leadership, teaching, learning, confidence, and trust throughout your school.

Culture Re-Boot reframes school culture to include organizational learning, relational trust, accountability, program improvement, and teacher effectiveness while showing you how to:

• Be the transformational leader your school needs to reinvigorate your school culture
• Establish a student-centered learning culture focused on student outcomes
• Engage teachers in culture-focused leadership teams that support teacher and student learning
• Get parents and community on-board to collaborate for student achievement
• Connect professional development and school culture for maximum results

Packed with hands-on culture re-boot activities to help school leaders and faculty revitalize their school′s values and practices, this practical handbook for school improvement will energize your school′s culture and build the capacity to help all students succeed.

"Ever since Seymour Sarason wrote his seminal book on The Culture of Schools and the Problem of Change, we have known that ′culture′ is at the heart of all organizational performance. But reformers keep forgetting this key fact. Kaplan and Owings′ book changes all that. Now in one place you can find everything you need to know to ′re-boot′ you own school′s culture."
—Michael Fullan, Author of Motion Leadership

"As a principal focused on student achievement and school climate, I am excited to begin using these strategies and discussions to drive our conversations to a deeper and more meaningful level. The combination of school culture, professional learning community, and teacher/community leadership provides a compelling and unique exploration of real methods to sustain student achievement and school improvement."
—William Richard Hall, Jr., Principal
R. C. Longan Elementary School, Henrico, VA

Leslie S. Kaplan, Ed.D. is a retired school administrator in Newport News, VA and is currently a full-time education writer. She has provided middle and high school instructional and school improvement leadership as an assistant principal for instruction as well as central office leadership as a director of program development. Before becoming a school administrator, she worked as a middle and high school counselor, and these insights continue to infuse her leadership behaviors. Her professional interests focus on teacher quality, principal quality, and school finance and their relationship to school improvement and increasing student achievement. She has co-authored several books and monographs with William Owings including American Public School Finance (2nd edition); Educational Foundations (2nd edition); Leadership and Organizational Behavior in Education: Theory into Practice; The Effective Schools Movement: History, Analysis, and Application; Teacher Quality, Teaching Quality, and School Improvement; Best Practices, Best Thinking, and Emerging Issue in School Leadership; and Enhancing Teacher and Teaching Quality. Kaplan’s scholarly publications, co-authored with Owings’, appear in numerous peer-reviewed professional journals. Kaplan is co-editor of the Journal for Effective Schools, and also serves on the NASSP Bulletin Editorial Board. She is a past president of the Virginia Counselors’ Association and the Virginia Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and presently sits on the board of Voices for Virginia’s Children. http://www.ejbe.org/EJBE2012Vol05No10p45OWINGS-KAPLAN-PIRIM.pdf http://issuu.com/odujes/docs/journal_for_effective_schools/1?mode=a_p http://www.effectiveschoolsjournal.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27&Itemid=72 http://www.ejbe.org/EJBE-2012-Nov-5-10.htm William A. Owings, Ed.D. is currently a professor of educational leadership at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. Owings has worked as a public school teacher, an elementary and high school principal, assistant superintendent, and superintendent of schools. His professional interests are in school finance, principal quality, and teacher quality as they relate to school improvement and student achievement. In addition, his scholarly publications co-authored with Leslie Kaplan include articles in National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) Bulletin, Journal of School Leadership, Journal of Education Finance, Journal of Effective Schools, Phi Delta Kappan, and the Teachers College Record. Owings has served on the state and international board of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), is currently the editor of the Journal for Effective Schools, and is on the Journal of Education Finance Editorial Advisory Board. He is a frequent presenter at state and national conferences and a consultant on educational leadership, school finance, and instructional improvement. Owings and Kaplan share the 2008 Virginia Educational Research Association Charles Edgar Clear Research Award for Consistent and Substantial Contributions to Educational Research and Scholarship. http://www.ejbe.org/EJBE2012Vol05No10p45OWINGS-KAPLAN-PIRIM.pdf http://issuu.com/odujes/docs/journal_for_effective_schools/1?mode=a_p http://www.effectiveschoolsjournal.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27&Itemid=72 http://www.ejbe.org/EJBE-2012-Nov-5-10.htm