Richard Elmore – författare

"Standard-based accountability" has become a consistent buzzword emanating from the mouths of hopeful politicians-liberal and conservative-for almost twenty years. But does accountability work? The NewAccountability explores the current wave of assessment-based school accountability reforms, which combine two traditions in American education-public accountability and student testing.

"Standard-based accountability" has become a consistent buzzword emanating from the mouths of hopeful politicians-liberal and conservative-for almost twenty years. But does accountability work? The NewAccountability explores the current wave of assessment-based school accountability reforms, which combine two traditions in American education-public accountability and student testing.

Giving test results to an incoherent, badly run school doesn't automatically make it a better school. The work of turning a school around entails improving the knowledge and skills of teachers-changing their knowledge of content and how to teach it-and helping them to understand where their students are in their academic development. Low-performing schools, and the people who work in them, don't know what to do. If they did, they would be doing it already. So writes Richard Elmore in ""Unwarranted Intrusion,"" an essay critiquing the accountability mandates and high-stakes testing policies of the No Child Left Behind Act. In School Reform from the Inside Out, one of the country's leading experts on the successes and failures of American education policy tackles issues ranging from teacher development to testing to ""failing"" schools. As Elmore aptly notes, successful school reform begins ""from the inside out"" with teachers, administrators, and school staff, not with external mandates or standards. This collection of some of Elmore's most probing and influential essays is essential reading for any school leader, education reformer, policymaker, or citizen interested in the forces that promote real school change.

Managing School Districts for High Performance brings together more than twenty case studies and other readings that offer a powerful and transformative approach to advancing and sustaining the work of school improvement. At the center of this work is the concept of organizational coherence: aligning organizational design, human capital management, resource allocation, and accountability and performance improvement systems to support an overarching strategy. This central idea provides a valuable conceptual framework for current and future school leaders. The case studies presented in Managing School Districts for High Performance grow out of the Public Education Leadership Project (PELP), a unique partnership between the Harvard Business School, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a network of urban school districts. This rich array of cases explores the managerial challenges districts face as they seek to ensure rich learning opportunities and high achievement for all students across a system of schools.