RE-ENGINEERING SCHOOLS
How can schools be re-engineered to plan, implement, and sustain the capacity to become high-performing learning communities?
Parents, the legislature, and the public keep asking our schools to provide more: more and better curriculum and instruction, more accountability, more technology, more parent involvement, and more student and family support services.
Northwest schools are caught in a dilemma. They must respond to the learning needs of an increasingly diverse and needy student population, while at the same time aligning their instructional programs to a set of performance standards that, in effect, encourage uniformity in curriculum materials and instructional practices.
Re-engineering is the fundamental building block for school reform. Through re-engineering, schools, districts, and their communities implement the structures, pro- cesses, programs, and training necessary to renew themselves based on a shared vision, changing context, student population, proven successful practices, and community expectations and requirements. The process of implementing educational reform is as important as the reform itself.
Restructuring initiatives, by definition, introduce substantial departures from conventional practice. Structural change involves organizing schools for learning by utilizing new roles and relationships, scheduling time differently, and reallocating resources.
More than 30 years of educational research has identified school and classroom-level practices that foster superior student performance. Re-engineering must capitalize on this body of knowledge and use the best practices known for motivating and preparing students to learn, engaging them actively, imparting learning content and strategies, providing incentives and recognition, monitoring quality of instruction and learning, remediating deficits, and providing extra support for slower, lower-ability, and ESL learners.
Effective leadership on the part of the school principal is an essential requirement for school success. Though leadership styles will always differ, researchers have identified some core principal behaviors that link to positive student achievement and behavior. Furthermore, districts must establish improvement as a top priority and implement successful school-based management, providing clear standards, benchmarks, and assessments.
