'This essential guide for educational leaders skillfully blends scholarship with practice and integrates theory with real-world examples. Through case studies, the authors show the reader how to develop, support, and improve a collaborative, inquiry-action process for improving teaching and learning. If we are going to have schools that successfully educate all students to high standards, then we need principals who translate the lessons of this book into practice' - Andrew Lachman, Executive Director, Connecticut Center for School Change Enhance learning with a collaborative, inquiry-based system of leadership! With sociopolitical forces prompting calls for school improvement, school leaders look for ways to expand their expertise in instructional leadership and strengthen their role in shaping classroom practice. Leading With Inquiry and Action presents a systematic, ongoing process for collecting information, making decisions, and taking action to improve instruction and raise student achievement. The authors illustrate this collaborative inquiry-action cycle with a running vignette of an experienced principal and offer questions and exercises to guide individual reflection and group discussion. Thoroughly grounded in research, this book helps administrators: - Identify areas for instructional improvement - Determine community-supported solutions and build stakeholder commitment - Articulate an action plan based on multiple data sources - Take steps that support teacher development - Systematically evaluate programme results Educational improvement requires informed leadership. This practical guide provides an efficient and functional framework for transforming current or aspiring principals into inquiry-minded, action-oriented instructional leaders.

A comprehensive, practical guide to effective use of data for school improvement! This hands-on guidebook helps head teachers make meaningful data-based instructional decisions with confidence. In layman's terms, the authors explain the essential statistical and assessment information that administrators need to know what types of data to look at, how to analyze the information, and how to use what they've learned from the data to make critical choices for their schools. As part of the Leadership for Learning Series, this resource: Provides school-level leaders with support in developing and sustaining a schoolwide capacity for continuous improvement Links data-based decision making with issues of accountability, improved learning, and shared mission and goals Includes a glossary, school improvement template, sample forms, and data tools

`A major contribution. The administrative accompaniment to the school restructuring and teacher empowerment movement' - Robert L Crowson, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL In this newly updated edition, Sharon Rallis and Ellen Goldring describes and illustrates good school leadership practices, drawing on the authors' case studies and surveys, and the research of others.