 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | A REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATIONAL REFORM IS SWEEPING URBAN SCHOOL SYSTEMS ACROSS THE COUNTRY AND RAISING STUDENT PERFORMANCE DRAMATICALLY. HERE IS THE STORY BEHIND THIS REVOLUTION IN EDUCATION.
In his previous book, Making Schools Work, William G. Ouchi reported on school decentralization, aided by a grant from the National Science Foundation. He found that when principals were given autonomy over their schools, the performance of those schools improved measurably. Picking up where that book left off, The Secret of TSL explains what it is that autonomous principals do to improve their schools. Drawing on the author's study of 442 schools in eight urban school districts, The Secret of TSL demonstrates that there is a direct correlation between how much control a principal has over his or her budget and how much that school's student performance rises. School organization reform lone produces a more potent improvement in student performance than any other single factor. When principals control their budgets, they tailor their expenses to fit their schools, and they invariably hire more teachers. With fewer students to teach, teachers are able to develop a stronger and more personal relationship with their students. TSL, or Total Student Load -- that is, the number of papers a teacher must grade and the number of students he or she must get to know each term -- declines, and student performance, as measured by federally mandated tests, improves, often substantially. TSL is the key to improved student performance. The school districts that Ouchi studied for this book include Boston, New York, Chicago, St. Paul, Houston, San Francisco, Oakland, and Seattle. The Secret of TSL analyzes school performance in each of these cities and shows why the districts that wholeheartedly embraced organizational reform have outperformed those that took more tentative steps. This is a book that every school board member, every principal, and every parent leader must read. |
Average Customer Rating:   The Secret of TSL This is a good book. It summarizes efforts which are "no brainers" to anyone who has really managed change and been successful in forming and leading teams to world-class success. The data is helpful although the lessons of Edmonton which are the most powerful because they have been so enduring have been pretty well known for a long time.
One area I totally disagree with Ouchi (who is a professor not a manager) on is his assertion that it takes a good educator to be a good education leader. This is simply not true. He defeats his own premise with his example of Klein in the NYC system. In fact it is very difficult to transform brainwashed education leaders into effective managers. Excellence in management requires a very high level of cognitive ability coupled with a high level of objectivity [intellectual honesty], both areas that research shows are not at high levels among education leaders. Levine in his Educating School Leaders points out that the GRE scores of those entering the leadership curricula in ed schools is very low. You can't take a dim bulb and get a shining light for leadership. What is required to be a great leader is someone who has the knowledge and skills in human psychology, motivation, behavior prediction and modification et al and most importantly has the "clinical" experience under tutelage of a coach or excellent role models to make it a natural and consistently practiced part of their management technique. As Mintzberg points out in his Manager's Not MBAs, this clinical requirement is not met by management schools and certainly not by the education schools. The reality is that there are darned few positive role models for management in education which explains the preservation of the status quo in spite of spending enormous amounts of money on pseudo reform efforts.
The Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission Final Report of 11/05 states it well, pointing out that in spite of billions having been spent on improvement initiatives, the gap is demonstrably worse than it was a third of a century ago when Robert Kennedy called it a stain on our national honor.
If education leaders were truly competent, the problem would have been solved decades ago but as too many superintendents told me in my book writing research when I questioned them about how the kids could be so poorly served, "You don't understand. Education is run to benefit the adults who work here, not the kids." Finally!!! A blueprint for educational reform that is understandable and achieveble. Professor Ouchi was just on BookTV and did a wonderful job explaining the results of his decade-long research. In essence, William Ouchi's data shows that smaller schools with small student loads produce higher achieving students. This means that low teacher-student ratio is the key to educational sucess. He explained that there are 16,000 school districts in this country; and 15,990 use centralized power to run the schools while 10 use decentralized power so that principals and teachers control 90% of the school budget. The best schools have one principal, one secretary, one business manager, one custodian, and all the rest of the adults in the building are teachers. Creating autonomous schools with the power to allocate their resources where the needs are the greatest is his thesis. If this comes to pass, teaching in America will be the preferred professional choice for all great thinkers who like children and love learning. Thank you Dr. Ouchi for using your position, your power, your intellect, and your steadfast resolve to help America create and sustain a renaissance of educational achievement. |  |
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