The Learning Leader: How to Focus School Improvement for Better Results

Have you ever blamed a student, a parent, or the school's Social Economic Status (SES) for their lack of student achievement? Have you ever felt like you were in a hopeless school environment? Are you in a school district that students achieve but a few are still left behind? Do you want every student and teacher to achieve at his or her highest potential? The Learning Leader: How to focus school improvement for better results by Douglas B. Reeves is a book that will challenge your present thoughts about what a school is today, what it can be, and empower you to change the answers to the previous questions. This 180 page book presents the reader with current educational problems, both student and organizational. For each problem, The Learning Leader provides research-based solutions to school issue. From Mr. Reeve's research he developed a leadership framework called "The Leadership for Learning" framework. This framework is the backbone of the book. The reader willing, could use the research and framework to impact student learning and organizational practice. Chapters two through four will challenge you to look at school leadership from a different perspective, provide a historical account of leadership, and then present essential leadership skills and practices that will help you meet the challenges. Chapter five through seven suggest how to implement, execute, and monitor school improvement. Chapter eight speaks in depth about the leadership framework and how to use it to assess the effectiveness of your school improvement. I highly recommend this book to school leaders and teachers who truly want to be an impact player in school-age children's lives.

The Learning Leader: How To Focus School Improvement For Better Results by Douglas B. Reeves (Director of the Center for Performance Assessment, an international organization dedicated to improving student achievement and educational equity) is an 121-page compendium of tactics and strategies appropriate for teaching and guiding students to achieve their best efforts in the classroom regardless of the curriculum or subject being studied. Addressing important issues such as the dimensions of leadership, the dilemmas of grading, transformation between learning and leading, improving a school through leadership, and so much more, The Learning Leader acts as a complete mapping of the struggles often faced by educators in new schools, positions of combined administrative and "on the line" teaching. Critically important reading, especially for those new to teaching, The Learning Leader is very strongly recommended for student teachers seeking their teaching certificates, as well as recently repositioned teachers searching for an adaptive reference for effectively guiding of their students to improved scholastic results.

The Learning Leader Douglas Reeves is no fool. He does not accept convention wisdom and openly challenges many beliefs that are taken for granted in the writings leadership. If you thought that this was another book among the thousands examining leadership, you will be wrong. This book is for the cognoscente. It is not for readers first entering the field because it analyses the analyses and beliefs. If you are looking for a different and challenging view of leadership, this book is worth the time and money.