All about Leadership: No Excuses

Sometimes I get a little too motivated for no particular reason. I'd even say I get down-right compelled at times. I've had several of these instances lately, particularly when it's come down to my reading. When I visited the library recently in order to pick up a GRE study guide, I ran across some educational leadership books, one of which was No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High Performing, High-Poverty Schools by Samuel Casey Carter.

The book told of some of the leadership techniques found at 21 well-performing, but low-income, school districts. It particularly focused on what the principals at these school districts did to foster learning and effective teachers. The schools were private, public, religious and secular.

The first chunk of the book was comprised of common tactics within these schools. It seemed one of the largest themes was getting rid of bad/resistant teachers and hand-picking teachers willing to work with the administrators, their co-workers and the parents & students. Another common theme was promoting the parent-student-teacher connection. This meant that communication and participation. Another theme was pushing reading and math above all because these to areas tend to influence all of the other areas. There were also special programs that seemed to help these school districts turn their test scores around. Some of these included direct instruction only methods.

The second and largest portion of this book was dedicated to the principals who were carrying out these plans. It basically read as a who's-who of school principals with a little about the schools mingled in.

While I was feeling strangely compelled to finish the book, the second section of the book was not nearly as beneficial as the first small chunk. If you choose to read it, skip all of the bios and instead spend your time on the latest Hunger Games book.