Thinking and Acting Systemically: Improving School Districts Under Pressure
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Thinking and Acting Systemically: Improving School Districts Under Pressure
Alan J. Daly and Kara S. Finnigan, Editors
Solving the puzzle of school district turnaround to bring about system-wide—rather than school-by-school—improvement has the potential to dramatically raise education outcomes. This timely and significant book focuses on systemic approaches to improving education by targeting the school district as the unit of reform and argues for new theoretical and methodological strategies. Facing higher demands for performance and accountability, administrators and policy makers across the globe have struggled to reverse declining school outcomes, often selecting strategies with limited empirical basis. Despite ongoing calls for performance-based accountability, little remains known about the interplay among accountability, organizational improvement, and district underperformance. This volume explores and spotlights the empirical, theoretical, and methodological innovations that have focused on persistently struggling districts and provide much-needed practical information, based on high-quality research, for all who care about improving education outcomes.
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About the Editors
Alan J. Daly is Chair and Professor of the Department of Education Studies at the University of California, San Diego; ajdaly@ucsd.edu. His research focuses primarily on the role of leadership, educational policy, and organizational structures and the relationship between those elements and the educational attainment of traditionally marginalized student populations, drawing on his theoretical and methodological expertise in social network theory and analysis.
Kara S. Finnigan is Associate Professor of Education Policy in the Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester; kfinnigan@warner.rochester.edu. Her research focuses primarily on low-performing schools and high-stakes accountability, district reform, principal leadership, and school choice; blends perspectives in education, sociology, and political science; employs both qualitative and quantitative methods, including social network analysis; and focuses on urban school districts.
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