The NEW School Rules:6 Vital Practices for Thriving and Responsive Schools

Kim, who specializes in education technology, school design, and personalized learning, and Gonzales-Black, a former teacher who specializes in organizational design and change initiatives in education, retail, and technology, identify six practices to help change how schools work and are organized. They argue that static and rigid organizational systems no longer work, pointing to shifts in the business world and proposing the need for educational organizations that are designed for responsiveness to the changing conditions around them, evolution, and continuous learning. They describe how these schools respond to new information, the needs and talents of staff, teachers, students, and the community, and unforeseen challenges and opportunities through an evolving approach to planning and structure, autonomy for teams and team members, and approaches to sharing and receiving information and feedback that build trust and engagement and allow for effective decision making. They outline responsive practices in six areas of school organizations--planning, teaming, managing roles, decision making, sharing information, and the importance of a learning culture--each with one rule and a set of principles and practices that can be adapted to school organizations of different scales, communities, and cultures. Each chapter outlines what isn’t working in schools and why change is needed; alternate, responsive principles; a case study; lessons that break the rules down into actionable concepts; experiments to try; and stories from businesses that have used aspects of responsiveness. Annotation ©2018 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)