Aligning Student Support With Achievement Goals
The Secondary Principal's Guide
- Karen Seashore Louis - University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA
- Molly F. Gordon - University of Minnesota, USA
Fully integrate your school's support community and watch achievement levels and morale soar!
Many principals feel they lack the personnel necessary to raise student achievement to mandated levels. Yet, as school leaders seek to improve educational outcomes, one of the most underutilized groups remains student support professionals-the counselors, social workers, and nurses already on site.
Karen Seashore Louis and Molly F. Gordon offer a practical approach to creating a fully integrated student support community that contributes to increasing achievement levels. Incorporating research and practical strategies into a broader paradigm of leadership, they offer directives for implementing reform initiatives and rigorously assessing their effectiveness. Bridging theory and practice, this book provides:
- An examination of emerging models linking student support programs and academic achievement
- Guidelines and resources for overcoming barriers to reform
- Exercises and suggestions to help start the change process
- Case studies of principals who have successfully integrated their student support services
- An expanded comprehensive support model (CSP) that considers the multi-professional nature of student support activities
Reorganizing existing resources is the most efficient path to school reform. Rather than limiting the counselor or social worker's role, use it to form a comprehensive support program to help improve school achievement!
"This book (will)...get you thinking and ready to grapple with some of the major issues facing counseling today."
"Principals who have joined forces with their school counselor in leadership, advocacy, and systemic change are seeing the results in equity of opportunity for all students in their charge. This book is a tool to help the principal partner in support of the school counselors' efforts to act intentionally to drive data in a positive direction."
"Seashore Louis and Gordon provide a remarkably insightful and user-friendly portfolio of strategies for fully integrating the student personnel function into the quest to create more productive schools."
