How to improve our schools

William Ouchi, the well-known management theorist and consultant, just put out Making Schools Work. His more substantive recommendations include the following:

1. The school principal is an entrepreneur and fully in charge.

2. The school, not a central office, controls its own budget.

3. Everyone is accountable for student performance and for budgets.

4. Families have school choice.

Plus all the usual rhetoric of caring about learning.

Ouchi and co-author Lydia Segal claims that these principle are found in the (successful) public school districts of Edmonton, Seattle, and Houston, plus they are used by Catholic schools in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, again successfully. There is some fluff in this book, but it also offers a no-nonsense account of some practical value.