From Publishers Weekly
Since the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk, readers have been deluged with proposals for school reform. This work by UCLA management school "corporate renewal" professor Ouchi takes its place among them. Ouchi bases his theory on sound principles derived from his research into a variety of successful schools. Educational management systems should be entrepreneurial rather than bureaucratic, he says. Give principals real control over their budgets, empower parents as genuine participants in school decisions, and student achievement will soar, even in communities beset by poverty and high immigration rates, two usual indicators of school failure. Any useful management book must reduce complex issues to bullets, and this one is no exception: Ouchi's arguments, encapsulated in his "Seven Keys to Success," claim to "revolutionize" schools and lead to vastly improved student academic achievement. "Revolutionary" may be too strong a word here, and in fact, some of the pedagogical practices Ouchi highlights are dubiously retrograde (e.g., third graders "reciting the days of the week, the months of the year, and the number of days in a week, month, and year"). However, Ouchi doesn't prescribe any of these rituals; he merely advocates for the empowerment of school communities to choose what's best for their particular students. Of interest to school leaders and policy makers, the book also has a section devoted to what parents and community members can do to improve not just their school but their school district, where fundamental change is essential. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Ouchi, a professor of management, studied 223 schools in nine school systems to develop a theory on how to manage schools successfully. He focuses on public and Catholic schools in the three largest school districts (New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago) and compares them with three successful school districts (Edmonton, Canada; Seattle; and Houston). Ouchi boils down the successful elements to seven factors: entrepreneurial principals, budgetary control, accountability for performance and budget, delegating authority, focus on student achievement, community of learners, and real choice for families. Ouchi devotes an entire chapter to each key to success, drawing on his observations at the successful schools and comparisons with the nation's largest school systems. He concludes with a guide for parents to evaluate their children's school and practical recommendations on how parents and educators can adopt the key elements of success to their own schools and districts. This detailed and compelling look at effective school management will appeal to parents and educators alike. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Chester E. Finn, Jr., The Education Gadfly, August 21, 2003
"[An] insightful and important piece of work that holds out real hope for urban school reform at the system level."


Book Description
Introducing a bold, persuasive new argument into the national debate over education, Dr. William Ouchi describes a revolutionary approach to creating successful public schools. This program has produced significant, lasting improvements in the school districts where it has already been implemented. Drawing on the results of a landmark study of 223 schools in six cities, a project that Ouchi supervised and that was funded in part by the National Science Foundation, Making Schools Work shows that a school's educational performance may be most directly affected by how the school is managed. Ouchi's 2001-2002 study examined innovative school systems in Edmonton (Canada), Seattle, and Houston, and compared them with the three largest traditional school systems: New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Researchers discovered that the schools that consistently performed best also had the most decentralized management systems, in which autonomous principals -- not administrators in a central office -- controlled school budgets and personnel hiring policies. They were fully responsible and fully accountable for the performance of their schools. With greater freedom and flexibility to shape their educational programs, hire specialists as needed, and generally determine the direction of their school, the best principals will act as entrepreneurs, says Ouchi. Those who do poorly are placed under the supervision of successful principals, who assume responsibility for the failing schools. An essential component of this management approach is the Weighted Student Formula, a budgetary tool whereby every student is evaluated and assessed a certain dollar value in educational services (a non-English-speaking or autistic student, or one from a low-income family, for example, would receive a higher dollar value than a middle-class student with no special needs). Families have the freedom to choose among public schools, and when schools must compete for students, good schools flourish while those that do poorly literally go out of business. Such accountability has long worked for religious and independent schools, where parents pay a premium for educational performance. Making Schools Work shows how the same approach can be adapted to public schools. The book also provides guidelines for parents on how to evaluate a school and make sure their child is getting the best education possible. Revolutionary yet practical, Making Schools Work shows that positive educational reform is within reach and, indeed, already happening in schools across the country.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This program has produced significant, lasting improvements in the school districts where it has already been implemented. Drawing on the results of a landmark study of 223 schools in six cities, a project that Ouchi supervised and that was funded in part by the National Science Foundation, Making Schools Work shows that a school's educational performance may be most directly affected by how the school is managed.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Since the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk, readers have been deluged with proposals for school reform. This work by UCLA management school "corporate renewal" professor Ouchi takes its place among them. Ouchi bases his theory on sound principles derived from his research into a variety of successful schools. Educational management systems should be entrepreneurial rather than bureaucratic, he says. Give principals real control over their budgets, empower parents as genuine participants in school decisions, and student achievement will soar, even in communities beset by poverty and high immigration rates, two usual indicators of school failure. Any useful management book must reduce complex issues to bullets, and this one is no exception: Ouchi's arguments, encapsulated in his "Seven Keys to Success," claim to "revolutionize" schools and lead to vastly improved student academic achievement. "Revolutionary" may be too strong a word here, and in fact, some of the pedagogical practices Ouchi highlights are dubiously retrograde (e.g., third graders "reciting the days of the week, the months of the year, and the number of days in a week, month, and year"). However, Ouchi doesn't prescribe any of these rituals; he merely advocates for the empowerment of school communities to choose what's best for their particular students. Of interest to school leaders and policy makers, the book also has a section devoted to what parents and community members can do to improve not just their school but their school district, where fundamental change is essential. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now (LEARN) has had a strong, albeit controversial, impact on the school reform movement in California. A founding member of that group, Ouchi (Anderson Sch. of Management, UCLA) brings both his management and reform activist perspectives to this book, comparing nine examples of centralized and decentralized school systems, reviewing standardized test scores, and conducting interviews with principals and teachers in more than 200 schools. The author's Seven Keys to Success-principal as entrepreneur, principal controls budget, school personnel accountable for student performance, delegation of authority downwards, focus on student achievement, schools as "communities of learners," and family school choice-are the result. Ouchi uses his research data to support the efficacy of his Seven Keys and wraps the book up with a how-to section for aspiring citizen reformers. A major weakness is an inexcusably light treatment of the arguments against standardized testing. Readers will come away with ideas for investigating their own school systems and plenty of advice on how to proceed in local school reform following Ouchi's particular model.-Jean Caspers, Linfield Coll. Lib., McMinnville, OR Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Making Schools Work is the most important book on education in a half century. Bill Ouchi is a meticulous researcher, a brilliant thinker and a superb writer. We simply must listen to and take his advice. — Tom Peters

Henry Cisneros