The Secret of Tsl: The Revolutionary Discovery That Raises School Performance

By William G. Ouchi

Book Overview

From the author of the acclaimed and influential Making Schools Work comes Untitled on Education, a guide to the revolutionary reforms that are changing public education in some of the nation's biggest cities.

- Builds on the author's growing reputation. Making Schools Work influenced New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein's effort to radically decentralize the nation's largest school system. Seven of the ten largest school districts in the u.S. have now implemented the decentralization championed in that book.

- Based on a groundbreaking study by the author. Ouchi studied 442 schools in Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York City, Oakland, St. Paul, San Francisco, and Seattle that have embraced school decentralization. He shows how decentralization has improved school performance as measured by standardized tests.

- Explains the key to school success. Principals must be given control of their budgets and other authority. When they are empowered, they allocate funds to increase the number of teachers and lower the Total Student Load (TSL) per teacher. TSL is the key factor in school performance. Principals with autonomy invariably lower their school's TSL.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1439121591
• ISBN13: 9781439121597
• Release Date: March 2013
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Finally!!! A blueprint for educational reform that is understandable and achieveble.

Professor Ouchi was just on BookTV and did a wonderful job explaining the results of his decade-long research. In essence, William Ouchi's data shows that smaller schools with small student loads produce higher achieving students. This means that low teacher-student ratio is the key to educational sucess. He explained that there are 16,000 school districts in this country; and 15,990 use centralized power to run the schools while 10 use decentralized power so that principals and teachers control 90% of the school budget. The best schools have one principal, one secretary, one business manager, one custodian, and all the rest of the adults in the building are teachers. Creating autonomous schools with the power to allocate their resources where the needs are the greatest is his thesis. If this comes to pass, teaching in America will be the preferred professional choice for all great thinkers who like children and love learning. Thank you Dr. Ouchi for using your position, your power, your intellect, and your steadfast resolve to help America create and sustain a renaissance of educational achievement.