The Future of Schools will help changemakers move toward better functioning school systems using reliable, participative, and practical methods. The author describes an orderly sequence of activities that are intertwined with simple explanations. The principles and methods on which the book is based, follow from over fifty years of research ensuring that the processes yield reliable results. Each chapter discusses a range of variations and examples with both successful applications and potential pitfalls with simple ways of avoiding them. These variations and examples help the school district and its community to choose the best path through the planning and design processes for their unique people and circumstances. All of the methods and processes described are totally participative so that the schools and communities who use them can develop ownership of the processes and their outcomes. Not only does the school district change for the better, the community itself becomes more socially cohesive through working together for a common purpose.

"Since the 1970s, Emery has spent much of her career developing the field of open systems theory and its two major methods: the Search Conference and the Participative Design Workshop. In this text for school leaders, she describes how these principles and methods can be used to redesign entire school systems to improve educational outcomes." - Reference and Research Book News