Good elementary, middle, and high schools share several common characteristics, the most important of which is the quality of leadership. The principal of a good school is a person who leads rather than manages. S/he is a person of vision who keeps up to date with regard to innovative ideas that will improve teaching and learning. This person does not conduct business as usual nor does s/he respond to educational fads. Instead, s/he prioritizes needs and problems and progressively introduces new and more effective ways of doing things. S/he does this through collaboration with all constituencies including higher administrators, school board members, teachers, school staff members, parents, and students. This principal is interested in balancing change with stability. Such a person needs very little direction and control by central administration because s/he can be trusted.

Good schools also reflect shared decision-making through teacher empowerment. Teachers are trusted to work together to examine curriculum and school policies and to make recommendations that will benefit the majority of students. Teachers work much harder when they have a say in what affects them because there is more ownership in the process.

Good schools do not arbitrarily assign students to grade levels by age or on the basis of entrance tests. Nor do they place students in classes by ability, disability, or achievement levels. Good schools get ready for children rather than have children get ready for them. Such schools are inclusive. Good schools project a sense of community rather than a sense of caste. The people in them celebrate individual, cultural, racial, and ethnic, and religious differences not only of people within our own country but also those of other countries. They also teach about how important our environment and planet are and how we are all interdependent members of the human family. In many ways good schools resemble the traditional one-room schoolhouse.

Good schools have high levels of parental involvement and provide for ongoing parenting education from the time a child enters school until s/he leaves it. Good schools have personnel who believe that parents are indispensable to the rearing of healthy and well-adjusted children. They also believe that parents want and need current information on child development so that they can undertake the process of parenting in an informed manner.

Good schools rely on demonstrated student accomplishments to determine their effectiveness rather than standardized test results or letter grades. The students have pride in what they produce and are eager to have their work exhibited for all to see. These students collect their individual and group projects over the years as records of their achievements. Good schools are places where students learn to work together cooperatively rather than competitively. Their teachers model collaboration through interdisciplinary and team teaching.

Good schools have the philosophy that good education is crafted and not mass-produced. This is why good schools keep class size small in the early grades when children are still in the transition between play and work and are developing skills that are new and difficult for them. Class size is also kept limited during junior high school because sensitive, awkward, and self-conscious teenagers require personal attention, patience, and acceptance. Because good schools give children a good beginning and a good end, they have low dropout rates.

Good schools are cheery places where students, faculty, staff, and visitors feel welcome. The hallways and rooms are decorated with the work of all students. Mutual respect, courtesy, and cooperation abound in these schools. These are schools where both the teachers and the children like to remain in the building after school hours, and take work home. These schools are the only ones that could justify having longer school days and a longer school year because both the children and teachers want to be in them. Good schools entice; they don't coerce.

Good schools operate on the assumption that the self-esteem and self-worth of everyone is important from preschoolers up to highschoolers. This even includes teachers and parents because they too need to feel worthy. The teachers in these schools understand that motivation, discipline, moral development, and productivity are strongly associated with self-esteem.

When schools have all these characteristics and more, they become excellent schools which, in turn, produce life-long learners who will increase the health and well-being of our society. Such schools produce excellence more by design than by decree. Excellent schools will give us our first real opportunity to reverse the alarming statistics and to provide a model of education that will be emulated throughout the world.