a school-based professional community.
Lew Smith (2001) tells of a Fordham University study of schools that make significant improvements. The researchers noted that these schools had newly-assigned experienced principals who provided strong leadership that helped create internal dissonance combined with outside pressure. These leaders also initiated internal and external collaborative rela- tionships, had a commitment to school-based professional development with a sharp focus on how well students were learning, and shifted from top-down management to teachers' making decisions about curriculum and teaching methods. Smith closes his essay with the question, "Can we muster the will to make change happen?" (p. 33), a subject I will address in Part V.
Tom Guskey (2000) argues that principals must help teachers make better use of assess- ment data, particularly that data that is produced in their own classrooms. He says that principals should emphasize the use of classroom assessments as learning tools that are part of the instructional process, regularly review classroom assessment results with teachers to identify potential instructional problems, and provide opportunities for teachers to plan collaboratively, examine their students' assessment results and work samples to identify areas of difficulty, and develop shared strategies for improvement.