The author builds upon a foundation which identifies courageous school leadership and the professional learning community as the center of effective school reform. The author offers six guiding principles steps for creating and sustaining a high-performing school: (1) Common mission, vision, values, and goals: (2) Systems for prevention and intervention; (3) Collaborative teaming for teaching and learning; (4) Data driven decision making and continuous improvement; (5) Active engagement from family and community; and (6) Building sustainable leadership capacity. Covering theory into practice, applications are provided that include case studies, vignettes, and techniques for addressing difficult issues. These provide valuable dual perspectives on the critical issues: how implementation looks when it's done right as well as when things go wrong."Failure Is Not an Option" is a resource book which can be used by school leaders with "practical applications to perplexing problems". After the Foreword (Michael Fullan), this book is divided into ten chapters: (1) Why Failure Is Not an Option; (2) Courageous Leadership for School Success; (3) Ten Common Routes to Failure, and How to Avoid Each; (4) Building a Professional Learning Community with Relational Trust; (5) Principle #1--Common Mission, Vision, Values, and Goals; (6) Principle #2--Ensuring Achievement for All Students: Systems for Prevention and Intervention; (7) Principle #3--Collaborative Teaming Focused on Teaching and Learning; (8) Principle #4--Using Data to Guide Decision Making and Continuous Improvement; (9) Principle #5--Gaining Active Engagement from Family and Community and (10) Principle #6--Building Sustainable Leadership Capacity (Alan M. Blankstein, with Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink). Appended are: (A) Self-Assessment; (B) Strategies for Making Time; (C) Strategies for Dealing With Resistance; (D) Running River Elementary School Mission Statement; (E) Development Process for Mission, Vision, Values, and Goals; (F) Worksheet for Developing a Student Improvement Plan; (G) Developing a System of Prevention and Intervention; (H) Pyramid of Interventions as Used in Hartford, Connecticut; (I) Faith, Hope, and Intervention (Alan Boyle); and (J) Teacher-Principal Trust Item. Also included are a bibliography and index. [This book was co published with the Hope foundation, Bloomington, IN.]