It is a challenge to appropriate formulation and solution to short-term scheduling of cascaded hydropower stations with discrete operating zones and water-head effects. A mixed integer linear programming model for short-term scheduling of the cascaded hydropower generation system is established that can efficiently handle discrete operating zones and water-head effects. The basic idea is the discretization of the storage level of the reservoir while setting some relevant binary variables and constraints. The model is then solved with a CPLEX package. Numerical test results concerning a testing system with 3 reservoirs and 12 hydropower generating units show that the model presented is effective and flexible， while capable of handling many complex factors in short-term scheduling of cascaded hydropower systems.