The heart and soul of any successful organization is outstanding leadership. In education, school divisions are always striving to increase school achievement and as such hold school leaders accountable for this growth. Leaders require explicit leadership skills. This article shares a proposal in which school leaders participate in direct literacy…

The Ashland University's superintendent licensure program had not been revised and updated for the last several years. With all of the educational reforms in the first part of this new millennium, there was a pressing need to redefine and develop the overall program and courses embedded in it. An action plan was set up to carry out several steps…

The increasing emphasis on the myriad of leadership preparation standards have caused university principal preparation programs to necessarily focus on the more secular aspect of leading schools. For the Catholic school principal, this has left little focus on the development of critical strategies to lead for Catholic Identity and faith…

Strong leadership has a tremendous impact on organizations. This special edition of "Educational Considerations" highlights the journey of the Kansas Educational Leadership Institute (KELI), from inception to implementation. All of the authors in this special themed edition of "Educational Considerations" describe the various…

In times of uncertainty, university faculties have a duty to prepare school leaders to handle complexity, as the number of variables in the educational system and the interactivity of variables increase exponentially. The Leaders in Education Program (LEP) is a 6-month full-time program at the Singapore National Institute of Education (NIE, which…

Purpose: A crucial aspect of a school's capacity to promote and sustain change and improvement in student learning is the depth, breadth and endurance of both its formal and informal leadership. Shortages of willing leaders, however, have forced governments around the world to expend a considerable amount of time, effort, and money to fill up the…

This article is a follow-up to Mary Devin's report on the collaborative efforts required to create the "Kansas Educational Leadership Institute" in 2010. The Kansas Educational Leadership Institute (KELI) moved from planning to implementation on March 30, 2011, as a statewide systematic support system for the recruitment, development,…

This article presents the perceptions of approximately 300 experienced New Zealand principals who participated in a pilot leadership development initiative funded by the Ministry of Education. The Experienced Principals Development Programme (EPDP) underwent a rigorous evaluation that included formative (mid-point) and summative (end-point)…

To assist system administrators as they pursue their own teacher leadership initiatives, this profile from Leading Educators and the Aspen Institute details the steps Denver Public Schools (DPS) took to design and implement its Differentiated Roles pilot. Specifically, it examines the initiative's opportunities and challenges within the context of…

Background: The purpose of this study was to detect and document common themes among success stories, along with challenges, as related by participants in the Michiana Coordinated School Health Leadership Institute. Four-member teams from 18 Michigan and Indiana school districts participated in semiannual Institute workshops over a 3-year period…

A university and a large urban district began collaborating in 2003 to intensify and customize the preparation of principals. District leadership viewed the principal as the keystone to improving academic achievement for all students. The university and district reciprocally collaborated on the design and implementation of this principal…

In this study the discipline of collaborative inquiry is employed to prepare aspiring administrators to lead for equity. Educational leadership students are required to conduct a site-based collaborative inquiry resulting in an Equity Plan signature assignment. As they develop their Equity Plans, emerging leaders also participate in a…

New Leaders for New Schools created the Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC) initiative in 2006 to learn from educators driving achievement gains in high-need urban schools. EPIC identifies school leaders and teachers whose students are making significant achievement gains and financially rewards these educators in exchange for sharing…

Since September 2002, business leaders and educators have been examining the differences in business and educational leadership in a professional development partnership, titled, The Academy for Leadership in Education (ALE). This organization was created as a program to encourage the study of leadership and develop the capacity for mentoring new…

Purpose: Reformers, policymakers, and researchers have given considerable attention to organizational capacity in schools, especially in those schools that perpetuate or exacerbate achievement gaps among diverse student groups and reproduce social inequalities. There is an emerging consensus about key dimensions of school capacity and how they can…