This book provides new and experienced Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) with a critical approach to understanding the importance of outstanding leadership of Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and how to effectively meet the current SEND policy requirements. Closely informed by the statutory guidance for SENCOs, this…

Meaningful improvement in schools and districts is just small shifts away. How can administrators and teachers work together in ways that lead to significant--and sustained--improvement over time? How can schools accomplish this goal without adding to the work of overstretched educators? This practical guide answers these questions with…

The George W. Bush Institute's School Leadership Initiative (SLI) District Cohort Research Project is a five-year effort with four school districts to test two frameworks--Principal Talent Management (PTM) and Effective Implementation. This collaboration is designed to improve how districts prepare, recruit, support, and retain principals. This…

In "Navigating the Principalship," James P. Spillane and Rebecca Lowenhaupt look at the major challenges of the principal position, examining how new principals adapt to the role, set an instructional agenda, and build cooperation and collaboration. They focus in particular on the dilemmas that mark the principalship--the inevitable,…

This playbook provides ways in which Higher Education Agencies (sometimes referred as the State Higher Education Executive Officers) and teams can blur the lines between high school, postsecondary education, and the workforce. Higher Education Agencies (HEAs) play a significant role to Raise the Bar for student success by developing an…

This toolkit was developed to assist principals in structuring their thinking about the return to school, in whatever form it takes. It offers tools and tip sheets, the context for using them, and suggestions for actions principals might consider. The toolkit is organized around four sections: (1) Change (staying current in understanding changes…

The purpose of this book is to act as a guide to good governance by exploring its various aspects and the key elements of success. It is intended to be used by anybody who is a member of a board, particularly in the nonprofit sector. This book is intended to help board members maximize their effectiveness both individually and collectively.…

A strategy to reform the educational system based upon collaboration and inclusion, vision building among all participants, the establishment of a new infrastructure, and the replacement of linear, top-down planning is explained. Each of these four goals is examined with suggestions for implementation given. After this strategy is outlined, three…

Principals' use of the curriculum council to develop the professional management function and establish a position of educational leadership is recommended. Additional benefits would include improved communications with staff and increased professional collegiality. (MJL)

Effective administrative decisions result from the continuous and systematic appraisal of past decisions and of current conditions. Forty observations that may guide secondary school administrators in assessing and improving the effectiveness of their own decision-making processes are presented in this publication. Each observation is accompanied…

Instrumental to successful democratic leadership is the use of committees to solve management problems. In democratic leadership, a leader encourages participation and uses a guidance approach to direct a group toward consensus. This document offers leaders guidelines in effective democratic management of meetings. The authors first discuss the…

Guidelines for avoiding negative side effects of committee work include reasons for forming or not forming a committee, advantages and disadvantages of committees, and questions to help establish a committee in which members understand their role, task, and relationship to the administrator. (MJL)

Teachers participating in a school's budget development understand better why resources are allocated as they are. Participative budgeting involves submission of prioritized requests by each department's teachers, review of the requests by the principal, and revision of the requests by department heads in response to each other's demonstrated…

Chapter 5 of a revised volume on school leadership, this chapter presents the case for school-based management, stressing the principal's central role. In site management, the school is the primary decision-making unit. Decisions concerning expenditures, curricula, and personnel are made by school site staff, with help from parents, students, and…

It is beneficial to identify three administrative teams through linking pins: the principal is the linking pin between the instructional team and the administrative team; the superintendent is the linking pin between the administrative team and the policy team, which includes the board of education; the administrative team consisting of all…