For eight years, more than a dozen district superintendents in New Jersey have joined together for a full day each month during the school year to listen to and learn from each other as a community of practice. Known as the New Jersey Network of Superintendents, this community of practice has a tight focus on advancing equity through improvement…

No longer is the central office a place for educators' careers to meet a dead end. Nor can it be where ineffective leaders are transferred to lessen impact. It cannot be "the blob," as coined by William Bennett (Walker, 1987). The Wallace Foundation notes that the central office has never been more important for system and individual…

What kind of data does the Aldine (Texas) Independent School District collect on each of the 64,000 students in the system? The answer is: Traditional information--progress reports, grades, and state assessment results, including a statewide reading inventory given three times a year and state language acquisition tests. The school has a chart for…

The School-University Research Network (SURN) Principal Academy at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, has a mission to build a leadership development program that increases principals' instructional knowledge and develops mentor principals to sustain the program. The academy is designed to connect and empower principals…

In Charlotte-Mecklenburg (N.C.) Schools, educators have leapt into the Common Core with both feet, creating an internal website for teachers to share performance tasks and implementing systemwide, school-based professional learning that has put the standards into practice and tested students on them in the 2012-13 school year. The district began…

Welcome to the West Valley School District in eastern Washington. Home to almost 4,000 students, West Valley made a public commitment more than seven years ago that all students would graduate with the option to attend college. This daunting goal--made even more so by the fact that almost half of the district's high school students come from…

Fort Wayne Community Schools continue to increase student learning and meet state and national standards and expectations annually based on several factors that have made a difference for educators within the system: district and principal leadership, learning teams, effective learning designs, and deep commitment to a culture of learning. Fort…

Administrative demands, crisis management, and political challenges often strand superintendents miles away from the day-to-day work of teachers and students in the classroom. Even when superintendents strive to focus their work on the instructional core--the interactions among student, teacher, and content--those same commitments and crises…

Linda MacDonell is the assistant superintendent of the Instructional Services Division of the Orange County (California) Department of Education and over the years, Delores Lindsey served as MacDonell's leadership coach. In this article, they talk about their experiences as external/internal partners building internal capacity for culturally…

The central office is both a physical place and a state of mind. In some school systems, the central office is a separate building located away from schools. In other communities, the office is housed in one of the school buildings. When someone mentions "central office," they may not be referring only to the building. They may also mean the tip…

Seattle Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson spoke at National Staff Development Council's (NSDC) 2010 Summer Conference in Seattle in July. Goodloe-Johnson shared her insights on the role of professional learning in reaching all students in a diverse urban district. Selected excerpts from her speech are presented.

Whether by design or by chance, superintendents communicate their beliefs about what is important educationally and the roles they expect their principals to fulfill. Superintendents who champion the development of their principals as instructional leaders begin by establishing common understandings with them about why principals' instructional…

Beverly Hall has been superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools since 1999. Before coming to Atlanta, Hall was state district superintendent of Newark Public Schools, deputy chancellor for instruction of New York City Public Schools, superintendent of Community School District 27 in New York City, and a principal in Brooklyn. Hall chairs Harvard…

More than 10 years ago, the author wrote her first version of "The Power of One" for the "Journal of Staff Development." She described her personal journey of discovering how one person could make a huge difference in the face of what appeared as insurmountable challenges. She described ways in which she had made such a difference and told,…

Facing a superintendent change in 2006-2007, Decatur Public School District 61 in Illinois was already confronting the major challenges of a widening student achievement gap, increasing dropout rate, and schools not meeting Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). From the beginning, Superintendent Gloria J. Davis professed several simple beliefs that…