Purpose: Performance evaluation informs professional development and helps school personnel improve student learning. Although psychometric literature indicates that a rational, sound, and coherent standard-setting process adds to the credibility of an assessment, few studies have empirically examined the decision-making process. This article…

This gold mine of wisdom from top education researcher and the best-selling author of "Turning Around Failing Schools and Connecting Teacher Leadership and School Improvement" contains key tips and strategies every school leader should know. Award-winning professor and former school administrator Joseph F. Murphy's concise and instructive lessons…

Research has consistently shown that principal leadership matters for successful schools. Evaluating principals on the behaviors shown to improve student learning should be an important leverage point for raising leadership quality. Yet principals are often evaluated with the use of instruments with no theoretical background and little, if any,…

Principals must attend to eight curricular issues in their role as instructional leader: amount of content; extent of academic focus on coursework; focus and sequence of courses; breadth versus depth of content; differential access to knowledge; homework as an extension of content; curricular alignment; and quality of course objectives. Includes…

This article discusses the research concerning the relationship between the organizational and social context of schools and principal instructional leadership. The discussion centers on several contextual variables that include school level, staff composition, technical clarity and complexity, and district context. Particular attention is focused…

In 1996, a consortium of state and professional associations, the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium, published a comprehensive set of Standards for School Leaders. This paper provides early indications of standards implementation throughout the nation. Intrastate distribution of ISLLC Standards was achieved in 34 of the 54 states and…

This book is designed to inform the debate on administrator preparation and to provide information for shaping new designs for administrator education. Chapter 1 discusses the changing educational environment and the need for improving administrator training. Chapters 2 and 3 review phases in the evolution of training programs over the last…