For much of the last two decades, beginning with the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2002, the top political leaders have shown concern about children stuck in failing public schools. NCLB required districts to do something -- not enough, but something -- about those schools. Millions of children still languish in low-performing schools,…

A body of research suggests that human capital--educators' and employees' training, education, and experience--is a key factor in school improvement efforts. Social capital, which may be defined as relations that can be mobilized to facilitate action, is another factor that may be as important as human capital. The synergistic interplay of human…

In what may come as a surprise to many, principals have remarkably little control over who teaches in their schools. For the most part, the human resources (HR) department in a district's central office, not individual school principals, makes the final call about when to hire teachers, whom to hire and in which schools they are placed.…

A number of scholars are exploring the district context in which schools are embedded. These studies suggest the importance of the district office as a support or constraint to the work of schools and offer strategies for building relations between district and site leaders. While this is an important task, what is frequently overlooked is that…

Under the federal policy No Child Left Behind, school district central office administrators have been thrust into the role of orchestrating substantial increases in student learning. However, there is mounting research recognizing that most central office administrators are ill-prepared for the work of instructional improvement at a systems level…

A number of scholars are exploring district and site relations in organizational change efforts in the larger policy context of No Child Left Behind. These studies suggest the importance of the central office as a support to the work of reform and offer strategies for building relations between district offices and sites in order to implement and…

The No Child Left Behind Act increases pressure on schools and districts to use standardized state test data. Seeking to learn about the process of turning accountability data into actionable information, this paper presents findings from three case studies of small to medium sized school districts. The study examines the flow of state science…

This article discusses why the work of central-office administrators and building administrators seem so disconnected from one another. The fact that central-office administrators and principals seem to travel in orbits with different paths, with seemingly few areas of significant overlap, has a decidedly negative impact on the ability of the…