As new school leaders take over the district's top jobs this fall, they and their communities face transitions. Joshua P. Starr explains that too many leaders focus on entry and fail to engage in a thoughtful and comprehensive transition process. Transition isn't just about change; it's also about loss. Organizational transition is about how…

The "Roadmap for Educator Preparation Reform" is a planning framework intended to guide and support educator preparation programs (EPPs) to integrate evidence-based and high-leverage practices within and across coursework and field experiences. The roadmap highlights the major guidelines that EPPs should consider throughout the reform…

This article examines motivations for faculty involvement in shared governance. Faculty members at a mid-sized, Midwestern university were surveyed to assess reasons for serving and leading in the shared governance process. Five predominant themes were identified as affecting faculty participation in university governance. The five predominant…

Curriculum is the heart of the mission of every college. College curriculum approval processes have been established to ensure that rigorous, high quality curriculum is offered that meets the needs of students. While some concerns may exist regarding the effectiveness and efficiency of local curriculum processes, all participants in the process…

All enrollment managers face some level of challenge related to decentralized decision making and operations. Policies and practices can vary considerably by academic area, creating administrative complexity, restricting the scope and speed of institutional initiatives, and limiting potential efficiencies. Central attempts to standardize or…

Because The Maine Community College System (MCCS) is aware of that fact that student veterans and those veterans seeking to enroll in college have specific needs, each of the colleges in the MCCS system is working to develop and strengthen target responses to meet those needs. The Maine Community College System is therefore providing this report…

This paper introduces the questions and approaches of a five-nation cross-cultural study of state-based curriculum-making discussed in this issue of "JCS." The paper reviews the two decade-long interest of many nations in state-based curriculum-making and presents a framework for thinking about state-based curriculum-making as a tool of…

In Canada, only 44% of members of academic governance bodies at universities feel that their boards are effective decision-making bodies (Jones, Shanahan, & Goyan, 2004). In this study, we examined the views of senators at a British Columbia university regarding their senate's effectiveness in decision-making, including structures, processes,…

This document records testimony from a hearing held to examine the implementation of the promise to restore state and local control over K-12 education through the Every Student Succeeds Act. The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act puts states and school districts back in charge of education and includes more than 50 pages of provisions to…

Professional educators in the classroom, library, counseling center, or anywhere in between share one overarching goal: ensuring all students receive the rich, well-rounded education they need to be productive, engaged, citizens. This regular feature explores the work of professional educators--their accomplishments and their challenges--so that…

Current research indicates that parental involvement positively influences children's academic success. This study investigates parental involvement in the Arab education system in Israel, highlighting involvement in the New Horizon reform. We interviewed school principals and parent committee chairpersons from 15 Arab schools. The study confirmed…

This report argues that requiring faculty members to sign confidentiality agreements as a requirement to serve on university committees is in most cases inconsistent with widely accepted standards of shared governance and with the concept of serving as a representative. This argument does not apply to faculty serving on promotion and tenure…

In this Exemplars case, the fifth and final under the direction of the current coeditors, the authors present a reflective account of an ongoing, complex, multiyear, multinational monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system conducted for African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), an international development program. The…

As governing boards have become more sophisticated and polished in their oversight of colleges and universities, they have also become more intentional in the way they organize themselves to meet their missions. Some boards have evolved entirely new structures. Even within the parameters of fairly traditional constructs, many boards have made…

"Updating Board Bylaws: A Guide for Colleges and Universities" represents the latest thinking on good governance in higher education by providing a concise deconstruction of the essential clauses in college, university, and system bylaws. Written by Robert O'Neil, former professor of law and president of the University of Wisconsin System and the…