As demonstrated through the experiences of executive administrators who lost their jobs, higher education leaders experience pain when they fail. Leaders at any stage of their life and career can process the pain of failure in constructive ways using a recovery formula built on a "half-life of pain" concept. The time it takes for a…

The lack of women holding high-level leadership positions in higher education institutions is problematic. From a historical standpoint, women face several more obstacles while working toward obtaining leadership roles in higher education than men do. In addition, from a societal lens, women are judged differently in regard to leadership style,…

This article highlights the State-Wide Read Aloud Days of the picturebook "My Shadow is Purple" (Stuart, 2022) held across and beyond the state of Georgia in response to the firing of elementary school teacher Katie Rinderle under Georgia's trio of censorship laws. The goals for this article are to: (1) document and analyze the emergence…

Cutting programs and laying off staff is one of the hardest parts of a community college president's job. Not only is it emotional for everyone involved, but the political fallout can be damaging as well. How campus leaders arrive at the difficult choice to cut staff and programs, and how they communicate their decision to stakeholders, can make a…

Scholarship in composition and rhetoric has certainly addressed issues of African American economic inequality (Gilyard) and institutional austerity (Welch and Scott), yet the field has failed to address how both are united in the site of the contemporary HBCU. In particular, composition scholars have not explored how the shifts of the new economy…

A corporate executive provides an amusing and reflective account on her experience of being downsized. This "day in the life" perspective documents the feelings of an individual who found herself served with "divorce papers" from a job that had, in many ways, defined her identity. Her personal story shines the spotlight on…

A review of two recent federal court cases concerning school principals who experienced adverse job actions after they engaged in speech about fiscal misconduct by other employees indicates that the courts found that the principal's speech was made as part of his or her job duties and was not protected by the First Amendment.

This fifth article in the series reviewing recent court decisions concerning appropriate school psychology practice from both professional and legal perspectives, asks readers to consider the summary of the Illinois case presented, and the questions and answers that follow. The primary issue is whether the school district's adverse employment…

The report documents a major breakdown in governance at UVA, focusing on the role of the board of visitors and its rector, Helen Dragas, who initiated the effort to force the president's resignation. It finds that the events at the university resulted from "a failure by those charged with institutional oversight to understand the institution…

School business administrators and other education leaders do not have the luxury of simply uttering words like "You're fired!" to employees whom they believe should no longer work for the district--especially in states with tenure and collective-bargaining agreements. Rather, administrators must follow appropriate personnel procedures…

Enacted in 2002 as the cornerstone of President George W. Bush's educational policy, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act has been controversial since it became law. At its heart, NCLB is designed to have students perform at grade level by the year 2014. Yet as debate rages on an array of issues surrounding NCLB, the reauthorization process has…

One of the best ways for a child care program to lose an employment-related lawsuit is failure to document the performance of its employees. Documentation of an employee's performance can provide evidence of an employment-related decision such as discipline, promotion, or discharge. When properly implemented, documentation of employee performance…

In a daylong meeting broadcast online this month, David B. Ashley, the president of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, was repeatedly grilled, and then publicly demoted, during a contentious gathering of the university system's Board of Regents. The dressing-down followed months of public disputes over the conduct of Mr. Ashley's wife and…

College faculties often use votes of "no confidence" to try to push out the leaders of their institutions. Many do so, however, without giving much thought to what such a vote actually means, whether they are using it appropriately, or how it will affect their campus--and their own future. Mae Kuykendall, a professor of law at Michigan State…

The authors' recent study of all published decisions in state and federal courts concerning superintendent termination led to a surprising finding: The decisions overwhelmingly favored school districts. In this article, the authors examine several superintendents' intriguing cases. The authors also discuss practical lessons for superintendents.