This study evaluates the perceived purpose, alignment, and effectiveness of the structures and processes intended to develop teacher leaders at a suburban school in north Alabama. This teacher leader development program has three distinct, yet equally important, groups of stakeholders impacting its performance and outcome: 1) teacher leaders, 2)…

A serendipitous moment, a passing conversation, led to this study. A university professor expressed concern that his second-grade son was "bored" with his weekly spelling lists, homework, and tests. A colleague of his, a former elementary teacher with 30 years experience and currently teaching field-based methods courses in this child's…

Despite the key role that principals play in leading schoolwide change, districts' efforts to support principals are often limited, particularly in rural settings. In this article, we report the preliminary findings of a cross-district mentoring program for nine midcareer rural school principals. The collaboratively developed human resource…

It is well documented that the achievement gap between affluent students and economically disadvantaged students and between White students and students of color continues to widen. In addition to these achievement gaps, marginalizing practices are often imbedded in the structures of schooling. These challenges require educational leadership…

Fourth-generation program evaluation is a collaborative, responsive approach that attaches great importance to the claims, concerns, and issues set forth by various stakeholders. This model stresses value pluralism and has several community-involvement phases: planning, data collection, results, final evaluation report, and follow-up. (20…

This article describes a new program directed toward preparing principals to function as change agents in elementary and secondary schools in Appalachia. Program evaluation procedures that include cost effectiveness analysis based on Bayesian statistics are described in detail. (JH)

A National Institute of Mental Health project was initiated in 1964 at the University of New Mexico to prepare educational administrators to become community change agents. The 10 fellows appointed to the program received training in applications of the social sciences to administration, with concentration on concepts of community organization and…

Contemporary school administrators play a daunting array of roles. They must be educational visionaries and change agents, instructional leaders, curriculum and assessment experts, budget analysts, facility managers, special program administrators, and community builders. New expectations for schools--that they successfully teach a broad range of…

This booklet summarizes the major findings of a comprehensive followup of the original interns in the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) Administrative Internship Project for Secondary School Improvement. In 1962, the NASSP sought support from the Fund for Advancement of Education for an administrative internship pilot…

Bridging the gap between the research resources and field personnel becomes an increasingly important problem. This study investigated the impact of the Research Utilization Project (RUP) on public elementary schools in the District of Columbia. In the 16 schools selected by a multistage stratified sampling method, the total number of information…

This monograph surveys the literature relating to the role of the principal as change agent and the process of educational change, and reviews those characteristics that research has found to make principals more effective and efficient change agents. The introduction identifies four relevant perspectives in the research on instructional…

This report presents an account and evaluation of a two-year survey-feedback problem-solving organization development (OD) project in a small city's school district. The project combined the survey-feedback technology with structural alterations in the school district and the training of internal change agents. Both planned and unplanned events…

This volume, the fourth of a five-volume series, contains three onsite case studies of organization development (OD) selected from a sample of 76 school districts. The purpose of the case studies was to analyze in detail different types of OD programs and their use. Each case study represents a different OD focus: case study A involves a survey…