One has heard it before: time is money, especially when it comes to adding time for instruction to the school day. When budgets are tight and relief is nowhere in sight, how can schools afford to implement a reform as costly as adding instructional time? It's a daunting task, yet current federal educational priorities tied to federal funding…

A lack of time can cause or exacerbate many roadblocks to learning. For example, if the only time that staff members have to plan is after school when they are tired, tired planning occurs. Staff members may try sincerely to find extra time to show an interest in their students, but the importance of those efforts is often dismissed when staff…

Schools and districts across the country are being subjected to some of the fiercest budget cuts in recent history, even as principals are held increasingly accountable for significantly improving student achievement, particularly in schools labeled "persistently low-achieving." For the 5,000 lowest-performing schools, there is the…

Becoming a principal is a milestone in an educator's professional life. The principalship is an opportunity to provide leadership that will afford students opportunities to thrive in a nurturing and supportive environment. Despite the continuously expanding demands of being a new principal, effective time management will enable an individual to be…

Transitions are the "interval between any two activities." Therefore, transitions occur between classes (before and after a class) and within class periods (between activities). Using transition time effectively is a cost-free way of maximizing instructional time. Therefore, it becomes imperative that transitions occur smoothly throughout the…

There are two ways to avoid time-crunch panic attacks: work smarter and delegate wisely. In this article, the author provides a list of some strategies and tactics he has used to help more than 500 school executives in North Carolina work smarter, delegate more effectively and become more effective instructional leaders. These strategies fall into…

A recent Web search returned more than 1.1 billion hits for the phrase "time management," a concept that school leaders hear in seminars, read about in books, and are trained in during professional development. But, like principals, students too need the advantage of a little more time. One high school in Indiana is giving students the…

In order to improve what happens in classrooms, a considerable amount of work needs to take place between teachers and principals. This can only happen if campus leaders make dramatic shifts in how and where they spend their daily time. Principals can have a greater impact on teaching and learning by transforming their work one day at a time. The…

How can a dedicated principal work really, really hard but fail to get significant gains in student achievement? The answer is obvious: by spending too much time on the wrong things and not enough on the right things. The principal's number-one priority is zeroing in on the highest-priority activities for bringing all students to high levels of…

Flexible modular scheduling (flex mod)--a schedule philosophy and system that has been in place at Wausau West High School in Wausau, Wisconsin, for the last 35 years and aligns nicely with current research on student learning--is getting more and more attention from high school administrators across the country. Flexible modular scheduling was…

The demands of the principalship today are keeping good people away. They do not want to deal with the demands on their time, the drive for great test scores, hovering parents, neglectful parents, teachers' needs, and the political hot spot that some schools have become in their communities. They do not see current principals finding balance and…

In this article, Fr. Carl Markelz and Harold Maldonado, two veteran inner-city principals, share how they have learned to use their time more efficiently. Fr. Markelz is the principal of Mount Carmel High School, a 900-student, all-male, parochial school in an area of Chicago, Illinois, that is experiencing regentrification. Maldonado is the…

In this article, the author discusses three steps that will help administrators build a system that allows them to bring balance back into their life. The first step is to create a picture of how things could be, because real change always comes from the inside. The second step is adjusting their attitude. Controlling their attitude is as…

Site-based professional development is an important component of instructional leadership in every school, yet many schools struggle to define and maintain a systematic approach to staff development. The need to stay informed about current strategies and research that relates to effective instruction is not new to education leaders, but they are…

Everyday communication demands can be tamed with a few simple strategies: (1) restrict; and (2) redirect. In this article, the author recommends that one should launch a quiet campaign to restrict the communication systems in one's office. She talks about how to manage voice mails, the perils of e-mail, and interruptions. She emphasizes that one…