When Deborah Peterson reluctantly accepted the principalship of Roosevelt High School in Portland, Oregon, a high-poverty school no other qualified applicants would touch that her supervisor assigned to her, books for new principals were no help. The books suggested actions like crafting a school vision and developing professional learning…

As the chief executive officer, the superintendent must demonstrate high quality performance at every level in order to impact student achievement. In order to be an effective superintendent, the individual must have knowledge and skills in educational leadership and be able to articulate information clearly and precisely about the school…

Emerging research suggests that teachers' perceptions of fairness with respect to interactions with school administrators, decision-making processes, and decision outcomes can contribute greatly to understanding effective schools. This study of Virginia public high schools used correlational analysis to measure the strength of the relationships…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to survey rural superintendents regarding their perceptions of specific educational leadership practices identified by Waters and Marzano (2006) and to correlate their endorsement of specific practices with student achievement. Methodology: All superintendents invited to participate in the study did so. The…

This study examined the effective strategies, resources, and programs urban superintendents utilize to improve the academic achievement for African-American males. This study employed a mixed-methods approach to answer the following research questions regarding urban superintendents and the academic achievement for African-American males: What…

This research addresses lack of student teaching preparation. There is strong evidence that beginning teachers are not trained to adequately teach students due to their lack of preparation/content knowledge. The purpose of this study is to examine the experience of beginning teachers to try to understand why student teachers are not prepared for…

The current national average tenure for superintendents is between 2.75 and 4.00 years. Since the organizational chain of command in Texas places the human resources management of the superintendent in the hands of elected school board members, it is imperative that superintendents understand the factors that contribute to their tenure. The study…

This article documents perceptions of superintendents and principals when working under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2004-06. It uses data collected through the Voices 3 Project to consider three factors associated with instructional leadership as applied under NCLB, defining the school's mission, managing the instructional program, and…

As student accountability models have become the norm in the United States, first in individual states such as North Carolina and then throughout the nation with No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the implementation of inclusion as a curriculum delivery model for students with disabilities has been explored. The purpose of this study was to examine how…

The purpose of this study was to discover what school leaders considered during the decision-making process when adding a transitional kindergarten program and how the decision was made. This study investigated the decision-making process for superintendents and principals by examining decisions made by rural, suburban, and large school…

How prepared are central office administrators to lead school districts in the face of changing standards and changing student populations? The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine the responses of central office administrators in the top 5% performing school districts in Washington State with the goal of identifying common attitudes…

The purpose of this research was to survey randomly selected Eastern Kentucky Superintendents to collect data about stress in public schools. This was the third year of a continuation study for Eastern Kentucky that collected data on how men and women teachers and men and women administrators handle stress. A stress survey (Appendix A) was sent to…

Principals are being asked to lead students to unprecedented levels of academic success, but with increasingly less power or resources to their avail. Moreover, principals must interact with countless stakeholders in education. While much research has studied the general characteristics of what many believe constitute an effective principal,…

In 2009, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) adopted a new policy statement on early childhood education. Based on the work of a task force of 13 chiefs, "A Quiet Crisis: The Urgent Need to Build Early Childhood Systems and Quality Programs for Children Birth to Age Five" presents a compelling argument for why public…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify and describe the perceptions of urban superintendents and the influence of executive coaching on their leadership practices, to identify which phases of the executive coaching process urban superintendents perceive as influential in their leadership practice, to determine which coaching strategies…