Executive committee chairman of the Primerica Corporation and chairman of the board of directors of the Institute for Educational Leadership stresses how difficult change is for all organizations and how, in the business as well as education worlds, external forces have compelled responses. The similarities and differences in the management and…

The professional expectations for a superintendent are outlined and organized under three sets of skills. Technical skills, the first set described, include (1) having language skills, (2) understanding teaching and being a teacher, (3) being current on learning theory, (4) being familiar with a variety of curricula, and (5) acting as a liaison…

Urban public education needs to be improved, and the superintendent is the key to improvement. Because the public influences school quality, the superintendent must deal with the public and with political leaders and officials. Hence the superintendent must be a community leader and should meet and work with the city's mayor. Mayors are aware that…

A national study of superintendents reveals that most superintendents (89.6 percent) consider their relationship with the community to be very important, and most (63.5 percent) spend a great deal of time on that relationship. There is a positive correlation between the importance superintendents assign to their relationship to the community and…

Productive board meetings entail well-planned agenda, effective chairpersons, and on-task focuses which avoid extraneous issues and fruitless, time-consuming discussions. Members should understand the agenda's chief points beforehand or be prepared to make pertinent inquiries which administrators anticipate. Tips for chairpersons include keeping…

The purpose of the study was to refine a method to identify critical tasks and administrative behaviors utilized to effectively administer a specialized program in smaller school districts. Vocational education was the special program investigated. Data were gathered by personal interviews with 72 superintendents and a composite of 85 high school…

Education in rural schools is alive, working to provide quality education through different organizational configurations, and experiencing many changes as it strives to meet the needs of all rural children for a quality education. In the nurturing of rural schools, the State must assist in making it possible to adequately finance justifiable…

Staff selection and hiring in the Jamestown (Rhode Island) Public Schools includes two unusual elements: Teachers, administrators, and the community are involved in the hiring procedure and the superintendent negotiates with teachers hired to determine their first year salaries. During the district's recent selection of an elementary school…

Chapter 3 of a volume on school leadership, this chapter reviews theories of leadership style. After defining leadership style simply as "how the leader leads," the author presents and explains significant ideas about the important components and environmental determinants of leadership style. The author looks at leadership style theories that…

A case study of curricular change compares two leading models of organizational change. One model stresses the uncertainty and disorder of major changes and views them as dramatic events. The other model sees major organizational shifts as the result of ordinary day-to-day processes and emphasizes their routine nature. For this study, the…

With the interests of the school district in mind, the author offers suggested provisions for a superintendent's contract. He reviews a popular prototype contract and points out where modifications might need to be made in each section. The author recommends first reviewing state legislation to see what contract provisions may be required by law.…

A questionnaire was sent to 100 superintendents to find out how they viewed the preparation of the recent graduates of the University of Maine at Orono hired for teaching positions within their districts. The superintendents were asked to rate the graduates and to list the competencies that were strong points as well as weak points in their…

TO SURVEY THE CERTIFICATION STATUS, TEACHING ASSIGNMENT, AND SELECTED JOB-RELATED OPINIONS OF GEORGIA SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHERS, DATA ON 115 SCHOOLS AND 403 TEACHERS WAS EXTRACTED FROM A RANDOM SAMPLING OF THE ANNUAL REPORTS OF SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENTS TO THE GEORGIA ACCREDITING COMMISSION. AN UNSTRUCTURED QUESTIONNAIRE ASKING WHICH ASPECTS OF…

TO DETERMINE HOW COMMUNITY PERCEPTIONS ABOUT RULES OF BEHAVIOR AFFECT THE POSITION AND ROLE OF TEACHERS, INFORMATION ABOUT THE NORMATIVE STRUCTURE OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS WAS GAINED THROUGH USE OF ROLE NORM INVENTORIES ADMINISTERED TO 367 TEACHERS, 22 PRINCIPALS, 7 SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS, THE SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT, 603 CITIZENS, 56 COMMUNITY LEADERS,…

This document presents edited interviews with four former superintendents of instruction--Ewald Nyquist of New York, Jack Nix of Georgia, Dolores Colburg of Montana, and John Pittenger of Pennsylvania. Although the states in which these persons held their positions are quite different, there are a number of commonalities in the problems they…