School leaders deal with pressures, pitfalls, and opportunities every day. The authors maintain that creative leaders can keep schools moving in the right direction by reflecting on their natural talents and maximizing the strengths of their staff. This completely updated guide helps you assess your role as an administrator, shows how you might…

To develop high-performance teams and improve student learning and achievement educators are making changes in the way they interact with colleagues. Educators are participating in various school teams-grade level teams, vertical teams, school leadership teams, study groups, and school improvement teams. This book translates what social scientists…

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings joined President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and Attorney General Gonzales at a Conference on School Safety on October 10, 2006. Teachers, parents, administrators, law enforcement officials, and other experts discussed best practices and lessons learned about school safety during the conference at the National 4-H…

This book offers an in-depth understanding of the unique challenges and contributions of urban primary schools. The authors set urban education in the wider social context of structural disadvantage, poverty, oppression and exclusion, and reassert some critical urban educational concerns. Recognizing that practice needs to be informed by theory,…

This report presents recommendations for providing excellent teachers in all Texas schools. It notes that while state-level policy reforms have helped advance the quality of educator preparation, university-based programs have been unable to produce sufficient numbers of teachers to keep up with the rapidly growing student population. Teacher…

This comprehensive review of parent involvement examines more than 200 studies to identify what research says about attitudes toward parent involvement, how parent involvement is practiced, and how parent involvement affects student achievement. The review also identifies research-based applications educators can use to implement effective parent…

The recent growth of online course offerings has progressed at a rapid pace without regard to all of the real and potential consequences. This is especially troubling since there are many more casualties (e.g., withdrawn and failing students) than with traditional methods of education. However, with caution and examination of the processes at the…

In many communities there is a need to reconnect schools to community entities, including businesses. This fastback is designed to act as a guide to partnership-program development. It begins with a brief history of partnerships, tracks the development of partnership programs, outlines key roles, and identifies the indicators of…

A study examined how government administrators in New Zealand construct their professional identities and power relationships, and how this identity is reflected in patterns of discourse and strategies of interaction. Three levels of discourse analysis (speech functions; discourse strategies; and linguistic forms) and their components and…

An essential component of effective leadership is the cultivation of followers. This study examined whether 67 California and Ohio elementary and secondary school teachers understood the role and importance of followership in influencing school leadership. Teachers provided demographic data and completed the Teacher Sentiment Inventory, which…

This book is intended as a practical guide for university administrators, especially those department chairpersons who are new on the job. Chapter topics include: (1) "Advice to the New Department Chairperson"; (2) "Seven Habits of Successful Chairpersons"; (3) "Duties and Responsibilities of Department Chairpersons"; (4) "Providing Leadership";…

This guide provides information about the services available to schools through the High Schools That Work (HSTW) and the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and how to build a strong support network for teachers and schools. The following topics are covered: (1) the benefits of networking; (2) the link between networking and HSTW services;…

In 1995 the School Board of Philadelphia adopted Children Achieving, a systemic reform initiative. This report is an evaluation of that reform. The report examines the role of the central office and describes its evolution over the course of the program. The first section recounts how conflicts arose over theories of systemic reform, underlying…

This manual combines best practices for involvement of supervisors and counterparts in programming, training, and volunteer activities from the three regions of the Peace Corps. Its intent is to offer ideas for participatory development to supplement the work being done with partners at posts. It is designed to help associate Peace Corps directors…

This report documents a study that examined what school leaders actually do to effectively lead schools. It then presents what this implies for policy and leadership development. Data for the study were collected from interviews with principals, vice principals, and teachers from 21 public, private, charter, contract, and magnet schools in 4…