Superintendents of 164 Arkansas small school districts predicted the importance of 20 selected academic courses/physical activities by the year 2000. Courses/activities ranked highest for 2000 were computer science, physics, soccer, economics, and composition. Study assumes collective wisdom or bias of superintendents will alter future secondary…

A recent study indicates that the superintendent's personal involvement in principal supervision and evaluation, including frequent school visits, can be a key ingredient in school effectiveness. (MCG)

Describes a recent court decision in which a school board and the superintendent did not support a teacher when he came under fire from the community for teaching a controversial subject. The teacher won his case against the district because it had violated the academic freedom rule and denied the teacher due process.(MD)

Describes a study of chief state school officers on their opinions of accountability in public education. Findings are examined concerning their responses to questions about funding, professionalism, teaching, innovations, certification, and quality control. (CT)

Describes how formal written contracts for senior school board officials in Canada can successfully address four potential problem areas: tenure, compensation, performance, and growth. Reports some of the results of the Canadian Association of School Administrators' 1979 survey on contracts for superintendents. (SB)

The history of the partnership between the Atlanta schools and their community is presented as a guide for other school systems. One of the most valuable lessons to learn from it is keeping lines of communication open and clearly assessing strengths and weaknesses at every stage of development. (MD)

Professional educators have gained an upper hand in policy making while at the same time enjoying substantial insulation from public opinion and accountability. (MM)

For the past half a century, the New York City public school system has undergone major transformations in its organization. The 1950s and 1960s community control movement led to decentralization of the school system in 1969. The school system broke into 32 community school districts, with superintendents appointed by local community school…

After conducting intensive research and observations of school district superintendents, administrators, and school principals, the author offers strategies for achieving a healthy work and life balance, including: (1) Taking care of yourself as well as you do others; (2) Defining and applying the six themes of personal growth; (3) Nourishing your…

This report offers an inside look into the world of the nation's best and brightest education leaders, its school superintendents. What makes these superintendents stand apart, however, is their sheer dedication to and success in finding new ways to teach, new approaches to communicate and listen to their communities, and new strategies to ensure…

The current report explores what is available to superintendents after they assume their positions: what the landscape of sustained executive training and support options available for sitting school system leaders looks like. It describes about two dozen programs offered around the country-who offers them, how they are organized and funded, what…

This collection of papers, purposely written in jargon-free language, is designed to inform policymakers, business leaders, educators, and civic-minded parents about the abiding complexities of urban school reform and the linkages between the success of schools and the vitality of cities. After the "Introduction: Learning from the Past"…

This digest in Spanish explores the strategy of paying school administrators based on performance contracts. A performance contract is an agreement between an administrator--typically a superintendent--and the school board that links the administrator's pay to indicators of job performance. Most commonly, performance contracts include bonuses for…

That the daily challenges facing public-school leaders can sometimes be overwhelming is the underlying theme of this report. The study on which the report is based focused on superintendents' and principals' views on and concerns about leadership. Data for the study were gathered in 2001 from surveys of 853 public-school superintendents and 909…

While numerous feminist scholars have written about "silence," few have focused on the silence of women in powerful masculinized positions such as the superintendency. The purpose of the paper is to expose the silencing, the disallowing of voice in actual practice, or the "unnatural silence" (Olsen 1978) of women superintendents through a…