Although principals have long been seen as important to the success of schools, a new set of working papers from some prominent education researchers aims to promote a better understanding of the extent to which school leaders matter and why. For instance, one study of the 345,000-student Miami-Dade County, Florida, school system finds that the…

A predictive, non-experimental, cross-sectional design (Johnson, 2001) was used to conduct a study to determine if elementary administrators' key counseling skills and select demographics predicted state-level student performance indicators in their respective schools. A secondary purpose of this study was to develop a valid and reliable on-line…

This research is a collection of comparative case studies that examine the perspectives of four principals in their 1st year of implementing the High School College Collaborative (HSCC), which works to provide traditionally underserved high school students with the opportunity to receive college credit, possibly an associate of arts degree,…

The premise of this article is to analyze the managerial skills competencies of secondary schools heads trained through distance mode of education in Pakistan. For this purpose a sample 300 secondary school teachers and 100 secondary schools head-teachers trained through distance mode and working in the Federal Government Educational Institutions…

The evaluation of superintendents is one of the most important school board functions as it encapsulates expectations for the superintendent's performance and advancement toward district goals. Current and past literature devote little attention to the processes and outcomes of superintendent evaluations despite an apparent connection between…

The purpose of this research study was to investigate the impact of principal participation in a leadership capacity building and support program on educational leaders' practice and the professional practice of teachers. The two examined principals participated in the Duncan Principal Coaching Initiative (DPCI), a comprehensive, research and…

The Disabilities Education Act was introduced in June, 1997 in the Turkish Education System. The Act states that schools have a duty to educate children with disabilities in general education classrooms. All children with disabilities should be educated with non-disabled children at their own age and have access to the general education…

This mixed methods descriptive and causal-comparative study investigates what instructional leadership behaviors effective California high school principals have and what their beliefs are in regards to pedagogy, related issues, and professional issues, either constructivist or instructivist in nature, in the environment of the current NCLB…

We offer the collaborative inquiry-action cycle as a framework for principals' practice and principal preparation. The cycle is a pragmatic tool that does not prescribe behaviors or contexts. Moreover, the cycle does not represent another programmatic solution or model for leadership. Rather the power of the cycle is that it drives collaboration,…

Backers of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law based their support on the belief that teachers and administrators primarily were responsible for low levels of achievement by America's poor. This one-sided view about who is responsible for the nation's achievement gap is both inadequate and unsupported by the evidence. The author argues that harsh…

Billed as the country's first independent university, the American University of Afghanistan was established in 2004 with financial support from the highest levels of the American and Afghan governments. But its development has been rockier than anticipated, even taking into account Afghanistan's growing instability. A number of current and former…

In this article, the author shares some of the lessons about leadership he learned when he became chancellor of the University of Georgia in 2006. He realized that the route to leadership in the private sector differs significantly from the route in higher education. The path to leadership in the academe is not only poorly marked, but it does not…

The two overarching research questions of this study are: What are the perceptions of high school administrators regarding the effectiveness of their current approach to instructional management? What recommendations do high school administrators have for effective strategies for instructional management? To answer these questions, a qualitative…

Effective principals are those who boost academic achievement for all students, increase the effectiveness of their teaching staffs, and consistently take leadership actions shown to improve outcomes for students. Therefore principal evaluation systems should place 70% of their weight on the ability of principals to increase student achievement…

When you're a school principal dealing with multiple tasks at every moment, you're continuously at risk of getting blindsided by unspoken grievances and hidden agendas. But you can identify and reduce these risks by applying the ideas and strategies from this book. Two experienced principals describe how to keep on top of the human relationships…