The purpose of this study was to examine the efforts of school districts in developing and sustaining their capacity to improve student achievement in response to increased accountability. The study sought to confirm what the research says regarding the role of the school district in influencing school improvement. While there is a significant…

Three foundational elements are key to improving student achievement: a coherent curriculum, intensive literacy practices, and well-structured lessons. There is stunning--in the author's view, indisputable--evidence for and agreement on the unrivaled power of sound curricula, authentic literacy, and effectively structured lessons. For schools to…

Large distances and small budgets had made it challenging for Florida Project Learning Tree (PLT) to conduct in-person workshops with volunteer 4-H leaders to disseminate the PreK-8 guide. An online version of a PLT workshop was developed to overcome these barriers. Formative evaluation data suggested that the program effectively introduced PLT to…

Although much has been written about the importance of leadership in the determination of organizational success, there is little quantitative evidence due to the difficulty of separating the impact of leaders from other organizational components--particularly in the public sector. Schools provide an especially rich environment for studying the…

Very few people in early years would dispute that the success of a child care centre is almost entirely down to the strength of the centre manager. At its most successful, management expands to leadership, where leaders are able to influence the behaviour of others for the purpose of achieving a goal. Leaders develop a special set of rather…

At the end of the 2011-12 version of the project course Schools Across Borders, Schools Across Time (SABSAT), a high school senior wrote a series of letters reflecting on the experience of participating in an unusual course with an unusual outcome. In the letters, the student wanted to evoke what was personal and what was critical--to herself, her…

This study explores the perspectives and understandings of post-secondary leaders and their contexts as described through the qualitative experiences of 12 Maritime Canadian leaders (presidents and vice-presidents) who work in contemporary, publicly funded, post-secondary institutions. Four themes emerge: balancing daily dissonance, learning…

This study investigates the relationship between coaching expertise, project difficulty, and team empowerment on team learning outcomes within the context of a high-performance work team. Variables were tested using multiple regression analysis. The data were analyzed for two groups--team leaders and team members--using t-tests, factor analysis,…

Forty-two states and the District of Columbia have charter school laws today, and the nation's first such law celebrated its 20th anniversary in Minnesota this year. Charters, publicly funded schools formed by parents and community leaders, are expected to provide alternatives to traditional public schools. Yet despite the proliferation of charter…

This is how Ricci Hall, principal of University Park Campus School in Worcester, Massachusetts, defines the job of principal: "Being a school leader is complicated. More than being about budgets or bottom lines, more than being about evaluations or meeting attendance, being a school leader is about helping to create powerful learning…

On January 20, 2009, Dr. Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, became the leader of the free world. The free world's attention was focused elsewhere: Senator Barack Obama, who on that day became President Barack Obama, quietly abdicated the role now taken up by Dr. Singh, having run an election campaign premised upon the ever-present but…

Why do so many independent schools fail? And what are the chief causes of death? When they can be performed, institutional "autopsies" are illuminating, but it should be noted that many schools disappear with few clues about their final undoing. However, when schools do leave paper trails that help understand the reasons for their…

This study demonstrates a novel approach that those engaged in promoting social change in health can use to analyze community power, mobilize it and enhance community capacity to reduce health inequalities. We used community reconnaissance methods to select and interview 33 participants from six leadership sectors in "Milltown", the New…

Across the education field, there is unusual consensus that strong teacher leaders are key to improving our nation's schools. Unfortunately, clear expectations for what teacher leaders should do, and strategies to prepare them to do it, are few and far between. A recent survey found that while 86 percent of urban school districts have teacher…

West Virginia University's Extension Service partnered with the Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Resources Program to improve guide performance in West Virginia's tourism industry. The result of this partnership is a West Virginia Interpretive Guide Training program aimed at providing low-cost, widely available training to guides throughout the…