For the typical early childhood administrator, there will never be enough hours in a day to finish the work that needs to be done. This includes numerous hours spent on a computer tracking enrollment, managing the budget, researching curriculum ideas online, and many other administrative tasks. Improving an administrator's computer efficiency can…

Too many new principals struggle through their beginning years and only learn through trial and error. The principalship is much too demanding and difficult to succeed without the support of the district and practical knowledge of veteran teachers and peers. In this article, the author, a veteran principal, shares a few tidbits that he learned…

Harold Kwalwasser has put together a call to action for education reform that makes a clear case for what has to be done in order to educate all children to their full potential. He visited forty high-performing and transforming school districts, charters, parochial, and private schools to understand why they have succeeded where others have…

This paper tells the remarkable and compelling story of Leonard Covello, a ground breaking progressive educator who worked tirelessly to shape public education in New York City during the first half of the 20th century. Covello was the founding principal of Benjamin Franklin High School (BFHS) in East Harlem in the 1930s. The author invites…

The transition from the comfort of a familiar role, that of teacher, to the discomfort of a new role, that of school administrator, is a transformative process. Transforming oneself requires leaving what is known and venturing into the unknown. Researchers have illuminated women's struggle to attain school leadership positions, but the…

The purpose of this research was to capture and analyze perceptions of Texas superintendents practicing in the 2008-2009 school year regarding their professional development at Texas Regional Education Service Centers (RESCs) in the area of leading student achievement. Superintendents statewide were surveyed and results analyzed using Analysis of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there was a relationship between school leaders' perceptions regarding High Involvement Model variables as components of their organizations, including power, knowledge, information, leadership, instructional guidance, rewards, and resources, and the leaders' ability to successfully use the IBM…

The results of the assessment of the emotional intelligence of public school principals, the results of a school quality survey, and students' standardized reading and mathematics test scores from public elementary, middle, and high schools in Hawaii provided the data for determining if there is a relationship between the emotional intelligence of…

In increasing numbers of individual schools across the country, a new kind of principalship is taking hold and producing well-documented breakthrough results for children. This report uses findings from these schools and principals to inform a new definition of principal effectiveness. It makes recommendations for school leadership policies geared…

Effective schools research gave birth to a new role for principals: instructional leader. Recent studies have suggested the relationship between strong school instructional leadership and higher student achievement. Skeptics question whether the principal's job is realistic and reasonable, with its emphasis on instructional leadership, multiple…

This study considered the question, how do principals influence student achievement? We adopted a direct-effects model with antecedent effects to measure the relationship between principal characteristics and student achievement. Using such a model, we postulated that preservice principal characteristics, such as training and experience, enable…

Education deans in the United States describe their approach to solving leadership problems that were cast as organizational dilemmas. The deans who participated in the study had been education deans for at least 6 to 7 years, indicating that they had avoided the revolving door syndrome of 4.5 years in a single appointment. Deans described their…

The role of work-based learning is a pivotal part of developing the learning region. With rates of employment at their highest for many years across Europe, the need for up-skilling the workforce in many areas will be essential to retain competitiveness and employability. This paper will focus on quality management up-skilling in small to…

This report describes a policy analysis project examining principal evaluation instruments, policies and processes in the fifty United States, the state of Missouri, and 15 Kansas City, Missouri area school districts. Since current research demonstrates that the principal plays a critical role in the success or failure of improvement initiatives,…

This document contains remarks delivered by the Secretary of Education who spoke at the 2009 Governors Education Symposium. Secretary Duncan spoke about uses of Recovery Act funding to drive reform in four core areas of education: (1) Robust data systems that track student achievement and teacher effectiveness; (2) Teacher and principal quality;…