Higher turnover rates, decreased tenure, diminished job appeal, a shrinking pool of candidates, longer superintendent searches, and school districts' economic stresses and political and social cultures contribute to increases in the incidence of interim superintendent appointments and tenures. Because of these dynamics, more interim…

This book demonstrates the centrality of caring in educational administration. As a conceptual framework that emphasizes personal development and the cultivation of community, an ethic of caring can be used to improve academic performance, combat social problems, and rethink organizational strategies. Chapter 1 draws from scholarship in a number…

This paper presents the results of a pilot study of African American public administrators' attitudes toward cultural diversity management in the Fall of 1995. It is based on an open-ended national survey that was mailed to 394 federal, state, and local African American public administrators. The study asked respondents about the special knowledge…

Program reviews provide department chairs and faculty with vital information about the need for their program, changes that can improve the program's viability, and needs for resource allocation. In addition, well-designed reviews will determine program effectiveness and lead to improvements in program quality. In recent years, the role of program…

One of the most important responsibilities of community college academic leaders is to encourage and provide resources for professional development. A Teaching-Learning Center (TLC) can be a crucial resource for achieving that goal. Trends in faculty and student demographics, the expansion of technology, changes in college governance, and declines…

Building principals who demonstrate positive language arts leadership can have a major impact on children's literacy learning. Even extremely busy administrators can find time to read educational newspapers and newsletters, which provide pertinent information about forthcoming workshops and conferences, professional and instructional resources,…

Leaders need to be forceful--to assert themselves and push others to action. They must also be enabling--to discover and bring out the capabilities of others. The problem is that many executives see forceful leadership and enabling leadership as mutually exclusive or strongly favor one approach over the other, thus lacking the versatility they…

Beginning principals in developing countries face drastically different problems than do their counterparts in developed countries. This paper presents findings of a study that surveyed Kenyan secondary school principals about the challenges they encountered. The questionnaire was sent to 200 secondary school principals--100 beginning and 100…

In many schools, the assistant principal is poorly trained to assume administrative responsibilities. This paper presents an overview of research that has examined the assistant principal's role. It argues that assistant principals will be expected to take on the new roles of team management and public relations, necessitating their effective use…

As representatives of their college and in working with the college community, community college trustees enter into numerous relationships, each of which has associated roles and responsibilities. Responsibilities of the board chairperson, for example, include working with the president to set meeting agenda, appointing committee members, serving…

Successive waves of school reform since 1985 have brought about massive transformations in the roles and responsibilities of principals in Chicago Public Schools. The time period has also been marked by high principal turnover. This report presents findings of a study conducted in the fall of 1994 by the Department of Research, Evaluation, and…

At a time of widespread public cynicism about social institutions, America's community colleges are striving to reconnect with the communities they serve and function as catalysts for community renewal. In a recent national survey, about a third of the colleges questioned had formalized service learning in their course work, and nearly half…

"Vision" is one of the most frequently used buzzwords in the education literature of the 1990s. This digest presents an overview of visionary leadership, which many education experts consider to be a make-or-break task for the school leader. It discusses various definitions of vision, the significance of vision for organizations, the…

Education program specialists in the United States Department of Education establish and lead the education program, policies, and activities for which the Department of Education is responsible under law. This brochure provides information about the job of education program specialist, describing how the specialists fit into the department's…

Principals encourage student academic gain by the ways in which they govern the school, build strong collaborative relationships, and organize and allocate professional work time. Because these activities are important predictors of academic achievement, along with quality teacher activities, further information is also provided about how…