A presidential transition has a major impact on the life of an institution. Hundreds of presidential transitions take place annually, and when they are not amicable and carefully orchestrated, they can scar both the institution and the president. This book is designed to provide assistance to presidents, trustees, faculty, and other important…

This book is a guide to special and inclusive education and provides a comprehensive overview of this complex field. Author Stephen Rayner examines context, policy, and practice, and shows how to successfully navigate the managerial challenges involved, while contributing to the way forward through leadership in a diverse field. The author…

Today, over a third of the nation's English language learners attend school in California, where they comprise more than a quarter of all its students. However, one million 18- to 24-year old Californians, about 30 percent of this age group, do not have a high school diploma. Regarding high school graduation rates, California ranks 45th among the…

This study examines tracking--the practice of grouping students into separate classes or courses based on their prior academic achievement--at the middle-school level, and the percentage of high-achieving students in tracked and untracked schools. It focuses on Massachusetts, a leader in "reforming" tracking, and the changes that have…

Successful transition planning is a lifelong process in which the student, family members, friends, and professionals come together to develop and act upon a plan that will lead to a successful adult life. For this reason, transition planning has become a part of several federal laws. The most encompassing of these laws, the Individuals with…

Although the number of urban Catholic schools has declined in recent years, Nativity model middle schools, first developed by the Jesuits over 35 years ago, have appeared throughout the nation to address the need for effective alternative education for urban children placed at risk. The present study compares the effectiveness of two types of…

The AIDS epidemic presents a complex of issues that require global answers, involving entire societies. The only sustainable solution is to include all sectors of society in a multidisciplinary collaboration, within which the formal education system plays a key role in delivering a comprehensive response to the disease at the national level.…

The authors present a checklist designed to help preschool and kindergarten administrators and teachers build confidence in their ability to be inclusive and to increase their awareness of the needs of children with disabilities. Teachers can use the checklist to prepare for the inclusion of a child with a disability. "Identifying potential…

Successful implementation of school-based management (SBM) begins with effective principal leadership. This paper describes findings of a study that examined the principal's role in implementing school-based decision making. Ethnographic data were collected over a 3-year period in 4 elementary schools that implemented SBM. Methods included…

This monograph explores the notion of viewing leadership as a single, interconnecting system at work in the internal and external school environment, rather than as a collection of individual roles. The document explores what the new leadership paradigm--a decentralized, collaborative model--means to schools. Leadership is viewed as an…

This newsletter provides examples from four small, rural school districts of how innovative superintendents plan and provide resources and provide staff development, which are two of the six ways that school administrators effect change. The superintendents are located in a small poor district in the Arkansas Mississippi Delta region, a primarily…

This paper offers recommendations for establishing meaningful integration opportunities for preschool children with disabilities, derived from the work of the Research Institute on Preschool Mainstreaming, a 5-year federally funded project of St. Peter's Child Development Centers, Inc., in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The knowledge base on preschool…

This paper focuses on a program at Marist Sisters' College, Woolwich (MSCW), an Australian secondary school, that integrates information skills into subject curriculums. A description of the school which includes its philosophy and ethnic makeup is presented to give a context for the program. The research project investigated the impact of…

What leaders encourage others to do must be congruent with the values they espouse and demonstrate through action. The educational leadership platform has recently been used as a tool to assist aspiring leaders in clarifying their personal values. This paper presents findings of a study that explored the effect of the educational leadership…

Four papers address the changing roles of system administrators in multicampus public higher education systems such as the State University of New York (SUNY). In the first paper, by Joseph C. Burke, "Unity and Diversity: SUNY's Challenge Not Its Choice," the role of a public university system is defined as doing for its campuses only…