Alarmed by mounting evidence of a national shortage of qualified and willing principals, the authors surveyed or interviewed over 200 school principals from across the country to find out why so many are leaving the profession and how those who stay manage their work. They discovered that regardless of a principal's race, gender, school level, geographic region, or tenure, there was a remarkable consistency in the challenges identified and suggestions given for revamping the role of the American principal. Featuring stories shared by practicing principals, this timely volume: offers fresh insights on ways to both attract and retain good principals; shows how successful principals reconcile their expectations and hopes with the realities and disappointments encountered in their work; examines issues common to all principals, such as time management, staff evaluations, keeping the focus on instruction, community expectations, and pursuing a balanced life; presents strategies that principals have used to make their role more effective and more attractive; and provides practical ideas for coping with the present and envisioning the future, including alternative principal models.
This edited volume examines innovative ways of preparing, supervising, and evaluating principals and explores factors that promote effective leadership practices. Chapter authors consider how principals’ leadership practices affect teachers’ instruction, satisfaction, commitment, retention, and effectiveness, and present evidence that principals can influence key student outcomes as well. Covering topics such as school leaders’ use of time, their efforts to reduce implicit bias, how leadership practices are associated with teachers’ workplace attitudes, leadership and student achievement, and how school leaders can best be supported under new federal legislation, this volume is a “must read” for educational leadership and policy faculty, school and district administrators, and researchers committed to promoting effective principal leadership.
Exceptional management skills are crucial to success in educational environments. As school leaders, principals are expected to effectively supervise the school system while facing a multitude of issues and demands. Multidimensional Perspectives on Principal Leadership Effectiveness combines best practices and the latest approaches in school administration and management. Exploring the challenges faced by principals, as well as the impact of new managerial tactics being employed, this book is a comprehensive reference publication for policymakers, academicians, researchers, students, school practitioners, and government officials seeking current and emerging research on administrative leadership in educational settings.
By detailing an explanatory sequential mixed methods study grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT), this book explores the role of effective educational leadership in developing multicultural acceptance in predominantly white schools. Drawing on the rich experiences and accounts of school principals in rural middle schools in the US, the volume asks how principals’ personal attitudes, professional experiences, and the degree to which they view themselves as a mentor and influencer within the school impacts their approach to improving multicultural understanding amongst students, staff, and faculty. The text is organized into five clear chapters, providing critical reflections, a review of the relevant literature, and in-depth discussion of first-hand data. Six key findings relating to whole-school acceptance, the role of individual principal’s attitudes, and support for teaching staff open new avenues for research and inform recommendations for the professional development of school principals. In presenting key theory and practical implications of research, this book will be crucial reading for researchers, scholars, and practitioners in the fields of educational leadership, multicultural education, sociology of education, and teacher education.
Developed from research on successful school turnaround initiatives that highlight the best practices of school leaders (Elmore, 2004; Leithwood et al., 2010), the Diagnostic Tool for School and District Effectiveness (DTSDE) was introduced by the New York State Education Department (NYSED) as a mandated component of the accountability and improvement processes for turning around underachieving schools were that labeled as Focus Schools or Priority Schools (NYSED, 2012). The DTSDE process has evolved since its inception in 2012, however there is a lack of research exploring the impact of the DTSDE on the long-term leadership actions and behaviors of the school principal that sustain a process of continuous improvement. The purpose of this qualitative comparative case study was to explore the role of principal leadership in advancing the school improvement process by examining the actions and behaviors of principals in four former Focus public secondary schools in New York State. Using the four components of Fullan and Quinn's (2016) Coherence Framework, three research questions studied the school principal's actions and behaviors before, during, and after viii the Focus designation to determine if the structure of the DTSDE sufficiently influenced the school leader's actions and behaviors to sustain a culture of continuous improvement after the Focus designation. Data were gathered through interviews with principals, teachers, and districtlevel leaders. Key findings showed that school leaders were not purposefully promoting a culture of continuous improvement prior to the Focus designation. Participation in the DTSDE process, throughout the Focus designation, led to an increase in the actions and behaviors that are known to support continuous improvement, however the DTSDE did not advance the long-term actions and behaviors of the majority of the principals to the extent described in the Coherence Framework (Fullan & Quinn, 2016) after the conclusion of the Focus designation. Analysis of the data suggested that the DTSDE was effective in advancing the leadership actions and behaviors after the Focus designation in only one out of four cases studied. Several conclusions were identified from the findings including: 1) There was a lack of evidence to support the use of a research-based leadership framework model for continuous improvement, with an embedded data-driven system, prior to the Focus designation; 2) The DTSDE process served as a mechanism for school leaders to begin the process of developing a data-driven culture for continuous improvement during the Focus designation; and 3) There was a lack of evidence to support that the DTSDE process advanced the sustained use of a researchbased leadership framework model for continuous improvement, with an embedded data-driven system, after the Focus designation.
Improving the nation's public schools is one of the highest priorities of federal, state, and local government in America. Recent research has shown that the quality of the principal is, among school-based factors, second only to the quality of the teacher in contributing to what students learn in the classroom. New programs to develop school leaders who can exercise vigilance over instruction and support effective teaching practices are not likely to succeed, however, if they are inconsistent with other state and district policies affecting school leadership. The Wallace Foundation, which focuses its grantmaking in education primarily on school leadership, has posited that well-coordinated policies and initiatives to develop leadership standards, provide high-quality training, and improve the conditions that affect principals' work will increase their ability to improve instruction in their schools. This study documents the actions taken by the Foundation's grantees to create a more cohesive set of policies and initiatives to improve instructional leadership in schools; describes how states and districts have worked together to forge such policies and initiatives around school leadership; and examines the hypothesis that more-cohesive systems do in fact improve school leadership. The study found that it is possible to build more-cohesive leadership systems and that such efforts appear to be a promising approach to developing school leaders engaged in improving instruction. Although the study did not find evidence that the full underlying theory behind this initiative is sound, it did find a correlation between improved conditions for principals and their engagement in instructional practices.
Our fourth book in the International Research on School Leadership series focuses on school leadership in an era of high stakes accountability. Fueled by sweeping federal education accountability reforms, such as the United States’ No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (R2T) and Australia’s Performance Measurement and Reporting Taskforce, school systems around the world are being forced to increase academic standards, participate in high-stakes testing, and raise evaluation standards for teachers and principals. These results-driven reforms are intended to hold educators “accountable for student learning and accountable to the public” (Anderson, 2005, p. 2, emphasis in original). While policymakers and the public debate the merits of student achievement accountability measures, P-12 educational leaders do not have the luxury to wait for clear guidance and resources to improve their schools and operating systems. Instead, successful leaders must balance the need to create learning communities, manage the organizational climate, and encourage community involvement with the consequences testing has on teacher morale and public scrutiny. The chapters in this volume clearly indicate that as school leaders attend to these potentially competing forces, this affects their problem-solving strategies, ability to facilitate change, and encourage community involvement. We were delighted with the responses from colleagues around the world who were eager to share their research dealing with how leaders are functioning effectively within a high-accountability environment. The nine chapters in this volume provide empirical evidence of the strategies school leaders use to cope with problems and negotiate external demands while improving student performance. In particular, the voices and actions of principals, superintendents, and school board members are captured in a blend of quantitative and qualitative studies. The breadth of studies is impressive, ranging from case studies of individual principals to cross-district comparisons to national data from the National Center for Education Statistics. To highlight important findings, we have organized the book into five sections. The first section (Chapters 2, 3, and 4) highlights the problem-solving strategies used by principals and superintendents when pressured to turn around low-performing schools. In the second section (Chapters 5 and 6), attention is devoted to ways in which school leaders act as “buffers” by reducing the impact of external demands within their local school contexts. Next, Chapters 7 and 8 explore creative ways in which financial analyses can be used to assess the cost effectiveness of programs and services. Chapters 9 and 10 examine how principals enact their instructional leadership roles in managing curriculum reforms and evaluating teachers. Finally, in the last section (Chapter 11), Kenneth Leithwood synthesizes the major themes and ideas emerging across these chapters, paying particular attention to practical issues influencing school leaders in this era of school reform and accountability as well as promising areas for future research.
Children in today's world are inundated with information about who to be, what to do and how to live. But what if there was a way to teach children how to manage priorities, focus on goals and be a positive influence on the world around them? The Leader in Meis that programme. It's based on a hugely successful initiative carried out at the A.B. Combs Elementary School in North Carolina. To hear the parents of A. B Combs talk about the school is to be amazed. In 1999, the school debuted a programme that taught The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleto a pilot group of students. The parents reported an incredible change in their children, who blossomed under the programme. By the end of the following year the average end-of-grade scores had leapt from 84 to 94. This book will launch the message onto a much larger platform. Stephen R. Covey takes the 7 Habits, that have already changed the lives of millions of people, and shows how children can use them as they develop. Those habits -- be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek to understand and then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw -- are critical skills to learn at a young age and bring incredible results, proving that it's never too early to teach someone how to live well.
Thailand is entering into a new phase of educational administration under the new National Education Act of 1999 which requires all educational institutions to have internal and external quality assurance in order to ensure improvement of educational quality and standards at all levels (Section 47). This means that all educational institutions, especially in the private sector, have to undergo many changes, including changes in administration, teaching and learning processes, methods of evaluation and professional development programs. The current study focused specifically on the transformational leadership behaviour of principals on school culture. Culture is considered to be a key factor in determining whether school improvement is possible (Deal & Peterson, 1999). The study was conducted in two phases: quantitative and a qualitative, and carried out in the secondary schools of the Brothers of St. Gabriel, in Thailand. In the quantitative phase, the researcher used two instruments, namely the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ, Short form) developed by Bass (2000) to measure the leadership behaviour of principals, and the School Culture Survey developed by Gruenert (1998) to measure school culture. The results from the quantitative study were used to select a school for the second phase of the study that was carried out using a qualitative approach. The quantitative findings provided descriptive evidence that transformational leadership existed in the schools of the Brothers of St. Gabriel, in Thailand and the dominant culture of the Gabrieltie schools was Professional Development. In addition, the findings also revealed that there was a significant relationship between leadership behaviour and school culture. In the second phase, the leadership behaviour of the selected principal was interpreted based on transformational leadership applied in a school setting. ....
