School Districts

A report by the Brown Center on Education Policy released in September 2014 finds that school superintendents are around for only a short time and have very little impact when it comes to improving student performance.

The concept of strategic leadership has been in the discourse of corporate governance and
management but in recent days, strategic leadership has become a concept in education
literature. Strategic leadership is also relevant in education more especially in a PK-12
educational setting.

This article examines the politics of principal evaluation through both an extensive review of the literature and in-depth interviews with principals and superintendents. The findings reveal that the format and processes used in principal evaluation often vary from one district to another and that principals and superintendents frequently hold different perspectives about the purposes and usefulness of evaluation.

Almost every state in the United States has revamped its principal evaluation policies since 2009, yet we know little about how they are implemented. Based on interviews and document analysis in 21 small- and medium-sized school districts, we found that superintendents’ sense making shaped their implementation of policy.

This paper describes a continuous learning model of principal and superintendent support. The model places a premium on engagement at all levels of the system on shaping a focused culture of instruction within their schools.

Principal supervisors are a potential point of leverage for supporting and developing principals' effectiveness, but little is known about the effectiveness of this approach. The overarching hypothesis of the PSI was that changing the role of principal supervisors from overseeing operations to developing principals' instructional leadership practices could drive improvement in principal effectiveness.

In this article, the authors examine leadership for effective learning employing research on highly productive schools and districts and high-performing principals and superintendents.

The Howard County school board agreed to pay nearly $1.65 million in salary and benefits to persuade Renee Foose to retire as schools superintendent.

Whether they are termed regional or assistant superintendents, area directors, instructional leadership supervisors, executive officers, or some other title, a leadership hierarchy is employed in school districts in the United States whereby principals report to and are managed or supported by principal supervisors. Traditionally, this role has primarily been one of representing the demands or expectations of the central office to the school by focusing on providing information about district initiatives and ensuring compliance.

Often principals in urban school districts report to a central office staff person whose primary function is to supervise principals. Over the past decade, the principal supervisor role has shifted away from administrative oversight toward developing principals’ instructional leadership capacity. As principals are increasingly responsible for driving improvement in their schools, the demands of supervising principals similarly have changed.

When school boards offer hefty buy-out packages to get rid of superintendents with whom they no longer see eye-to-eye, do taxpayers get the shaft?

This efficient casebook enables 3-way communication between the student teacher, the cooperating teacher, and the university supervisor and discusses the reality of functioning within a team of comrades who bring goals and perspectives that are sometimes identical, and at others times different, to a common student teaching experience.

The article examines the tensions one superintendent in the USA experienced as he evaluated principals in a high-stakes environment that had undergone numerous transformations at the central office. Using qualitative methods, primarily, shadowing techniques, observations and debriefing, the following tensions emerged and were examined in light of the work of the superintendent evaluating principal performance.