Information for Principals & School Leaders
A
Middle School Principal Pursuing "radical reform"
Canton Middle School,
an? inner-city Baltimore school, has been the focus of a radical
restructuring. A report by? Teacher magazine states that principal Craig Spilman "has done away with tracking and grade levels,
replacing them with multiage teams of students who stay with the same group of
teachers from year to year. Read how teachers organize their
days and programs as they deem important to achieve their educational goals."
? This weekly
electronic newsletter from NASSP updates school
leaders on the latest developments in federal
education policy and school law, education news
from around the nation, and NASSP's efforts to
support principals nationwide.
The National Association of Secondary School
Principals? publications NASSP Bulletin and Principal Leadership provides
insight into many topics and issues of interest to building principals.
Building
Better Principals
Research indicates "principals make a big difference in
shaping the education that goes on in a school."
Ensuring
Equity with Alternative Assessments (1/15/98)
A critical issues report from NCREL which discusses the promises and the challenges inherent in
using alternative assessment practices to make decisions.
FairTest: The National Center for Fair
& Open Testing
This is an advocacy organization seeking to end the
abuses, misuses and flaws of standardized testing and ensure that evaluation of
students and workers is fair, open and educationally sound.
Followership and
Leadership
The leadership development efforts of AASA focus primarily
on its professional development conferences and
seminars and the AASA Center for System
Leadership.? .
High Stakes Tests Do
Not Improve Student Learning (3/18/98)
A FairTest Report by Monty Neill? ?
Improving Student
Achievement: What NAEP State Test Scores Tell Us
Rand researchers find Texas first, California last in cross-state NAEP comparison
Job-Embedded
Principal Training
"Quietly, under cover of educational lingo and
university requirements, reformers around the country have established
beachheads of clinical education for principals. The programs view schools --
not university lecture halls -- as the proper training ground for future
leaders, and they put student learning as job one for principals." so says "Building on
Experience," Education Week, 5/3/00. Come and read all about it!
Leadership
Qualities Needed to Change Schools
The Institute for
Responsive Education identifies qualities believed to be necessary for those
leading educational reform.
Barbara Neufeld, Harvard researcher, describes what
her research says about middle school principals and characteristic of what
qualities it takes to be leaders of school reform.
Hayes Mizell interviewed for the Jan.1999 issue of "Ink", a newsletter published by the National
Association of Secondary School Principals.? Participants in
the "Principals Make a Difference" project on middle grades standards-based
reform (funded by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation) received a copy of this
work.? Many topics of great interest to school leaders appear in this work.
New
Superintendents E-Journal
The AASA
New Superintendents E-Journal is a quarterly
electronic newsletter written specifically for
those who are in their first months and years of
the superintendency. Even if you are a veteran
superintendent who just landed a job in a new
district, these e-journal articles provide a
refresher course on issues to keep front and
center during the early tenure of your new post.
Portrait of
the Super Principal
This? Harvard Education Letter seeks to identify ways to attract administrators in spite of all of the drawbacks the job
issues.
Preparing
Principals for Complex Leadership
This? February 2001 issue of "Strategies," published by AASA and the Panasonic Foundation,
examines? three school systems dedicate to building principals' capacity to meet new challenges.
You will discover the secrets shard by? Hamilton Co. of Chattanooga TN's
principal leadership center.
Jefferson County, KY principals describe how
they became "leaders of standards-based reform,"
Middle school principals discuss and evaluate samples of student work.
Come to this site to read how? Central Park East Elementary
School has improved its instructional strategies.
Join a middle school principal as she describes lessons learned during
her internship.
Principal Leadership Drives
Middle School Reform Agenda
Principals in Jefferson County, KY work to
identify? their role in leadership and supporting structures to achieve
their goals.? Read about the? exchange among the principals
about how they examine student work.
Prisoners
of Time
The National Education Commission on Time and Learning presents
its findings and recommendations regarding the management of instructional and
professional development time in this report.
Reinventing the
Principalship
Read this report in PDF format? from the Institute
for Educational Leadership,? "Leadership for Student Learning: Reinventing the Principalship".
The contents is from the work of IEL's Task Force on Principal Leadership. Find
out how? "The core mission of the principalship must be redefined as
leadership for student learning. Communities must fill the pipeline with
effective school leaders...and guarantee quality and results."
Read what the director of the Boston Plan for
Excellence describes as the progress of an initiative that has "change" coaches and
"content" coaches offering principals and teachers "the kind of professional
development that research says is most effective in schools that have active ongoing
change......" This information comes from the KAPPAN article of June 2001.
Hayes Mizell offers the definition of an achieving middle
school:? "It
is a school whose mission, ethos, culture, structure, organization, curriculum,
co-curriculum, and instruction is explicitly dedicated to the achievement of
every student and every adult in the building. It is a school where from the
time a visitor walks in the front door there is no doubt that the school's focus
is on advancing the achievement of every student and every adult.... In the
achieving middle school the administrators, teachers, and students understand
that they all have something to teach and a lot to learn." Come and read more
from Mizell.
Standards for
School Leaders
The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium
(ISLLC), a program of the Council of Chief State School Officers, whose mission
is developing school standards "forged from research on productive educational
leadership and the wisdom of colleagues, the standards were drafted by personnel
from 24 state education agencies and representatives from various professional
associations. The standards present a common core of knowledge, dispositions,
and performances that will help link leadership more forcefully to productive
schools and enhanced educational outcomes." PDF Format (Adobe Acrobat
required)
Strategies For
School System Leaders on District-Level Change
The Panasonic
Foundation collaborating with the American
Association of School Administrators report on
various issues.
The
Leadership Institute's Benchmarking Consortium
shows off its data analysis tool (2/24/06)
Technological
Literacy for Administrators
Seven
rubrics offered from the School Administrator ? magazine may
help school leaders determine how? to best? use information
technologies. "Planning for good administrative use of technology also requires
that administrators assess their own technological skills so they can plan for
their own professional development needs." A must read article for those who
lead schools where technology integration is not fully deployed.
What "habits of mind & heart" help
school leaders guide successful school change over time? Summary of a USDE study
with link to complete document.
What Makes
Principals "Highly Successful"?
Read the results of a survey completed
from Washington State
principals. They were asked to determine the factors? likely to prevent schools from raising
student achievement. The results identified the lack of visionary leadership.
Find more about this? study by Seattle Pacific University in this Education
World article.
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