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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."
A
Principal Reflects on a Successful Learning Community
Read this article
found at the George Lucas Foundation site. A principal describes
collaborative relationships that strengthen the quality of teaching and develop
teacher leaders in an Indianapolis K-8 school..
A
Principal's Update
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.
Articles for Middle
School Principals from NASSP
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.
Brief
for Principals
The Center on Organization and Restructuring of
Schools at the University of Wisconsin has published these articles analyzing
the relationship between school management and school reform issues.
Building
Better Principals
Research indicates "principals make a big difference in
shaping the education that goes on in a school."
Council for Basic
Education
This group promotes the development of high academic
standards in K-12 education. .
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. .
Getting Staff "Buy In" for
School Reform Models
This article stresses the implementation of "proven programs"
and reference research from RAND that states that "schools that were forced (by
the district) to implement a design showed lower levels of
implementation."
Guiding
Comprehensive School Reform
In this report from McREL's Leadership Folio Series,
much information is presented. Much of it "involves critically examining the model in terms of the underlying theory, its
successful implementation and replication, its effect on student achievement,
and the studies validating its claims of effectiveness."
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.
Leadership and the New
Technologies
Visit this web site if you are a superintendent, assistant superintendent, curriculum coordinator,
technology coordinator, principal, technology committee member, or someone who
has a leadership role in the school community. You will find information about
how school district leaders support and use technology to improve teaching and learning
among its students. Expect to find news, links to resources,
online workshops, and forums for members.
Managers of
Bureaucracies Or
Leaders of 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.
Musings on
Middle Grades Principal Leadership
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.
Principal
Leadership Drives
Middle School Reform Agenda
Jefferson County, KY principals describe how
they became "leaders of standards-based reform,"
Principal Talk
Middle school principals discuss and evaluate samples of student work.
Work samples
and rubric can be found here..
Powerful Ideas for Changing
Schools
Come to this site to read how Central Park East Elementary
School has improved its instructional strategies.
Principal Internships: Five
Tips for Success
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.
Reality
Check 2001 (2/21/01)
The Public Agenda and Education
Week joined together on this project. They produced an annual report on the progress of the
academic-standards movement and the impact of reform efforts
on schools and the business world.
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."
Send Me In, Coach
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.
School Leadership Profile for
Principals
If you are a principal or hold a leadership position in your
school, where do you fall on a school improvement-oriented educational
leadership scale? This website describes five dimensions of educational
leadership and offers an opportunity for self-assessment and reflection.
Includes bibliography.
Six Steps to an Achieving
Middle School
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
Is the School Leader's Role
In Sustaining School Reform?
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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