Driven by Data


Book Description

Offers a practical guide for improving schools dramatically that will enable all students from all backgrounds to achieve at high levels. Includes assessment forms, an index, and a DVD.




Beginning the Principalship


Book Description

Principals are today’s newest superheroes, and every superhero needs a mentor. Daresh and Alexander offer encouragement in a practical hands-on guide to help principals navigate the challenges of leadership. Discover how to: Drive student learning as the primary mission of the school Deal with others’ expectations of you as principal Master the technical skills needed to run an efficient school Create and clarify a personal professional growth plan Work effectively with the greater community and parents Celebrate instructional and non-instructional staff in a positive school culture Don’t just survive. Read this guide and thrive!




The Principal's Guide to Time Management


Book Description

Make the most of your time—and your leadership Is your school’s vision getting buried under paperwork? If you spend more time picking up pieces than putting them together, this is your book. Written by seasoned school principals, this plan of action will get you back to the essence of your job: instructional leadership. By using educational technology to maximize efficiency, you’ll improve teaching, student achievement, resource management, and school culture. This comprehensive guide features: Easy-to-follow, single-topic chapters Standards–based scenarios and questions Time-management self-assessments Easily adaptable experiential exercises Strategies for battling the “silent time thief”




Improving Principal Effectiveness


Book Description




Exploring Principal Development and Teacher Outcomes


Book Description

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.




Organizing Schools for Improvement


Book Description

In 1988, the Chicago public school system decentralized, granting parents and communities significant resources and authority to reform their schools in dramatic ways. To track the effects of this bold experiment, the authors of Organizing Schools for Improvement collected a wealth of data on elementary schools in Chicago. Over a seven-year period they identified one hundred elementary schools that had substantially improved—and one hundred that had not. What did the successful schools do to accelerate student learning? The authors of this illuminating book identify a comprehensive set of practices and conditions that were key factors for improvement, including school leadership, the professional capacity of the faculty and staff, and a student-centered learning climate. In addition, they analyze the impact of social dynamics, including crime, critically examining the inextricable link between schools and their communities. Putting their data onto a more human scale, they also chronicle the stories of two neighboring schools with very different trajectories. The lessons gleaned from this groundbreaking study will be invaluable for anyone involved with urban education.




Leaders of Learning


Book Description

For many years, the authors have been fellow travelers on the journey to help educators improve their schools. Their first coauthored book focuses on district leadership, principal leadership, and team leadership and addresses how individual teachers can be most effective in leading students—by learning with colleagues how to implement the most promising pedagogy in their classrooms




Principal Pipelines


Book Description

This report describes the implementation of The Wallace Foundation's Principal Pipeline Initiative and its effects on student achievement, other school outcomes, and principal retention.




Improving Teacher Evaluation Systems


Book Description

This is the first book to pull together what we have learned about the impacts and challenges of data-intensive teacher evaluation systemsa defining characteristic of the current education policy landscape. Expert researchers and practitioners speak to what we know (and what remains to be known) about evaluation measures themselves, the implementation of evaluation systems, and the use of evaluation data. The authors argue that rigorous teacher evaluation systems have the potential to promote school improvement but only if the systems are carefully designed and implemented and the data they generate are interpreted and used appropriately. This timely and important volume will be relevant and useful to school and district administrators, policymakers, researchers, and teacher education institutions grappling with issues of teacher accountability and school leadership.




Improving School Leadership


Book Description

This study documents actions of Wallace Foundation grantees to create more-cohesive policies and initiatives to improve instructional leadership in schools; describes how states and districts have worked together to forge such policies and initiatives; and examines the hypothesis that cohesive systems improve school leadership. Such efforts appear to be a promising approach to developing school principals engaged in improving instruction.