In March 2020, schools along with businesses across the United States began to shut down as a result of COVID-19. In addition, the slayings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor would spark civil unrest during the polarizing election year with President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden on a crash course to be elected as the commander…

Schools are dynamic environments surrounded by static brick and mortar. Schools are a complex entanglement of systems clinging to normalcy led and composed of individuals seeking growth and progress. There is constant turnover as students move through the systems, gaining mastery, seeking support, and receiving guidance. Employees similarly move…

The job of a school leader is more challenging--and important--than ever. To be effective, administrators need to support their students and staff, but they also need to take care of themselves. Bestselling author Baruti K. Kafele brings this motivational message to the pivotal members of the leadership team who are too often overlooked: assistant…

The contexts in which people immerse themselves, as well as the people they interact with, contribute immensely to people's understanding of self. As a person grows, lives and operates in different contexts with different people, he/she develops a self-concept or a particular understanding of oneself. This understanding constitutes an identity…

Each year, SC TEACHER publishes different workforce profiles, sharing details and demographics around South Carolina educators for a better understanding of our public school workforce. Among these publications, this report is the first to examine the state's school "administrator" workforce. The analysis in this report uses statewide…

This article, as an opinion piece, considers the importance of developing a succession plan that can be implemented when a vacancy occurs in school leadership. While succession planning is a common practice within corporations, businesses and governments, schools also have to be thoughtful and prepared for change. A change in leadership can be…

In 2020-2021, evaluation focused on continuing to monitor and assess the HireVue and assessment center processes in relation to AP and principal hiring practices. To help ensure that the hiring processes were operating as designed, survey feedback AP and principal candidates provided perceptions of the hiring process. Passthrough rates also…

The author identifies 10 phases of the principal development pipeline, some of which are seldom acknowledged and many of which are inadequately addressed. The author argues that various stakeholder groups should collaborate to provide continuous professional development to future and current principals through each phase of the pipeline. Examples…

The main purpose of the 2019-2020 evaluation of the Department of Leadership Development was to evaluate the implementation of the newly developed assistant principal (AP) and principal hiring processes, designed to select a diverse group of equity-focused, effective novice leaders. The hiring process consisted of using an online video…

Current percentages of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) principals largely mirror those of the teacher workforce. They, however, diverge from student demographics. We provide insight into these racial imbalances by charting principal preparation patterns and demonstrating the typical leadership pipeline in Texas. In doing so, we draw…

For teachers seeking formal school leadership roles the key choices have been either the vice- principalship or the principalship. In Ontario, Canada, however, the principalship has traditionally been considered the premier leadership goal with the vice-principalship regarded as merely a necessary transitional step toward achieving the…

In Australia, there is a national education agenda for school improvement with an increasing focus on how school leaders can fulfil this agenda. As school principals are arguably faced with increasing demands, the importance of school middle leaders is increasing. This article presents the initial findings from a larger project on middle…

Many states across the nation are working to improve school leadership, some on a substantial scale. Several factors encourage state-level work focused on principals, including: research evidence of principal effects on student learning, flexibility in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), new national professional standards for principals,…

The authors review the current school principal leadership development program in Hong Kong and analyze the challenges and opportunities based on existing scholarly work in the field. Based on the previous analysis from the literature, five areas in current principal leadership development are identified as key dimensions which need further…

We reviewed the scholarship on capacities for educational leadership for the past decade of the pre-reform era (1976-1985), as well as a recent decade of the reform era (2005-2015), and compared scholarship from both decades with the current Professional Standards for Educational Leaders. We found that scholars in the past decade of the pre-reform…