School psychologists are frequently called upon to assess students who have made verbal or behavioral threats of violence against others, a practice commonly known as threat assessment. One critical issue is whether the outcomes of a threat assessment generate the kind of racial disparities widely observed in school disciplinary practices. In…

This article presents analyses of documents from special schools in Sweden for students in the care of social welfare who have been assessed with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. The aim is to use actor-network theory to analyse how blame and critique are handled in individual educational plans, and how responsibilities are produced…

Purpose: The past decade has seen considerable debate about how to best evaluate the efficacy of educational improvement initiatives, and members of the educational leadership research community have entered the debate with great energy. Throughout this debate, the use of randomized experiments has been a particularly contentious subject. This…

This article takes advantage of a unique policy change to examine how principals make decisions regarding teacher dismissal. In 2004, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and Chicago Teachers Union signed a new collective bargaining agreement that gave principals the flexibility to dismiss probationary teachers for any reason and without the…

If principals have the authority to dismiss teachers, will they dismiss the less effective ones, or will they instead make perverse decisions by letting the good teachers go? Evidence from low-stakes surveys suggests that principals are able to identify the most and least effective teachers in their schools, as measured by their impact on student…

This article explores the importance of maintaining case records and draws implications for the field of educational administration. The Center for Advancing Principalship EXcellence (APEX Center) receives case records from member principals and uses them to report on how specific types of problems are dealt with in practice. (MT)

Elementary school principals' decisions about disclosure of school age children's confidential medical information was empirically studied. Participants included a stratified sample of 339 elementary school principals from the seven largest school districts in Florida. Each participant received one of six vignettes describing a student with HIV,…

Effective administrator preparation programs and professional practices are important to enhancing principals' knowledge base. In chapter 1 of this report, "Strategies of Organizing Principal Preparation: A Survey of the Danforth Principal Preparation Program," Gerald C. Ubben and Frances C. Fowler discuss their survey of facilitators of the…

This study assesses the usefulness of case records in significantly expanding the base of knowledge in education administration. Forty-six school personnel case records were examined in regard to: how respondents perceive and describe problem situations; whether or not alternative strategies are reported and, if so, what types; and what kind of…

During action research projects a great deal of written material is produced. Some of this is data generated about the project, some about the process of the research and some is reflective writing about the researcher(s). In this article I propose that a deliberate focus on the tracking of texts might be helpful in action research, particularly…