Today's superintendents are unaccustomed to sharing significant power with others and are expected to educate all youngsters effectively. Superintendents' responses to differences with their boards can profoundly affect progress in school improvement. By stressing dialog over discussion, superintendents might keep their jobs without sacrificing…

Confusion about the meaning of education makes truly educational leadership impossible. Education is a continuing effort to work at the worthwhile things in life, and educational leaders must bring communities together to discuss what is good and worthwhile, what kind of society they want to create, and what kind of education is consistent with…

Principal Chris Borgen has led the Fidalgo Elementary School in Anacortes (Washington) to excellence by collaborating with his staff on a commitment to student needs. They implemented a learning model that increased student achievement and IQ. In response to parent requests, a variety of approaches are used, including multiage classrooms,…

David Nufer, Alaska's National Distinguished Principal for 1999, uses collaboration to create a family atmosphere at Finger Lake (Alaska) Elementary School. He turned the scheduling process over to teachers, involved teachers and parents in implementing a two-track system of mixed and single-age classrooms, brought in senior citizens to supplement…

Principals play a key role in developing teacher leadership. To identify, develop, and support teacher leaders in their schools, principals should define teacher leadership, be comfortable with teacher leaders, encourage teachers to become leaders, help teachers develop leadership skills, and provide positive and limited constructive feedback.…

This case study describes the management system of Dickinson College Library. Highlights include a rotating chair instead of a director; collegiality in decision making; rotating departmental responsibilities; developing an acceptable level of expertise in both technical and public services; and an emphasis on professionalism. (Author/LRW)

Advice on making facilities facilitate education includes: an educational vision comes first, involve all stakeholders, working smarter requires a systems approach, systems-focused planning takes time, partnerships stretch limited resources, "beautiful" is not expensive, change is tough, building a community is as important as building a…

Considers strategies for the implementation of quality improvement in libraries. Highlights include structured quality improvement, especially Total Quality Management; organizational change; customer focus; continuous improvement; data-based decision making; systems thinking; employee involvement in decision making; diffusion of innovation;…

Successful development and implementation of outcome-based education requires long-range planning and ongoing commitment from all planning partners. District-level planning is essential. A well-designed strategic plan embraces OBE philosophies, premises, and principles and should consist of a district philosophy, vision, and mission and a set of…

Reflects on the nature of power and the value of collaboration in Writing Program Administration work. Argues that the WPA position is a contradictory one which contains within it the paradox of powerless power (having responsibility and little authority, having insider knowledge and being institutionally ignorant, and needing to cooperate and…

Tries to encourage teachers, principals, and others to strive to achieve authentic practices of teacher leadership and community building. Narrates the efforts of St. Patrick School in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Canada since 1996 to build a collaborative culture based on trust and good will so that the entire staff was transformed into a team of…

Drawing on the parallel literature on increasing student voice in the field of education and on building youth-adult partnerships in the youth development field, this article examines the place of young people in efforts to increase social justice in school settings. Through an examination of thirteen youth-adult partnership initiatives, it…

A 3-year project of school-wide change undertaken by a team of school counselors, administrators and counselor educators was initiated to create strong working relationships among a school's counselors, teachers, and students' families. This article delineates the goals and history of this consultation project and gives detailed examples of the…

Cultural and symbolic processes--that is, communication--quite frequently play as important a role as structural issues in enabling effective governance.

In this article, the authors feature the model, Under Control: The Damming of the Missouri River, which was designed to engage middle school students in a real-world geographic issue: investigating the long term environmental, economic and cultural impacts of the 1944 Pick-Sloan Plan, which resulted in the construction of six dams on the Missouri…