Ten suggestions for having a successful principalship include: focus on instruction; build a community of learners; share decision making; sustain the basics; leverage time; support ongoing professional development for all staff; assess and redirect resources necessary to support a multifaceted school plan; have integrity; remain competent; and…

Describes programs of the National College for School Leadership (NCSL). Introduces three articles dealing with leadership in urban schools and those with challenging circumstances that emerged from work supported by NCSL. All three articles explore the concept of distributed leadership. (PKP)

Examines site-based management's effects on schools, using a Canadian framework and drawing on research from the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. As branches carrying the "corporate line," schools still lack local decision-making flexibility. Principals' workload is more demanding, and student learning outcomes have not…

Presents descriptive and conceptual findings about shared-governance leadership from the perspective of 45 effective principals affiliated with the Georgia-based League of Professional Schools. Discusses contributing socialization factors and strategies (building trust, initiating facilitative structures, setting limits, encouraging group…

Neglected in educational literature, assistant principals can nonetheless help principals by acting as vision codesigners, teacher coaches and evaluators, master schedule designers, program developers, instructional managers, and communicators. Shared instructional leadership allows for greater job control, flexibility, initiative, collegial…

Uses Argentina as an example to explore issues of participatory reform and democracy, discussing the national and international background of Argentina's educational reform and describing the Argentinean educational system and sociocultural realities that create the local context of reform. Uses findings from studies of school site councils in…

Discusses the history of community control of public education, examining: sub-regional communities (New York City's community school boards and Detroit's regional decentralization); school-based decentralization (preserving professional privilege in Salt Lake City and local school councils in Chicago); balancing bottom-up and top-down; whether…

England's Education Action Zones and their forums seek to draw together diverse constituencies to develop and implement local plans for school improvement, thereby empowering parents and communities. This article, based on interviews with EAZ applicants and directors, explores EAZ's imperfectly realized potential to democratize schooling.…

On average, about 25 percent of students leave higher education (HE) institutions annually in South Africa because they are excluded on academic and financial grounds. To resist such putouts, student boycotts and protests are common despite the fact that student organizations were incorporated into decision-making processes at HE institutions…

This work presents questions related to the viability and the requirements for the implementation of a National Policy of Water Resources in Brazil, and identifies the means to bring about active participation by the population in the management of water resources. While social inequalities may be an impediment to the implementation of full…

Community college leaders commonly think of community college leadership in terms of rationality, expertise, power, negotiations, and legalisms rather than the more human, loving, symbolic, and transcendent dimensions of their work. Yet the giving of oneself to a common cause, to a higher calling, is the most important role community college…

In this article, the author emphasizes that student's opinions are seldom heard regarding the issue on school improvement. School boards, politicians, government officials, newspaper columnists, and others give strong opinions on what schools and teachers need to do better, but seldom the students are being heard. Here she discusses some of the…

Before youth can be accepted as important players in school decision making, the concept of student voice must gain acceptance among powerful stakeholders in the school. Using social movement theory as a lens, this article examines the consequences of positioning a student voice effort inside or outside of school walls. Positioning influences the…

The story of Bryon Elementary School's 10-year transformation is a story of school improvement. Moreover, it's a story of a cultural change that altered roles, responsibilities, and expectations and led to significant gains in student achievement. A principal, faculty, and staff who were driven by a common vision, who spoke a common language, and…

Holistic school renewal will require a qualitatively different discourse than the current uneasy conversations about school improvement and school effectiveness. Leadership for whole school renewal requires emotionally safe spaces for learning and growing together. Visions of school leadership as distributed, distributive and shared are grounded…