The Challenge for School Leaders identifies essential systems and their elements that enhance the school leader’s knowledge and skill to continually improve the academic program through a faculty collaborative process. The critical systems addressed are system elements, communication, curriculum, instruction, assessment, and collaborative decision making to determine causes of nonproductive systems and solutions to remove and solve these issues. The text includes a pre- and post-school assessment survey process that involves the faculty and administrators in evaluating their school, and identifying critical areas that need improvement. This survey has been statistically affirmed for high reliability and validity with respect to academic system behaviors correlated with high academic student performance. The continual improvement philosophy is the foundation of this text and collaboration is the method by which this concept is achieved. The value of each person is critical, and everyone is needed to improve the academic systems to serve the needs of the students and the faculty. The communication linkage system as well as curriculum-instruction-assessment integration is addressed and is essential to the improvement process. The analysis and improvement of the instructional process is the key to enhancing student academic performance. The concepts and practical suggestions along with the knowledge and skills to build an effective academic system for students is the aim of this study.

The Challenge for School Leaders identifies essential systems and their elements that enhance the school leader s knowledge and skill to continually improve the academic program through a faculty collaborative process."

The work of educational leaders depends on relationships with people--faculty and staff members, students, other administrators, parents, and community members. This book presents a new way of viewing leadership: how to become person-centered leaders. Rather than relying on outdated ways of managing schools, principals and other leaders must take up the challenge of paying attention to the people issues of the school. Through many examples, the authors show how school leaders must * consciously seek the appropriate type of data to respond to; * increase their capacity for empathy; * develop healthy personal self-concepts; and * learn how to develop healthy self-concepts in others, both students and teachers. School leaders also should be committed to a broad purpose for schooling, should be informed about how their beliefs and behavior influence the organization of the school, and should be able to participate in interactions with authenticity. They also must be able to help create authenticity in their school organizations. In these ways, school leaders will create schools that are learning organizations for everyone. Universities that prepare future school leaders should spend more time developing leaders who are person centered in their approach to leading schools. This new way of thinking will require leader preparation programs to change their priorities for curriculum, academic activities, and field experiences.

“Imagine you were cast adrift on a desert island with a school full of children in desperate need of a great headteacher. What eight qualities would you take with you to run your desert island school?” In this inspirational book, some of the UK's most successful headteachers answer this question, talking openly about what it takes to effectively manage a school today. In candid and moving accounts we hear how they have both turned around failing schools and improved outstanding schools. Their thoughts, from vision, to courage and resilience, form the 8 key qualities which are examined in depth through the book. This is not a book about government-led initiatives, top-down models or politically-motivated attempts to change the way schools are managed. Instead, it focuses on the vital leadership ingredients that successful heads say work for them. It offers essential insights and advice into the challenges of running a school successfully and will be a source of inspiration for all school leaders and anyone thinking about moving into headship.

This timely and essential book provides a comprehensive guide for school leaders who desire to engage their school communities in transformative systemic change. Sharon I. Radd, Gretchen Givens Generett, Mark Anthony Gooden, and George Theoharis offer five practices to increase educational equity and eliminate marginalization based on race, disability, socioeconomics, language, gender and sexual identity, and religion. For each dimension of diversity, the authors provide background information for understanding the current realities in schools and beyond, and they suggest "disruptive practices" to replace the status quo in order to achieve full inclusion and educational excellence for every child. Assuming that leadership to create equity is a unique practice, the book offers * Clear explanations of foundational terms and concepts, such as equity, systemic inequity, paradigms and cognitive dissonance, and privilege; * Specific recommendations for how to build support and sustainability by engaging colleagues and other stakeholders in constructive dialogues with multiple perspectives; * Detailed descriptions of routines and roles for building effective equity-leadership teams; * Guidelines and tools for performing an equity audit, including environmental scans; * A change framework to skillfully transform your system; and * Reflection activities for self-discovery, understanding, and personal and professional growth. A call to action that is both passionate and practical, Five Practices for Equity-Focused School Leadership is an indispensable roadmap for educators undertaking the journey toward an education system that acknowledges and advances the worth and potential of all students.

High Challenge, Low Threat is Mary Myatt's smart and thoughtful exploration of all the things that wise leaders do. Informed through thousands of conversations over a 20-year period in education, Mary shows the lessons that school management teams can learn from leaders in a wide range of other sectors and points to the conditions which these leaders create to allow colleagues to engage with difficult issues enthusiastically and wholeheartedly. This book makes the case that any leadership role is concerned primarily with the relationships between individuals. It is the quality of these, whatever the size of the organisation, which make the difference between organisations which thrive, and those which stagnate. This is not to argue for soft, easy and comfortable options. Instead it considers how top leaders manage to walk the line between the impossible and the possible, between the undoable and the doable, and to create conditions for productive work which transcend the difficulties which come towards us every day. Instead of dodging them, they embrace them. And by navigating high challenge, low threat, they show how others how to do the same.

"Design is the rendering of intent." What if education leaders approached their work with the perspective of a designer? This new perspective of seeing the world differently is desperately needed in schools and begins with school leadership. Alyssa Gallagher and Kami Thordarson, widely recognized experts on Design Thinking, educational leadership, and innovative strategies, call this new perspective design-inspired leadership—one of the most powerful ways to ignite positive change and address education challenges using the same design and innovation principles that have been so successful in private industry. Design Thinking for School Leaders explores the changing landscape of leadership and offers practical ways to reframe the role of school leader using Design Thinking, one step at a time. Leaders can shift from "accidental designers" to "design-inspired leaders," acting with greater intention and achieving greater impact. You'll learn how viewing the world through a more empathetic lens—a critical first step on the path to becoming a design-inspired leader—can raise your awareness of the uniqueness of your teachers and students and prompt you to question the ways in which they experience your school. Gallagher and Thordarson detail five specific roles to help you identify opportunities for positively impacting students, teachers, districts, parents, and the community: Opportunity Seeker. Shifts from problem solving to problem finding. Experience Architect. Designs and curates learning experiences. Rule Breaker. Challenges the way things are "always" done. Producer. Gets things done and creates rapid learning cycles for teams. Storyteller. Captures the hearts and minds of a community. Full of examples of Design Thinking in action in schools across the country, Design Thinking for School Leaders can help you guide your school to the forefront of the new design + education movement, one that will move traditional education into the modern world and drive the future of learning.