In this article, we problematise the practice of appointing principals on the basis of comradeship instead of excellence, qualifications and competency. The appointment of principals in South Africa has, over the years, become politicised and unionised to the extent that it is contextualised within comradeship narratives, thereby negating the…

The main purpose of this study is to find the attributes of corporations that prevent hiring of highly educated female new graduates, who hold bachelor's or master's degrees. Our results show that the percentages of new graduates who majored in the field of humanities and of female employees positively correlate with the percentage of female new…

In the last decade, a gradual negative perception of the compulsory Mexican education system started to emerge when internal and international evaluations of students' outcomes showed continuously low results that did not improve with immediate and mid-term remedial efforts. This added pressure by Mexican society to reform education, where…

The publication is advice designed to help employers in all schools with staffing and employment issues, and to inform their decision making. It advises on matters contained within the School Staffing (England) Regulations 2009 for maintained schools and for independent schools, which include academies and free schools, the Education (Independent…

A book that draws equally on Richard Lee Colvin's deep acquaintance with contemporary education reform and the unique circumstances of the San Diego experience, "Tilting at Windmills" is a penetrating and invaluable account of Alan Bersin's contentious superintendency. Between 1998, when Alan Bersin became superintendent of the San Diego…

Several hundred of the nation's lowest-performing schools have recently undergone major changes in leadership and teaching staff to comply with federal requirements for using school improvement grants (SIGs) financed by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). In particular, schools that receive stimulus-funded SIG awards must…

An increase in teacher hiring in recent years has led some observers to posit a link to the waves of pink slips districts are now sending across the U.S. Between the 1999-2000 and the 2007-08 school years, the teacher force increased at more than double the rate of K-12 student enrollments. Hiring teachers to reduce class sizes remains a…

No one stakeholder group can realize lasting change on their own; nor can any reform initiative focusing on just one type of strategy create the workplace conditions needed to truly build capacity within the education profession. Rather, stakeholders must focus on collaborating, reaching common understanding, and prioritizing for ultimate impact…

The literature on teacher hiring and assignment tends to omit definitions of these key terms. An exception in Cohen-Vogel and Osborne-Lampkin (277), who define teacher assignment as "the reciprocal process between school management and teachers to guide decisions about who will teach, where they will teach, and what they will teach." But the…

Because the demand for excellence in public education is ever present, this article explores the development of a professional enhancement program designed to select and develop a qualified, competent faculty and staff. The basis for the program is a strong educational philosophy, which leads to a vision of what schools can be. It stresses the…

This report describes recent hiring and retirement patterns as well as tenure-related changes and actions taken by public and private not-for-profit postsecondary institutions that offered an associate's or higher degree in fall 2003 and participated in federal Title IV student aid programs. The 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty…

This document sets forth standards of good practice for the employment of professional staff. These guidelines serve as a blueprint for the appropriate treatment of professional staff based on the principle that recognition and equity must be coupled with job security and professional treatment. This publication is divided into two sections: (1)…

Education Resource Strategies (ERS) works with school and district leaders to help them more strategically use resources--people, time, and money--to improve student performance. They have found that many school districts begin creating small high schools without a clear sense of how much they will spend or how to ensure that small schools…

In this paper, a companion piece to "Strategic Designs: Lessons from Leading Edge Small Urban High Schools" (ED544382), the authors analyze small high school spending in three urban districts--Baltimore City, Boston, and Chicago--to understand whether it is higher than in larger schools; if it is, why it is different; and the policy…