Educators often invoke the term "care" to describe why they entered the field and what compels them to continue. This book argues that care, as typically described and enacted, is not sufficient for leading schools, particularly those serving Black and Latinx children. Instead, school leaders need to embrace "radical care."…

In "Navigating the Principalship," James P. Spillane and Rebecca Lowenhaupt look at the major challenges of the principal position, examining how new principals adapt to the role, set an instructional agenda, and build cooperation and collaboration. They focus in particular on the dilemmas that mark the principalship--the inevitable,…

About 80 percent of education spending is devoted to personnel, yet the capacity of schools and districts to recruit, develop, and retain top talent is stunningly low compared with other knowledge sectors. This problem is most profoundly felt in urban school systems, which creates tremendous inequity for the students who most need a high-quality…

Much of what ails urban education is actually the result of continuous or fragmentary reform efforts. A study of 57 school districts shows how political pressures drive reform, and suggests ways to nurture a more focused agenda for urban schools. The chapters are: (1) "The Politics of Urban School Reform"; (2) "Organizational and Personal…

Lorraine Monroe, founder of the Frederick Douglass Academy, a public school that promises inner-city students an education comparable to that of an elite suburban school, tells her own story of overcoming obstacles to become a respected educator. Monroe grew up in Harlem in a broken home after the departure of an abusive father. Following her…

This handbook is written for the principal of an inner-city school in the belief that the principal who respects the people with whom he works, who encourages them in planning to achieve mutually agreed-upon goals, who trusts them with real responsibility, and who supports their efforts has a greater chance of being an affective school…

Case studies of seven black school superintendents in the 1970s reveal the magnitude and complexity of problems they face. This 1980 book begins with a chapter on urban crisis, examining deprivation and deterioration in the inner cities. The role of the superintendent and the challenges and deficiencies of urban education are discussed. Profiles…

The articles in this report describe efforts at using varieties of process consultation to stimulate renewal in urban schools. Process consultation is a strategy for improving the group and intergroup procedures used by school personnel to reach their educational objectives and to solve their own problems. Emphasis is on the ways teachers,…

The role and expectations of the arts supervisor and administrator have expanded beyond managing personnel and programmatic activities to informing policy decisions. Legislation such as The No Child Left Behind Act, signed by President Bush in 2002, exacerbated this paradigm shift. Thus, the role of arts supervisors and administrators as leaders…

In this memoir, a principal recounts the story of his 2 years at Edison Elementary School in San Francisco (CA), a school that was called the worst school in California. The students had the worst standardized test scores in the district, and racial discord and playground violence were common. The school was facing the threat of reconstitution,…

This book demonstrates how high achievement can exist in high-poverty, high-minority schools. By drawing on the best practices of 13 exemplary schools, the book highlights the specific means by which ethnically diverse (namely, African American and Latino) students can attain educational success. The book offers seven strategies for principals to…

This volume offers nine chapters on focal issues in current urban education that are of a middle-range of abstraction and have long-term consequences for students. Individual chapters provide examples of possible interventions appropriate to the unique context of urban schools. The following chapters correspond to nine problems of practice, which…

This book describes a study of 10 inner city schools in the United Kingdom which showed how the empathy and imagination of teachers and principals, as well as culturally relevant curricula and stimulating teaching, helped enable bilingual students to achieve. The first part of the book describes the main issues: what counts as achievement for…

In today's society where most students own MP3 players, engage in constant instant messaging and downloading from the Internet, more than ever school administrators and staff should be aware of issues in administration, policy, and applications. This book provides a comprehensive presentation of current policies and practices of technology in…

This collection of papers examines a 10-year process of teacher education reform at Ohio State University, describing 13 Professional Development Schools (PDSs). After "Introduction: Context, Challenges, and Consequences: PDSs in the Making" (Marilyn Johnston), there are 16 papers in four parts. Part 1, "Contextualizing PDS Work and…