21st century school leadership is not for the faint of heart and as with any organization a school is only as successful as their leadership. The acknowledgment that a "different" reality exists for school principals is of utmost importance when identifying the conditions, situations, and roles that one will engage in. In this article Dr. East…

Adding the position Lead Instructional Designer (LID) will help an educational company or school district to work with principals and instructional designers to implement better instructional design strategies. This type of change creates more jobs and takes added pressure away from schools. The vision is to create better customer service to the…

Educational leaders must continually refine their skills to successfully utilize the following leadership components: reward, coercive, expert, and legitimate and referent power to help schools achieve and sustain their vision. The intent of this article is to examine how educational leaders can positively and successfully establish authority to…

The purpose of this article is to review the rural area administrator's role in the areas of teacher recruitment, hiring and staff development. State and Regional Policies reveal that these areas are chief among the concerns of rural school leaders (Johnson, 2005). The rural school administrator's role often requires him/her to become involved in…

The following excerpt allows the reader to briefly peer into an ideal school setting: For the purposes of this paper, the fictitious school will be named Utopia Middle School or U.M.S. U.M.S embodies and exemplifies the perfect school. At U.M.S., the campus administrators perform at a level of excellence that motivates, empowers and supports all…

Schools must have the capacity to change. School administrators must be able to find a balance in distributing administrative authority in schools. In an effort to evoke meaningful change within the organization of secondary school structures, administrators must be advocates of change and support their staff members by decentralizing key roles by…

The president of a relatively small college describes the road he traveled in trying to adjust to the emerging technologies. While the embedded leadership in technology in an earlier presidency had resulted in that institution becoming somewhat of a "posture-institution" for the other colleges and universities in the larger state system,…

The two authors from their respective leadership/administration and library/media specialist's backgrounds share their thoughts about a "Team Approach" to improved instruction. Basic elements of a shared approach are discussed with attention to the changing role of the library/media specialists in schooling.

This article presents a series of arguments supporting greater use of mediation as a tool for conflict resolution in higher education contexts. The structure of higher education is explored, as are rationales for mediation from the point of view of students, faculty and administrators. [This content was originally published in: "The Fourth R,"…

Low-test scores in literacy and mathematics have resulted in increased accountability for educators, as evidenced by statewide "high stakes: testing. The push by federal and state mandates, such as the "No Child Left Behind" Act and the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) have increased the amount of teaching and…

The prevailing expectation in education today is, "All children can learn." This expectation includes all children, including disadvantaged children and those who come from poverty. Our actions are guided by our expectations. If we believe that all children can learn, then children can learn. If we believe that children cannot learn, then our self…