Quality circles can be an effective way to strengthen three significant forces influencing school organizations today. Quality circles allow teachers to participate in more meaningful ways, transform the principal's instructional leadership role, and allow site-based management, or bottom-up decision making, to succeed. (MLH)

Existing in schools means actively doing and critically pursuing possibilities for teacher growth and achievement. Two vignettes focus on principals who fully exist in their schools. One principal created a circle of caring and cooperation by stressing positive language. The other shared his contagious school vision and sparked teacher thinking…

Partnerships pose opportunities and challenges for school principals, especially when involving organizations and programs outside education. Collaborative school leaders must be able to appreciate diverse perspectives, understand the big picture, gather and use data for planning, motivate themselves and others, facilitate group efforts, solve…

Principals are pivotal in expanding opportunities for more inclusive programming while ensuring that students with disabilities receive carefully planned, individualized services. By allocating the necessary resources, providing inservice training, scheduling time for collaborative planning and preparation, and designing systematic program…

This article reports how secondary principals perceive the status of the accountability movement and their professional job responsibilities in the context of accountability. The data were collected from a nationally representative sample of secondary principals during the Schools and Staffing Survey 1999-2000. Respondents reported that there were…

This investigation sought information about principals and their relationship with computer technology. Several questions were fundamental to the inquiry. Are principals prepared to facilitate the attainment of technology's promise through the integration of computer technology into the teaching and learning process? Are principals prepared to use…

Assistant principals are important people, reminds this principal, who asks his colleagues to probe how they use their assistants. He follows with several suggestions about how to improve the situation. (Author/TE)

The characteristics of one high school's effectiveness are summarized and the ingredients of its success outlined. Described as extremely important to the school are its commitment to educating students in democratic values and its attempt to practice the democratic ethos in governance, student activities, instruction, regulations, parent…

This writer implores the literature dealing with the "in-house" political system that principals participate in. The principal's interactions with colleagues and superiors are all "political," in the sense that he seeks to influence the conditions of his school's environment. (Editor)

The fragmentation of educational lobbies, the loosening of party control, lawmakers' growing knowledge of educational issues, and their willingness to listen to their constituents--all these trends enhance the possibility of the principal's making his voice heard. Now is the time to influence state educational policy making. (Editor)

Previews the findings of "A Study of High Schools," cosponsored by the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the Commission on Educational Issues. Offers overall impressions of field visits to high schools and suggests eight principles by which high schools should be restructured. (JW)

Describes current attitudes toward staff development through inservice education, the need to coordinate staff evaluation and inservice programs, and the leadership required of administrators and committees. Particular attention is paid to basing inservice programs on needs expressed by teachers. The program followed in Fort Lee (New Jersey) is…

Synthesizes the general results of a year-long study of teachers in a suburban high school in New York that explored teachers' perceptions of their roles and responsibilities. The findings are presented here to help principals better coordinate their efforts with teachers to improve schools. (WD)

Offers suggestions for surviving a strike, solving common problems during the strike, and reuniting the school afterwards. (JM)