Teresa Lance came to her position as assistant superintendent for equity and innovation in School District U-46 in Elgin, Illinois, after leaving a superintendency where community leaders were unwilling to change the status quo. Joshua P. Starr describes how Lance's previous experiences led to her current role and what she learned along the way.

Without proper training, the realities of leading a school can overwhelm principals. Specifically, the challenges of leading a school will test principals' abilities to manage operations and implement effective initiatives. Despite knowledge of these demands, author Craig Hochbein writes that aspiring principals often engage in training…

Leadership is often conceptualized and taught through famous, world-changing individuals; however, leadership spans levels of influence, from small-group projects to global initiatives. While student leaders are present at every level, existing leadership research and programs center adults. Within this article, Lisa DaVia Rubenstein, Sydney…

Conflict management is one of the most stressful and frustrating aspects of a school leader's job. An inability to overcome conflicting viewpoints, ever more palpable in today's polarized climate, stymies innumerable school reform efforts. Yet, the subject is rarely examined in graduate-level leadership preparation programs or in-service…

School district leaders are responsible for managing million-dollar budgets, but many have received little or no training in education finance. Marguerite Roza discusses a recent analysis of administrator preparation programs that revealed startling gaps in content, including a tendency to focus on revenue in their finance education, instead of on…

Teachers are too rarely supported in investing in the shared inquiry, embedded professional learning, and collaborative culture building that peer observation cycles facilitate. But teachers can disrupt these patterns by opening their doors to colleagues and engaging with them in critical reflection, dialogue, and shared innovation. In this…

In April 2015, 11 educators were convicted for their roles in the cheating scandal in the Atlanta Public Schools. The authors examine the lessons that teachers, administrators, and policy makers can learn from the cheating scandal: Teachers and school leaders were not adequately prepared to navigate the school district's environment; there were…

Intentionally developing the leadership capacity of all students is a necessary requirement for schools around the world. The Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, N.C., has been at the center of this work and presents three schools as examples: Ravenscroft School in Raleigh, N.C., the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South…

The flat structure of American schools is ill-suited to meeting today's demands for education improvement. Historically, American schools have addressed this instructional support deficit with a patchwork of poorly defined roles and responsibilities--underused department chairs, fitful coaching models, and informal teacher leaders who generally…

So what if we just turned every course in our Superintendent's Program into a form of practicum? This question was asked by two former superintendents in response to nationwide calls to reform school leadership training and who found themselves leading a university executive leadership program. It triggered a comprehensive redesign of their…

Interviews with a broad swath of current and former Teach For America alumni and current corps members reveal a decided preference for school leaders whose personality traits are akin to superhero/ines--charismatic, courageous, demanding--and who have a tendency to try to usher in greater student achievement via primarily managerial agendas,…

A lot has changed in the principalship since the principal was the head teacher in a school. Current principals are building administrators and that is likely to continue, the authors posit. Nonetheless, they report their study focusing on leadership's role in formative assessment concluded that in order to lead learning the principal must become…

Moving teacher evaluation systems from measuring teachers' performance to improving their practice requires much greater attention to communication and support. In the fall of 2012, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) instituted a sweeping reform of its teacher evaluation system with the introduction of REACH Students (Recognizing Educators Advancing…

Responding to the need for game-changing innovation that will catapult student achievement, some school districts seek assistance from school development organizations that specialize in helping schools. But such work presents problems when schools try to adopt and adapt innovation and outside partners face challenges in encouraging schools to…

School leaders have traditionally learned to "do no harm." But they must also develop the necessary skills to "do good." That can require "artistic subordination," a theory of action inspired by nonviolent protests. School leaders can learn five steps to that will help guide their actions in sticky situations. Strategies for action are framed in…