The principal authors of a new book, "Profiling Excellence in America's Schools," state that leadership is the single most important element for effective schools. The generic skills of leaders are flexibility, autonomy, risk taking, innovation, and commitment. Exceptional principals and teachers take their leadership and management roles…

The common ground process is an ongoing effort for inviting, scrutinizing, debating, and selecting ideas or making decisions about improving schools. Superintendents should assign a full-time communications person to executive staff, create a communications team, conduct a full-scale communications audit, listen better, urge the silent majority to…

Suggests administrators advocate against the juggernaut of business-minded, profit-driven, and commercial forces threatening to privatize public schools or make them public instruments of private greed. Notes that by cutting public funding for schools that serve the poorest children, corporate forces have turned many school officials into…

An extended interview with management consultant Peter Senge who proposes that rethinking traditional patterns of leadership and interaction will produce a true learning community, where improvement becomes a lifelong journey. (MLF)

Given the state of Chapter 1 funding, regular and special education advocates must fight for higher federal and state special education funding, resist legislators' efforts to divide their common child advocacy interests, work to entitle both special education and economically and educationally disadvantaged children under federal funding…

Presents eight themes concerning the superintendents' roles in the 1990s that demand a bold restructuring of school leadership. Future superintendents must project passionate instructional leadership, recapture the focus on student learning, coordinate community child services, redefine success with performance-based assessment, fight for…

A number of analysts and leaders state that investments must be made in furthering employees' skills and upgrading the nation's infrastructure. Revenue resources suggested include changes in the tax code to target those "on the gravy train" and reclaiming funds from the military budget. (MLF)

Presents presidential candidates' views concerning the federal role in education. Issues discussed include childhood poverty, educational inequities, Head Start funding, educational vouchers for private and parochial schools, national standards and examinations, funding for bilingual education, and redress for unequal access to education. Governor…

After years of counting books and toilets, the country's independent accrediting agencies are reflecting the changes occurring in education over the last decade. All six regional accrediting associations now examine student learning and are trying to shape the accreditation process into a tool for staff development and strategic planning. Sidebars…

The Japanese educational reform movement is concentrating on increased individuality, lifelong learning, and the need to cope with societal changes, notably internationalization and the spread of information media. The American education system is admirable for experimenting with dropout programs, awards for improved student performance, magnet…

The two major changes in school finance during the 1970s were legal challenges in courts concerning fiscal disparities and changes in school revenues sources. The only significant 1980s change was decreasing federal revenues. The 1990s focus will be on state revenue changes, staff compensation, site-based management, incentives and sanctions,…

Social capital and generalized trust are declining. Civic "watering-holes" like bowling leagues, fraternal organizations, choral societies, and "do-gooder" groups are drying up. Schools must spur greater parental involvement, make schools smaller, stress community service, teach civics, fund extracurricular activities, and…

A $500-billion industry, K-12 education offers attractive investment possibilities. Public education is being broadly criticized; state governments favor new program structures; the school-age population is growing; new technologies offer entrepreneurial opportunities; school revenues provide ready capital; and the knowledge industry is booming.…

For service-learning proponents, the emphasis on assessment presents special challenges: definitions vary widely; credible testing is in its infancy; and tracking causal effects on academics is difficult, intrusive, and expensive. Political will may diminish if schools are forced to choose between school service programs and high test scores. (MLH)

Teaching to the test has significant undesirable effects. This practice skews scores and invalidates the test, promotes convergent thinking, promotes learning that may be obsolete, excludes the arts and extracurricular activities, promotes didactic instruction over discovery learning, involves only short-term memory, and excludes higher-order…