The author's community, which includes parents of the 62,000 students who attend schools in Volusia County, Florida, has been baffled over the conflicting nature of Florida's school grading system of A, B, C, D, F based on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, and the federal system of pass or fail. While many of the 80 schools in her…

International Baccalaureate (IB) programs are turning up in a diverse mix of school districts, an attempt to add rigor and depth. For rich and for poor, for big schools and small ones, IB has become a way to add rigor and depth to public school curricula. But each school district has adapted IB for its own needs. Some use it in all schools for all…

In a small suburban district in the Midwest, the superintendent was outlining his plans for aligning the curriculum to the Common Core State Standards. The process had begun, he explained, so he and his staff were set to spend the next three years on math, then three years on English language arts and so on. The author struggled with the concept…

During the summer of 2010, school districts across the country reported almost daily on their plans to lay off staff because of sharp declines in aid. Hundreds of thousands of teachers' jobs were on the line. If these losses materialized, class sizes would skyrocket and educational enrichment activities would be lost. Some districts shortened…

Student and parent use of cell phones, text messaging and social networking through Facebook and Twitter can quickly become the enemies of a superintendent and principal. Rumors and misinformation about threats and other student safety issues that used to take hours and days to spread now goes viral in seconds. This rapid dissemination of…

The author, who has retired as Scarsdale elementary principal, was asked by the superintendent Michael McGill if he was interested in leading Scarsdale's green initiative. Early on in Scarsdale, they referred to their work as the "green initiative." After agreeing to lead the initiative, he set out to learn more about greening at K-12…

Most school leaders by now have heard about blogging but may not have thought much about how and why they should consider adding a blog to their school district's communication plan. Superintendents may be among the least likely in K-12 education to see the benefits of blogging and other social media. The problem with reacting to current problems…

Slowly but surely, Generation Xers have been taking over from Baby Boomers as the majority of parents in elementary and secondary education. In the early 1990s, Gen Xers began joining parent-teacher associations in the nation's elementary schools. Around 2005, they became the majority of middle school parents. By the fall of 2008, they took over…

The reality of life in the 21st century is that the skills associated with artistic practices--creative thinking, self-discipline, collaboration and innovation--are skills that are in great demand. In fact, in a rapidly changing global economy, the skills the arts teach may be mandatory for everyone's success. Arts education not only provides…

The demand for a new workforce to meet the challenges of a global knowledge economy is rapidly increasing. As a special report in Business Week magazine observed last year: "The game is changing. It isn't just about math and science anymore. It's about creativity, imagination, and, above all, innovation." Most analysts studying the new global…

America is at an important crossroad in education. With the pending reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, commonly referred to as NCLB, Americans need to examine with fierce honesty the impact it has had on schools, not just on the test scores, but the toll it has taken on the people: principals, teachers and students. For…

As a first-year superintendent, Nick Polyak has yet to conduct a search for a principal to lead one of his four schools in the Illinois Valley Central School District in Chillicothe, Ill. When that opportunity does come, Polyak is quite sure he'll be skeptical of any candidate whose curriculum vitae lists courses or entire degrees completed in…

Youngsters nowadays have grown up learning "protect tomorrow!" lessons from "Barney" and "Bill Nye the Science Guy." They have been tutored by unforgettable futuristic movies like "A.I." and "E.T," by science fiction serials and "Star Trek" reruns and by future-oriented series on cable TV (including material on The History Channel). Of course,…

Everything in K-12 education is instant, short-term, the quick fix. As such, little attention is paid to long-term planning and even less to leadership succession or stability. The change agenda is the leadership agenda and from the very top, both are being mismanaged. More and more, the author is seeing this with his own eyes in his studies of…

This article reports that across the country, retired superintendents are finding fulfillment as mentors, either formally or informally, spontaneously or planned. Some are paid, but most are volunteers who remember their first year running a school district and want to ease the transition for others. Some want to focus on leadership development.…