This paper raises and answers the question of whether professors of educational administration and school administrators are scholar practitioners or simply practitioner scholars. It concludes that the professors are scholar practitioners because they contemplate the practice of administration via theory and research. School administrators are…

Numerous 1983-84 educational improvement studies emphasized the need for strong principal leadership, yet present reform efforts fail to address adequately principal preparation. This proposal for administrative excellence has a four-category focus: recruitment of those with strong liberal arts degrees; selection of those committed to an 11-month…

This paper expresses points of view about what is needed to create a knowledge base for educational improvement. It argues that educators have failed to build a strong foundation for education's presumed cumulative effect. The paper assesses the claim that education constitutes a profession and discusses ways to improve the current educational…

A review of recent literature and commission reports identifies persistent problems in two areas of educational administration: research and preparation programs. The two problems are linked in that they are often supervised by faculty who direct but do not themselves perform research. Two areas of research needs are the poor research skills of…

The core work of educational administration is school improvement, especially improved school outcomes. The leader must know what to do, why some interventions work better than others, and how to implement them. Longitudinal experimental research, meta-analyses, and evaluations have definitely shown that small classes, at least in K-3, provide an…