Paul Norton Elementary School in Bettendorf, Iowa, was one of 27 schools chosen to participate in the NEA's Mastery in Learning Network project to empower teachers through site-based management. This article describes the school's ongoing progress at pursuing community-school partnerships, creative fund raising, and time management. (MLH)

Drawing on specific examples in elementary school classrooms and flying instruction analogies, this article shows how teachers can creatively combine tenets of both holistic and direct approaches to reading instruction. Students are more likely to use reading and writing effectively when teachers themselves are empowered to select intelligently…

Teacher and principal autonomy in public and private secondary schools was studied through interviews with more than 30 teachers and administrators, observations, and document analyses. Results reveal the complexity of the concept of autonomy and challenge the myth that teachers and principals in private schools enjoy more autonomy. (SLD)

Accuses successive governments of Australia of deriding intellect and the intellectual. Claims the attitude that teaching is everyone's realm and does not require professional expertise rewards itself in forms of ignorance, prejudice and narrowness and has created a critically deprived and impoverished education culture. (NH)

McKinney (Texas) Independent School District is developing a program aligned with Goals 2000 standards that stresses individual, collegial, and organizational improvement. The result is the Instructional Technology Academy, which tries to provide a catalyst for transforming the teaching/learning process and developing best practices to enhance…

Challenged to increase leadership opportunities for teachers, an El Paso elementary school principal appointed two master teachers to a vice-principal vacancy, increased teacher collaboration time, and experimented with vertical-team representation, teacher input for hiring decisions, and creative scheduling. Only the principal can actually…

Presents a contemporary leadership model comprised of three elements necessary to successfully recognize and promote teacher leaders. The elements include establishing an appropriate school culture, recognizing teacher leaders, and inspiring teachers' confidence. The three elements, along with enabled teacher leadership, create positive cultural…

Reviews three sometimes overlapping versions of educational reform: the professionalization of teachers; over-regulation of teachers' work; and the deregulation of schooling. Argues that over-regulation and deregulation often work together as part of a larger market-oriented strategy for educational reform that seeks to limit the professional…

The authors report a study in which they examined how principals utilize instructional leadership in high schools within a Hispanic majority context. The emphasis was on students' academic performance, goal development and implementation, school culture, and instructional management, which make up the broader theoretical framework of school…

In 2007, the state of Mississippi conducted a web-based survey of all school-based licensed educators in which they were asked to share their perceptions of the state of teacher working conditions in Mississippi. This report of the Mississippi Teacher Working Conditions Survey, Project CLEAR Voice (Cultivate Learning Environments to Accelerate…

The classroom is at the heart of the often-mixed messages of school reform and school practice. Educators must make sense of these mixed messages in order to engage in the work of teaching. Viewing educators as social agents amid the complexity of educational discourse and practice provides a distinctly different lens on reform than those…

The Hong Kong Government first introduced school-based management (SBM) to the education profession in 1991. The principal is a pivotal factor in fostering an environment for change. SBM and teacher empowerment calls for new modes of leadership: teachers lend their expertise, and principals become facilitators rather than directors. The purpose of…

Relationships between the level of teachers' perceived empowerment, the degree of teachers' perceived responsibility for student outcomes, and student achievement were studied with 271 elementary school teachers. The Responsibility for Student Achievement Scale (RSA) (T. Guskey, 1981) and the School Participant Empowerment Scales (SPES) (P. Short…

The purpose of this guide is to help leaders move their schools ahead in the face of adversity. It is intended for principals, teacher leaders, district administrators, and others who have a stake in helping schools move forward. The contents are based on qualitative research and actual experiences of schools effective in dealing with adversity.…

The Student Achievement Mode (SAM) gives teachers a system for collecting and analyzing data in order to increase student achievement in classrooms and schools. Developed in 1 school, the model is currently used in 63 elementary and 8 secondary schools in a large school district in Florida. The purpose of SAM is to increase student achievement,…