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Effective leadership does not depend on a set of attributes that a single individual possesses. Instead, the search for one best heroic leader should be replaced with the search for and investment in a number of superheroes: a League of Leadership. Those who create a leadership league don't explore individual skills, but collective practices, such as determining how to engage teachers and staff members and how to lead a school of teachers who are invested in improving instruction. The authors suggest that how effective a leader a principal is lies not in his or her role as a superhero, but in his or her day-to-day collaborative processes of inquiry and action. In this article, the authors discuss a collaborative inquiry-action cycle which consists of practices that principals can use to create empowering opportunities for all those in a school to become a league that contributes to student learning. The cycle is a planned, purposeful, and democratic process for identifying, framing, and accepting responsibility for a problem of practice; for articulating a theory of action, decision making, and action; for gathering data and evaluating effects of actions; and for reflecting, revisiting, and reconceptualizing the problem of practice. The authors illustrate the process by using the example of Lee, who has just assumed the principalship of the underperforming Marshall Middle School. (Contains 2 figures.)

Recent legislative and local school accountability efforts have placed a premium on the collection, analysis, and use of student assessment data for educational improvement. As a result, schools have sought assessments that will provide additional information about student performance. In response, a burgeoning boon industry formed--formative educational assessment systems. In this study we describe how districts search for and acquire formative assessment systems to meet their needs. We focus on three school districts that adopted three different formative assessment systems. Our findings suggest the fit between a system's characteristics and a school district's intended use is the most important consideration in instituting a successful formative assessment system that will have a positive impact on teacher education and student learning.

This study investigates parameters affecting the likelihood of passing school facility construction bonds by local district election. Using statewide data from Michigan, this study analyzes school bond data for urban (n = 30), suburban (n = 164), small town (n = 70), and rural (n = 241) school districts that held capital improvement bond elections from 2000 to 2005. This analysis found four parameters that were significant in predicting either passage or failure of school bonds: bond amount, number of students enrolled, the number of times the bond was attempted, and district urbanicity. Examining district bond passage rates by urbanicity showed that rural districts have worse chances of passing bond elections than urban and suburban districts and that small-town districts have the worst chances of all. (Contains 3 notes, 3 tables and 2 figures.)

This study investigates what factors are associated with the likelihood of passing school facility construction bonds by local district election. It uses statewide data from Michigan, 1998-2006, to examine the outcome of 789 bond elections in terms of the following ten variables: amount of the bond request; district enrollment; district locale; percentage of students receiving free school lunches; percentage of the district population with only a high school degree; the district's long-term debt; voter turnout; the day of the calendar year on which the election is held; the number of the bond proposal on the ballot; and the inclusion of technology in the ballot proposal's wording. The logistic regression analysis finds that bond amount--percentage of students receiving free lunches, percentage of district population with only a high school degree, voter turnout, and being further down on the ballot--are all negative and significant factors. District long-term debt and holding the election later in the calendar year are both positive and significant factors. District enrollment numbers are non-significant. In terms of district locale--using mid-sized city and suburban districts as the reference group--being a small town and rural district is a negative and significant factor. (Contains 1 figure and 3 tables.)

Multidisciplinary courses are being developed at a number of US colleges and universities to highlight the connections between the rise or fall of world civilizations and the sustainable or unsustainable uses of soil and water resources. The content presented in these courses is complex because it includes concepts from disciplines as varied as geology, soil science, politics, economics, history, and anthropology. The learning goals for the courses include developing skills in the critical analysis of complex "real-world" problems for which there is often no simple or correct solution. Didactic materials for such courses are limited. Field trips to sites around the world that present some of the issues covered in the course would be ideal, but are logistically challenging. We considered that a series of virtual field trips (VFTs) to sites around the world would allow us to present students with complicated real-world situations, with which to practice critical analysis skills. The VFTs envisaged are neither tutorials nor field/lab exercises. Rather, they are meant to be complex, multi-faceted representations of a past or current civilization and how it affects or is affected by its environment. We expect that the students will use the VFTs to explore the relationships between physical geography and culture and how the decisions or actions of a civilization impact natural resources and the environment and thus affect its fate. A goal of the VFTs is that through consideration of their experiences, students arrive at novel associations that lead to dynamic in-class dialogue about the material presented and a deeper understanding of the intricacies of the situation in the field. This article describes the process of assembling a VFT, and analyzes the technological and didactic choices the process requires. Our experience with a pilot VFT suggests that no single medium (i.e., video clips, interactive maps, animation sequences, etc.) is comprehensive enough to meet the course learning goals. Thus, a web-based, open architecture format was selected for the VFTs because of its simplicity, flexibility and extensibility. Each medium was selected for its ability to support the course learning goals. The learning process was mediated by the VFT text, questions for thought, and in-class discussions. Preliminary results with the pilot VFT are encouraging. (Contains 7 figures.)

The purpose of this national survey is to determine secondary school principals' knowledge of the rights of students and teachers, how often principals are legally threatened and sued, how they adjust their behaviors in response, and how they obtain and disseminate legal information. Survey results show that a majority of principals are uninformed or misinformed about school law issues and that 85% of the principals said they would change their behavior if they knew the answers to our law survey questions. (Contains 6 tables and 1 figure.)

Principals are the chief teachers of law in their schools. However, many principals would say that teaching law is not in their job description and that they do not need another responsibility, but intentional or not, most principals already teach law--in staff meetings; in teacher conferences; in informal conversations; and when they develop, interpret, and apply school rules. This article explains why principals need to be conscious, informed, and effective law teachers and how they can make it happen. (Contains 9 resources and 3 online resources.)

This study in this article investigated how school counselors and principals perceive their professional relationship. Q methodology was used to develop 45 opinion statements about the relationship between school counselors and principals, and 39 professional school counselors and principals then sorted the statements. Four factors emerged representing different viewpoints of this relationship. Each contained constructive attributes of the school counselor-principal relationship, but one factor exhibited an appreciation of the context of interpersonal collaboration along with the content of school improvement initiatives. (Contains 1 figure.)

This article examines how preservice and in-service teachers can be prepared to understand and implement school law. First, we report on research findings about what teachers know, do not know, and want to know about education law and where they get their information. Second, we identify the current norms, practices, and implications of preservice and in-service teacher education concerning school law. Finally, we offer alternative approaches to achieve universal legal literacy and its beneficial implications for teachers.

Research indicates that the leadership of a school principal is a determining factor in school effectiveness, second only to the role of a student's classroom teacher. Yet, the species of "principal" is dwindling. National reports indicate that a great number of schools and districts are experiencing a shortage of a qualified pool of principal candidates. The dearth of principals is particularly endemic in districts perceived to have challenging working conditions, large populations of impoverished or minority students, low per pupil expenditures, and urban settings. In addition, conservative estimates suggest that roughly 40% of principals will retire this decade and that the number of principal positions needing to be filled will grow 20% in the next five years. But the principal shortage is more than an issue of balancing recruitment and retirement; retaining highly qualified principals has become equally problematic. The "revolving door" of the principalship has been fueled by pressure and demands that make the job nearly untenable. This study determines the nature and characteristics of the principal shortage (both current and impending) in Massachusetts. Responses to a web-based survey of Massachusetts' principals and existing licensure supply and demand ratios were collected and analyzed. Information gleaned from the data analysis was used to assist the Massachusetts Department of Education in determining how it can best recruit and support principals in the Commonwealth and better address issues of educational quality in this era of accountability.

This article examines the implications of competition between school districts in a mid-Michigan metropolitan area. Over the 10-year period after Michigan's major school-funding reform in 1994, many urban and suburban districts found themselves competing for per-pupil state funding. Suburban districts need extra students to make up budgetary shortfalls and protect instructional programs that are essential in today's political climate of school accountability. Several districts in this study built new or substantially renovated state-of-the-art high schools, possibly illustrating a space race between the districts to build bigger, better, newer capital assets that attract pupils and residential development. The central city district, surrounded by growing suburbs with higher-value taxable property, is at a disadvantage in this competition. (Contains 4 figures, 6 notes and 3 tables.)

In this article, the authors use their personal narratives and collaborative portraits as methods to shed light on the complexities of developing a research identity while journeying through a doctoral program. Using the metaphors of a wanderer, a chameleon, and a warrior, their narratives represent portraits of experiences faced by doctoral students at the peak of their epistemological and ontological growth. Borrowing from Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis's alternative methodology of portraiture, the authors create portraits through personal narratives, which provide voice, reflexivity, and context to the stories told. Significant factors that fostered the students' research identity were present within the author's lived experiences and continued to evolve throughout the doctoral program. Inhibiting factors included the negotiation of a temporary loss of identity for full-time students, normative and analytical modes required by doctoral programs, and a lack of consideration for issues of diversity within the doctoral program. (Contains 3 notes.)

This study investigated how school counselors and principals perceive their professional relationship with each other. Specifically, it used Q methodology to develop 45 statements about the relationship between the school counselor and the principal. Subsequently, 39 professional school counselors and principals sorted the statements. Four factors emerged, each representing a distinct view of this relationship. The factors were analyzed using a distributed leadership framework. Although each factor contains constructive attributes of the school-counselor-principal relationship, one factor contains characteristics closely approximating the distributed leadership framework reflected in the literature and in the current school counselor and administrator professional standards. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

In this article, David Schimmel and Matthew Militello document the legal knowledge and training of teachers based on a survey of more than thirteen hundred K-12 respondents in seventeen states. The findings from this study suggest that most educators (1) are uninformed or misinformed about student and teacher rights; (2) have taken no course in school law; (3) get much of their school law information from other teachers; (4) would change their behavior if they knew more about school law; and (5) want to learn more about these issues. This article outlines the consequences of neglecting educators' lack of legal knowledge. The authors conclude with a series of recommendations on how to promote legal literacy among teachers in both teacher certification and professional development programs. (Contains 11 endnotes.)