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When the first plane of death sliced through the World Trade Center tower last September, Daniel Domenech, the superintendent in Fairfax County, Va., was chairing his regular Tuesday morning meeting [...]

Los Angeles, US, State Administrator of Education Randolph Ward has been successful in his attempts to improve the school system in Compton, Los Angeles. The educational system in California was corrupt and the schools were failing. The district in Compton is a deprived area, the home of many gangs and resulting racial tension. Ward employed workmen to repair and clean up the schools and he sacked many senior staff. Other cities have asked Ward to come and work in their schools. Yet some people in Los Angeles regard Ward with such hostility he has to have an armed guard.

Effective school administrators can have many different leadership styles, but common traits include being good storytellers, unpredictability, self-awareness, and resistance to failure. Other qualities include commitment to the profession and staff, caring, and willing to empower colleagues.

Senior Los Angeles school officials, including the district's police chief and its former chief operating officer, knew of sex allegations against a school administrator months before he was transferred to […]

With only 2,062 students in K12, Clarke County Public Schools is dwarfed in size by Fairfax and Loudoun counties, its burgeoning neighbors in northern Virginia. But Clarke County's school system [...]

As an advocate and practitioner of effective schools research, I read with interest the guest column ('The Contamination of the Effective Schools Movement,' March 2001) by M. Donald Thomas and [...]

Public engagement--the activity that holds out the promise that reforms will succeed if the public's concerns are heard and addressed--is much on the minds of school leaders nationwide. Findings from [...]

The problem with the education reform movement is that we spend a lot of time and energy on ideas and actions that will not generate much return. We do that [...]

You could forgive John Mackiel, superintendent in Omaha, Neb., and a lifelong educator in the city, if he carried around in his pocket some recent public statements of his school [...]

The widespread use of corporal punishment in Kenyan schools has led to increasing dropout rates and in a few cases, to death I When Justus Omanga, a fourth grade student [...]

True tales from the superintendency: * After a long search, you find that just-right house with the extra space you crave and the larger yard in which your kids can [...]

Mary F. Barter John R. Lawrence AASA member: 22 years Current position: superintendent, Durango School District 9R, Durango, Colo., August 1999 to present Most recent previous position: superintendent, Three Village [...]

As I near the waning days of my public school teaching journey, I am reflecting upon what made some of my school administrators successful and what made others not so. [...]

Twice a week during much of the school year, John Vaara strips off his business attire of the superintendency in favor of a zebra suit, replete with cap and whistle. [...]

Carol McCloud, superintendent, Windbear, [...]

The Department for Education and Skills needs to improve its leadership style. Getting interested in new ideas is appropriate, but offices or programs should be properly designed and fully ready to be used before they are opened, and that does not happen often enough.

1. A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is […]