Managing Schools In Hard Times

From the publisher. Improve your school's productivity with existing resources by implementing performance-based budgeting. Included are step-by-step instructions for how to do more with less.

In the first social history of what happened to public schools in those "years of the locust," the authors explore the daily experience of schoolchildren in many kinds of communities--the public school students of working-class northeastern towns, the rural black children of the South, the prosperous adolescents of midwestern suburbs. How did educators respond to the fiscal crisis, and why did Americans retain their faith in public schooling during the cataclysm? The authors examine how New Dealers regarded public education and the reaction of public school people to the distinctive New Deal style in programs such as the National Youth Administration. They illustrate the story with photographs, cartoons, and vignettes of life behind the schoolhouse door. Moving from that troubled period to our own, the authors compare the anxieties of the depression decade with the uncertainties of the 1970s and 1980s. Heirs to an optimistic tradition and trained to manage growth, school staff have lately encountered three shortages: of pupils, money, and public confidence. Professional morale has dropped as expectations and criticism have mounted. Changes in the governing and financing of education have made planning for the future even riskier than usual. Drawing on the experience of the 1930s to illuminate the problems of the 1980s, the authors lend historical perspective to current discussions about the future of public education. They stress the basic stability of public education while emphasizing the unfinished business of achieving equality in schooling.

Over the past 30 years our public school system has received an unprecedented amount of attention as this concerns methods of school reform and policy strategies for bringing about this reform. During the 1980s the emphasis of school reform was on transparency through school-community partnerships. Business and philanthropy, for example, became involved with issues of schooling that was unheard of prior to this period. The 1980s also gave rise to issues of school finance and student performance that went beyond traditional views that tended to focus on finance “adequacy” to views that focused more on school finance arrangements that would lead to actual “equitable outcomes” in student performance. The 1990s witnessed the emergence of the comprehensive school reform movement whereby curriculum outsourcing occurred at rates that had never occurred before. With this movement, the role of teachers and school leaders in the creation of school curriculum diminished as school districts increasingly purchased vendor-related curriculum packages, which included teacher and leader training modules and methods of curriculum assessment. On the heels of the increasing tendency of school districts to outsource school curriculum to curriculum-vendors came a rise in demands for school accountability and school outcomes. This was particularly evident with the passage of No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) (2001). NCLB was also developed within a political context that called for demands in the academic improvement of schools and school districts that housed historically disenfranchised students. These demands were particularly important as the nation experienced and continues to experience dramatic increases in student racial and ethnic diversity. This volume, entitled, Leading Schools in Challenging Times: Eye to the Future, discusses varying types of school leadership in the context of key topics that have been at the center of on-going school reform in the United States. These topics include challenges, opportunities and issues associated with our administrator and teacher leadership pipeline, preparation and development; leadership and school finance reform, leadership and changing student and population demographics; leadership and the role of community; issues of leadership, policy, public accountability and school performance outcomes. The authors also explicate these issues with a view to the future and the status of leadership in our public school system.

Based on research carried out under Labour governments throughout the 1990s in Western Australia, the authors consider the social, political and economic conditions under which policy is formulated, understood and enacted. They look at how the state structure affects the content and nature of policy statements and provide an outline of the history of policy developments and point to future possibilities and probabilities. Outcomes within funding ceilings, accountability frameworks and national guidelines are but some of the changes referred to. The emergence of competency-based standards in education and training in schools, workplaces and the professions is evident throughout Australia at state level, but the concern is whether issues of education should be played out within the state and outside civil society. The authors argue for the mediation in implementation of policy - rather than a lambasting of policy formulation and implementation. This text is intended for heads of education departments, PGCE, BEd. MEd. students and researchers interested in education policy and planning. Education policymakers, and educational historians.

Education leadership has been subject to a period of turmoil with rapid social change, political demands for excellence, economic pressures for austerity and the influence of technology impacting on leadership roles in multiple ways. This book draws on real examples of practice to identify the key challenges facing educational leadership and how these might be overcome drawing on recent research and interventions that have impacted positively on learner outcomes and teacher retention. Covering all aspects of leadership including school improvement, vision and values, working with partners and leading change, the book launches the concept of atomic leadership, advocating small steps to change for maximum momentum and large-scale impact. It reveals how leaders can cooperate to trial new ways of learning and disseminate their successes and failures with a new honesty and openness about what works in our schools. With reflective tasks in every chapter, this text will inspire debate and inform discussion at staff meetings and is essential reading for all school leaders as well as those undertaking master-level courses in educational leadership and or pursuing the National Professional Qualifications in leadership.

School counseling strategies that promote student success! So much is expected to prepare today’s students for success—academic achievement, career and college readiness, emotional and social competency, just to name a few. School counselors can make an enormous positive difference in children’s lives. In a succinct Q&A format, the authors provide school counselors and educational leaders with: 101 solutions to common counseling issues across the K–12 spectrum on topics ranging from data-driven counseling to bullying, collaboration, and equity Stories of school counselors and educational leaders who have successfully implemented these solutions Numerous print and digital resources for further exploration

Educational leaders must be prepared to lead during crisis. Leadership has been challenged with multiple crisis in recent years, including issues of school safety, school shootings, medical crises such as SARs, HINI, and the ongoing pandemic. While each of these situations has resulted in multiple plans of actions, none has impacted our society as the current pandemic (COVID19) has, in terms of immediacy of needs and actions. School and district leaders are in charge of managing many stakeholders, circumstances and have the authority and responsibility to lead with ethical behavior (Al Habusi, Ismail & Omar, 2018). Integrity, resilience, fairness help guide the components of ethical leadership that leaders need to model, communicate, and use as a framework for implementing and sustaining change in organizations (Hegarty & Moccia, 2018). This book is targeted for leaders of educational systems, school buildings and those leaders of organizations that are connected in some way to educational systems and schools at all levels. The educational issues raised by the COVID pandemic, began in March 2020. The leadership needs identified throughout this crisis exemplifies many of the issues of crisis management, that is applicable to other issues, such as school violence, school safety, accidents and deaths that occur in every district.