Special Education Leadership

Integrating coverage of the most important knowledge base, research, and practice in the field, this book prepares educators for the challenging role of special education leader. Special Education Leadership provides leaders with tools to review programs, implement special education law, and build special education programs that effectively supervise and support teachers. Grounded in theory, this book also includes best practice for day-to-day operations, such as issues of teaching and learning, personnel selection and evaluation, basic financial management, working with parent relations, mental health issues, and legal matters related to special education. Full of advice from practitioners, end-of-chapter questions, and coverage of emerging trends, this book helps prepare special education administrators and supervisors to survive the pressures of working with students with disabilities while supporting appropriate services and preventing litigation.

Your guide to excelling in the complex role of a special education administrator The job of the administrator of special education is arguably one of the most difficult in a school district—and that complexity can be overwhelming. It requires an aspect of every administrative job in the district, including budgets, human resources, student advocacy, and curriculum and assessment. Written by two veteran special education administrators with more than 100 years of combined experience, this book shows current and aspiring special education administrators how to excel in the many demanding areas of their position, allowing them to be effective administrators and educational leaders. Among the many topics included in the book are The importance of visibility in the form of face-to-face interactions to assist staff, students, and building principals The importance of parents in the process The significance of confidentiality, due process, program development, and working with advocates Insight into decision-making and relationship-building A critical tool in any special education administrator′s box, as well as building administrators, central office administrators and school committee members, this book provides practical and friendly advice for a difficult but critical job.

Practical and forward-thinking, Developing Teacher Leaders in Special Education is the administrator's essential guide to growing special educator leadership in any school, district, or program. Special educators need to be flexible, proactive, and collaborative – qualities that make them uniquely suited to roles in school leadership – but these skills are often overlooked when choosing effective teacher leaders. Featuring helpful tips and detailed examples to demonstrate the concepts in action, this book breaks down the qualities that special educators can bring to your school leadership team and explores how you can leverage those skills to create a more inclusive and successful community.

The Handbook of Leadership and Administration for Special Education brings together research informing practice in leading special education from preschool through transition into postsecondary settings. The second edition of this comprehensive handbook has been fully updated to provide coverage of disability policy, historical roots, policy and legal perspectives, as well as effective, collaborative, and instructional leadership practices that support the administration of special education. It can be used as a reference volume for scholars, administrators, practitioners, and policy makers, as well as a textbook for graduate courses related to the administration of special education.

Using the principles of transformational leadership, IEP teams become effective tools to ensure student success and achievements. There is a difference of teams that are simply chaired and those that are lead. Teams with transformational leaders promote the best efforts of all participants including parents and students to effectively deliver special education services that meet real student outcomes. Using a step-by-step approach to developing the IEP, improving team function and producing Great IEPs, schools and districts can demonstrate special education effectiveness through success and achievement of students. Transformational Leadership provides the reader with a background of meaningful and purposeful leadership, and the building blocks of the learning organization. These concepts are applied to the values and the operation of the IEP team. Teams following these principals improve service delivery by full participation of all team members. Transformational leadership can improve student advancement, school improve, and district accountability.

Special education is often a confusing and expensive consideration of running a school. You have IEPs and BIPs in place, but are they really working? Find a refresher on the key legal rights of students with disabilities, along with methods for designing and implementing IEPs and BIPs that work, approaches to creating effective instruction and assessment practices, and opportunities for inclusion in the general education classroom.

The Essential Tips for Special Education Leaders book offers practical tips and recommendations for novice and veteran special education leaders based on my special education leadership experience with special programs and Section 504. These are tried and true essential tips, special education background, and strategies to create task-driven outcomes and impact change for special education students. As a lover of knowledge, I enjoyed every college course in Educational Leadership; however, nothing could prepare me for the ever-changing society and trends in education, the many tasks, and decisions that leadership requires, or the specifics and background in special education.

Teacher leadership remains at the forefront of conversations in teacher education, with discussions on recruitment, retention, and effectiveness. Teachers are at the core of schooling, and the roles they assume and types of leadership they engage in are multi-dimensional. Teacher leadership comes in many shapes and definitions. In this sense, both opportunities and challenges exist in teacher leadership. While national competencies continue to define dispositional and knowledge base for teacher leaders, there is still work to be done to define and add to the body of scholarship on this topic. Teacher leadership opportunities provide development for teachers as a key retention strategy; however, role ambiguity presents challenges in how to empower teachers for formal and informal roles of leadership while maintaining the teacher identity. Empowering Formal and Informal Leadership While Maintaining Teacher Identity provides a comprehensive look at the opportunities and challenges of teacher leadership, drawing on research and practice that add to the body of knowledge for teacher leadership, which is a niche in education that differs from educational administration. Highlighted topics within this book include models for teacher leadership, teacher education, types of leadership roles, the development and retention of teacher leaders, and leadership across different types of school districts. This book is ideally designed for inservice and preservice teachers, administrators, teacher educators, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in teacher leadership roles and the way in which teacher identity is maintained in relation to these other leadership positions.