Keeping and Improving Today's School Leaders: Retaining and Sustaining the Best

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With dwindling funds and resources, tougher state and federal standards, and fatigue from more regulations and testing, many school administrators are giving up_or 'crashing' and leaving their posts. This book examines the process of sustaining and retaining quality leaders at the school and district levels. Beginning with a foreword by Michelle D. Young on the importance of administrative leadership in schools, subsequent chapters address: six steps of critical organizational supports for leaders; the need for socializing assistant principals into their roles; administrators' perceptions of their administrative teams; school routines and rituals; the need for administrator mentoring of Latina/Latino leaders; the relationship between superintendent leadership and principal job satisfaction and efficacy. Concluding with thoughts about retaining and sustaining the best leaders in dynamic environments, the various chapters offer contemporary views on retaining and encouraging school administrators throughout the life cycle. The chapters provide needed insight into what should and must be done to grow the best leaders for U.S. schools.

Reviews

What makes a school leader one of the best among her/his peers How can schools and school districts succeed in keeping the best How can they help enhance the ordinary to become one of the best This volume seeks and offers answers to questions such as the above. The volume deals with a wide range of educational leadership roles and diverse personal backgrounds of leaders-all within difficult financial times. Cooper and Conley have included here an excellent selection of highly focused but interrelated new scholarly works designed to place high quality school leadership at tomorrows center stage along with teacher effectiveness and student success. -- Naftaly (Tuli) Glasman, reasearch emeritus professor of leadership, University of California, Santa Barbara
Keeping and Improving Todays School Leaders: Retaining and Sustaining the Best is a compilation of seven research studies focusing on school principals. Bruce Cooper, professor of educational leadership and policy at Fordham University Graduate School of Education in New York City, and Sharon Conley, professor of education in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, edited the book and present information on supporting school leaders.The book offers data-based conclusions on the socialization of assistant principals in a rural school district and characteristics of administrative teams that could be enhanced to support renewal and appreciation of teams. Professional development that is consistent in delivery and yet flexible is needed to sustain and improve principals. Another finding in the design of effective professional development of principals to enable leadership succession is to consider career goals of the principals. In addition, consideration of the teams of leaders in buildings, rather than a singular focus on the lead principal, can increase the efficiency of the group and the satisfaction of those are the team. * AASA Journal of Scholarship & Practice *

Author Bio

Bruce S. Cooper, Ph.D. is professor of educational leadership and policy at Fordham University Graduate School of Education in New York City. His latest books as editor and author include: Handbook on Education Politics and Policy with James Cibulka and Lance Fusarelli (Routledge Press) and The Rising State: How State Power is Transforming our Nation's Schools (SUNY Press) with Bonnie Fusarelli. He is former president of the Politics of Education and a recent recipient of the Jay D. Scribner Award for Mentoring from the University Council of Education Administration.

Sharon C. Conley, Ph.D. is professor of education in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at University of California, Santa Barbara. Her latest articles include: "Organizational Routines in Flux: A Case Study of Change in Recording and Monitoring Student Attendance" with Ernestine K. Enomoto in Education and Urban Society and "Teacher Role Stress, Satisfaction, Commitment and Intentions to Leave: A Structural Model" in Psychological Reports.