Purpose: This exploratory case study examines how school systems and other local organizations have been working within two major U.S. cities to improve high school graduation rates. Systematically assessing active interorganizational dropout prevention networks may reveal characteristics affecting communities' capacity to support school…

Purpose: This study examines the ways in which school and district leaders create systems of support for classroom teachers who work with linguistically diverse students. We attempt to uncover the intentional supports leaders put in place for classroom teachers and how this may be part of a broader teaching and learning effort. Research Design:…

Purpose: This article explores the possibilities for reciprocal dialogue between educational decision makers and Students of Color. Such dialogue--defined as interactions in which participants build on each other's words--may provide the means to develop creative ways to address manifestations of systemic racism in education. The article uses…

Background: School district superintendents continue to favor collaborative relationships with their local business communities amid concerns over free-market competition, maintaining public legitimacy, and scarce financial resources. Prior research is inadequate regarding the development, implementation, and institutionalization of school and…

Purpose: This article considers the perspectives of superintendents who attended all-Black segregated schools and examines how their lived experiences informed their views on desegregation policy, programs, and practices. Research Design: This empirical, qualitative study used critical race theory as a methodological and analytical framework for…

Purpose: This study examines the outcomes of one regional intermediate school district's effort to promote literacy coach role implementation in its 20 constituent districts. The findings from this study provide information about the kinds of district-level contexts that influenced literacy coach role implementation and how those contexts were…

Background: Massive retirements, increased expectations, and mounting political pressures have resulted in a diminished talent pool for school superintendents. For school boards of the 124 school districts on Long Island, New York, the selection of a superintendent has been further complicated by sky-rocketing taxes and scandals leading to an…

Purpose: This research examined whether the removal of certification and other requirements led to larger or more diverse applicant pools for superintendent positions in Michigan. Michigan has not had any degree or certification requirements for educational administrators for many years and provided an empirical test of whether deregulation…

Background: School leaders must make sense of the messages they receive from multiple, overlapping contexts of their school environments. Equally important, they must shape meaning of school issues and events with and for other school members. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which school leaders defined and made sense…

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to use a recent feminist conceptual framework (Tallerico, 2000a) to frame an investigation of whether emphasizing the major roles of the job and district size in recruitment messages for a hypothetical superintendent's position influenced participant job attraction ratings. Research Methods: This study used a…

Background: The No Child Left Behind legislation creates an increased need for new school-based empirical studies whose implementation will depend largely on researchers' access to various school populations and records. Access decisions are typically made by superintendents, or their designees, functioning as gatekeepers who control right of…

Purpose: In this article, the authors highlight three constraints--structural time crisis (Schor, 1991) ideal worker norms (Williams, 2000), and labor and occupational queues (Reskin & Roos, 1990; Strober, 1992)--on the decisions and choices of women seeking to advance to and hold positions in the superintendency. Proposed Conceptual Argument: The…

Despite the small numbers of Black female superintendents and the overwhelming obstacles of the position, Black women who serve as public school superintendents continue to meet the challenges of educational leadership and are flourishing in their jobs. As noted in previous research on Black women in the superintendency and Black female leaders in…

This study illustrates Professor William P. Foster's ideas about narratives of schooling, leadership, and community inherent in his critical theory of educational leadership. The case study explored how a superintendent of a regional educational agency, along with 10 district-level superintendents in the agency's service area, shifted from…

This article examines 20th-century longitudinal data on the American superintendency's composition by sex. The authors analyze and discuss those data in the light of occupational sex segregation theory to illuminate complexities associated with women's in roads into historically male work. The authors' overarching purpose is to deepen…