Threatening student web sites raise complex legal questions for schools. According to "Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), students' First Amendment rights must be abridged to ensure an orderly school environment. Recent litigation, educator rights, American Civil Liberties Union interventions, and legally defensible strategies for schools are discussed.…

An exclusionary clause in the Education for All Handicapped Children Act prohibits special-education services for "socially maladjusted or disaffected" children. Ingrained in public-education culture, this policy undermines educators' efforts to address the needs of students with evolving personality and character disorders. Nonintervention is…

An Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development delegation traveled to school sites in the Caribbean Islands. They discovered similarities regarding education's importance, literacy rates, school governance reforms, and an emphasis on early childhood education and professional development for teachers. Private aid to religious schools is…

The National School Boards Association (NSBA) and the Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) are pleased to present a copy of the fourth annual Jacqueline P. Danzberger Memorial Lecture, presented at NSBA's Annual Conference (March 2004). The lecturer, Mrs. Melinda French Gates, Co-Founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, asserted…

This article reports on outcomes from a study funded by the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) designed to explore leadership talent identification, development, succession and retention in contextually different primary and secondary schools in England. Focus groups and a questionnaire were used to secure perceptions of heads, middle…

Despite the current interest in many countries in assessing the principal's performance, stemming from the greater attention to educational reform and accountability, the empirical study of principal's appraisal has been slow to develop. This article was designed to fill partially this gap. Data was collected by semi-structured interviews of eight…

This article presents evidence of the similarities and differences in the career paths of men and women who have achieved headships in UK independent coeducational schools. The research comprised a pilot study of interviews with nine female headteachers and a questionnaire sent to male and female heads of coeducational secondary schools. It…

This article is written from the perspective of a practising headteacher in the context of the "Leadership Programme for Serving Headteachers" (LSPH), now renamed "Head for the Future," and builds on an earlier treatment of the ideological background of LPSH and its construction of self in relation to approaches to educational leadership through…

The aim of this article is to contribute to an improved comprehension of the relations between administrators and teachers. The main argument is that mutual dependency is an operational feature of a school organization. I analyse a school case that shows essential features of the interconnections between the parties. An extensive commitment to ICT…

This article is to encourage debate about the challenges for academics wanting to see our theories translated into practice in schools. Conventional academic articles do not provide information ready for immediate download into daily school practice. Should academics therefore publish in alternative formats and styles as exemplified in the…

This article outlines a comparative analysis of three studies (one provincial, and two school division) that examined the congruence between the priorities of the Manitoba government's "Kindergarten to Senior 4 (K-S4) Education Agenda for Student Success" and priorities identified by stakeholders in a rural Manitoba (Canada) school division, as…

In this article an alternative interpretation of the functions of decision-making and the inherent activities at teachers' meetings at schools are presented. The metaphor of "play" is introduced in order to make the teachers' actions during decision-making comprehensible, not only for outsiders, but more importantly for "involved insiders", such…

Free primary education (FPE) is widely assumed to be required to ensure that the poor gain enrolment. After the introduction of FPE (from January 2003) in Kenyan schools, huge increases in enrolment were officially reported. However, our research, conducted 10 months after the introduction of FPE in and around the informal settlement of Kibera,…

A descriptive study using questionnaires was conducted in 2004 to assess the effectiveness of instructional leadership displayed by primary school management teams following the implementation of the Primary School Management Project in Botswana. Leadership skills, Coordination of instructional activities, management of curriculum and quality of…

The role of the school superintendent is complex and challenging. The type of leadership exemplified by school superintendents is crucial to their ability to respond appropriately and adequately to growing diversity issues and economic, social and community influences. Because individuals learn from the styles and/or characteristics of others whom…