For decades, the instructional field trip has been viewed as a strategy to enhance students' learning experiences. Yet what happens when an award-winning teacher is accused of choking a student while on a field trip? Tempers flare among community members, parents contact the police, and the principal is assigned the daunting task of investigating…

This case traces a middle school's involvement in curricular innovation and school reform. Beginning with curricular innovations in one classroom, educational reform eventually spreads through the entire sixth grade and beyond. Although the changes gain community and student support, teachers at the other grade levels are resistant and resentful…

This case concerns conflict over decision making in a high school and highlights major differences of opinion regarding the purposes of schooling and the democratic ideals of education. Faculty members who have worked toward greater heterogeneity are at odds with parents who want more honors classes. The school's faculty council has instituted a…

This case study focuses on the legal aspects of school district grading policies. Given parental and student challenges to assigned grades, a school district and its employees must be prepared to respond appropriately to substantive and procedural claims. Moreover, when these claims cannot be resolved at the building level, administrative reviews,…

Attempting to build teams within existing cultures often leads to unintended consequences for school administrators. A subculture can become weaker or stronger than the particular department or grade level within which it is housed. Perhaps a team stays so weak that it never becomes as strong or effective as the department; perhaps a grade-level…

Many states use test results to hold schools accountable, with the stakes for children, teachers, and administrators becoming higher. High school principal Kimberly Reeves had to show substantial progress in raising achievement scores to keep her school off the state's low-performing list and to help the district maintain positive community…

Principals play a major role in uniting faculties into collective action to improve teaching and learning. Researchers have found that schools that function as teaching and learning communities are successful in raising student academic achievement. To create a learning community, principals must transform their school cultures from places of…

This case study explores the duty of midmanagement administrators to enforce district policies with which they do not necessarily agree. The case addresses the issues of moral leadership, distribution of power, emotional responses that impact decision making, class differences, and equity. It also examines the role conflict that many married…

This case was developed for a class on administration and supervision. It describes the classroom speech of a teacher who uses questionable terms when referring to female students in his class. The case explores the distorted boundary between inappropriate speech and sexual harassment as a principal is called on to deal with a teacher's use of the…

In today's age of increasing accountability and scrutiny for school leaders, the issue of school bullying is perhaps one of the most prominent challenges that the school administrator will address. This case study seeks to illuminate the topic of bullying, specifically within the middle school context, while drawing upon recent research and…

This case exemplifies the frequent need for principals to negotiate the conflicting demands of parents and teachers. Parents are advocating increased participation in school decision making while teachers are demanding a more secure and isolated environment. Issues of class and race complicate this challenge for many urban administrators.…

People who become educational leadership professors usually come to their new occupation with a range of skills and experiences. Most doctoral preparation programs in educational leadership however do not always prepare future faculty members to address conflicts that arise when the actual roles and responsibilities of the new faculty member…

This article profiles Susan LaFlesche Picotte, the first Native American woman doctor in the United States. Several accounts record that at a very young age Picotte witnessed an incident involving a Caucasian doctor who refused to care for a dying Native American woman. Picotte was inspired by that incident to become a physician, ultimately…

This article profiles Shirley Chisholm (1924-2205), a 1993 inductee to the National Women's Hall of Fame. Born in New York, she was the oldest of four daughters. Her father was from British Guiana and her mother was from Barbados. In 1927, she was sent to Barbados to live with her maternal grandmother. She was educated in the British school system…

This article profiles Mary McLeod Bethune. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Bethune is not a household name. Despite the fact that she made major contributions in politics and education, she epitomized the quiet, passionate African-American woman of the mid-20th century, "the mothers of the race, the homemakers and spiritual guides." Bethune was…