School administrators make hundreds of decisions each year that affect their schools' academic and ethical quality. This article presents 12 practical dilemmas involving evaluation, discipline, and community relations to test secondary principals' character and reveal the ethical quality of their leadership. (MLH)

When teachers are assessed for tenure decisions, reappointment, promotion, or awards, the principal must demonstrate sound and consistent ethical behavior. Any hint of unethical behavior can have long-term consequences affecting teacher performance and instructional quality. Five key commandments for professional ethics are presented. Includes one…

Presents ethical assumptions to guide principals' decisions regarding the parents' right to know. Basically, families are the building blocks of society and have the best interests of the child at heart. Three special areas (discipline, special education, and counseling) involved with parental rights to information must be treated carefully. (MLH)

To maintain "marginality" when attempting to implement PL 142 (the Education for All Handicapped Children Act), a principal must understand the demands, goals, needs, and motivations of all concerned. Mainstreaming and other special education decisions made by principals need to be guided by situational ethics. Includes five references. (MLH)

Five principals were asked by NASSP editors to describe their personal response to an ethical dilemma. Principals' difficult situations included an athletic team's transportation costs, a college scholarship requirement, a site-based management problem, an employee alcoholism case, and a too-strict textbook adoption policy. (MLH)

Citizens must demand ethical behavior from elected officials and realize that public servants are being held to a higher standard than ever before. Educators need to excite and enlighten their young charges by underscoring the importance of ethical behavior in politics and spotlighting desirable character traits. (MLH)

Compares "moral literacy" to cultural literacy, as both depend on prior knowledge. If we want youngsters to possess admirable character traits, then we must teach them what they are through stories and historical examples. Children cannot be expected to take messages about rules or morality seriously unless they see adults following the same…

Asked about principals' leadership role, Peters claims we've gone wrong by emphasizing the superstructure over the unit commander and by taking "leading" and "managing" distinctions too seriously. Vision and people skills are all-important. Unfortunately, schools have drawn from the worst of private-sector management and confused leadership with…

Power, the capacity to ensure desired outcomes and prevent undesirable ones, should not be confused with status or prestige. Whereas leaders always have a measure of power, many powerholders have no trace of leadership. Although leaders' roles tend to be overemphasized, society cannot run without leadership. (MLH)

In Florida, 19 competencies that distinguish behaviors of highly and moderately performing principals now serve as a basis for selecting, certifying, and appraising school managers. This article discusses certain assumptions, describes a six-stage competency acquisition process, and outlines Florida's principal competencies. Includes six…

Instructional leaders need a sturdy support system and a sound background in clinical supervision to be effective administrators. This article identifies three vital tools of the trade: a specific set of basic skills for quality teaching; a support system for each teaching skill; and a dependable, flexible, and personalized delivery system. (MLH)

An exploratory study of five high schools involved in the Connecticut State Department of Education's Secondary School Development Project suggests that student performance factors (early termination, academic achievement, and student attendance) may be linked to effective school characteristics. This article summarizes the mixed results of the…

A survey of teachers and principals in North Cook County, Illinois, explored tenure issues related to teacher performance, professional image, job security, and teacher welfare. Although a majority of teachers and principals agreed that tenure inhibits dismissal of below-average teachers, 54 percent of teachers favored keeping tenure, and 69…

Recounts a year in the life of a new principal. The author discovered the primary elements of survival in the fishbowl to be establishing positive school-community relations, developing patience, maintaining a global perspective on the organization's activities, and acquiring resiliency in response to the continual ebb and flow of people, ideas,…

Drawing from personal experiences, writings, observations, evaluation training activities, and professional consultations, this article identifies 50 propositions inherent in personnel evaluation. Propositons fall into three categories: professional premises, contextual realities, and constraints. (MLH)