Cultural leadership is an essential foundation underlying successful instructional leadership activities. Careful use of cultural assessment helps principals identify contextual barriers shaping the outcomes of otherwise effective instructional change interventions. Cultural brokerage not only protects these improvements but promotes and…

As identified by French and Raven, expert power is based on the student's perception that the teacher possesses some special knowledge or expertise worth acquiring. Expert power, like all the power bases (reward, coercive, legitimate, and referent power), must be cultivated. Principals should act to promote and highlight the legitimate expertise…

Reform measures have had little effect on increasing high school students' academic performance. Instructional quality is largely determined by the attitude, competence, and talent of teachers and principals responsible for delivering classroom instruction. Contracts should be revised to increase teachers' starting salaries, enforce accountability…

The supervision model adopted by the Minot (North Dakota) Public School District Board of Education provided the skeletal foundation for the Magic City Campus instructional growth plan. By enhancing this framework with both an instructional model and indepth coaching, teacher growth and effectiveness naturally evolved. Principals striving to be…

Based on a survey of Ohio's elementary and high school principals, this article proposes a specific, selected set of effective teaching elements: classroom climate, questioning, set induction (to spark student motivation), stimulus variation, reinforcement, and closure. Principals will find these elements practically based, observable, common to…

Although most efforts to improve academic learning time have been directed at classroom teachers, principals can also employ schoolwide procedures to improve time usage. This article presents 11 such strategies involving direction-setting, direct staff support, and structural alterations. Academic learning time should be a schoolwide goal linked…

Six computer applications in education are word processing, computer-assisted instruction, computer-aided design, computer authoring systems, computer data systems, and computer storage. Computers may assist students with three learning stages: acquisition, transformation, and evaluation of information. Advances in computer programing, software,…

The Moss Point (Mississippi) School District developed a comprehensive plan to help secondary school students understand text organization, use semantic mapping, and apply writing process stages in the various content subjects. Teachers were taught to implement classroom strategies and to assess and document students' writing progress, which has…

Clinical supervision stresses face-to-face encounters with individual teachers about a specific teaching/learning situation. The process incorporates the use of specific objective data forming the basis for collaborating and aimed at instructional improvement. The five stages are preobservation conference, classroom observation, data and strategy…

Evaluators using a naturalistic orientation observe a teacher's performance within the context of other lessons and interactions, view teacher observation and evaluation as processes rather than outcomes, and see events from the teacher's perspective. Principals can increase objectivity by recognizing the effects of their attitudes and experiences…

The greatest deterrent to drugs and gangs is a full, high-quality student activity program. Cocurricular activities offer peer counseling groups, nurturing clubs, relationship building, and enormous support for youngsters at minimal cost. Potential dropouts can be engaged by car clubs, job opportunities, and computer use programs. Eliminating…

School bashing has been a national pastime for years. Government officials and business leaders demoralize teachers and administrators carrying out improvement efforts by telling them how poorly they are doing. Although many educators truly believe in a national desire to improve education, there is no national will to compensate and empower…

The educational community must acquire the organizational capability to engage in systems design, envision new stages of education, and bring the image to life. The first stage probes the essence of education: its relationship to society, the designation of social functions, the kind of learning to be offered, and the feasibility of organizational…

To implement shared governance, 24 Georgia schools joined with the University of Georgia's Program for School Improvement (PSI) to form the League of Professional Schools. This article explains how staff at participating schools overcame the complexities of the new system by communicating openly and breaking issues down into small parts. (MLH)

At the NASSP's Alaska Assessment Center for Principals, aspiring administrators and assistant principals consistently scored lowest in a key characteristic--the leader's strongly held values and ability to create a shared school vision. This article underlines the principal's role as author and choreographer of a shared school vision that must be…