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Because leading schools out of chronic failure is harder than managing a successful school - often requiring more creative problem-solving abilities and stronger leadership, among other skills - the supply of principals capable of doing the work is tiny.

I loved the comment that people don't grow on trees - I guess that great leadership programs will need to start growing immediately!

The study assessed a public school principals in terms of their attraction to the job of district superintendent. The reasearchers assumed "participant self-reported capability to become a superintendent impacts participant attraction to the job, and participant satisfaction with facets of their current jobs and their expected satisfaction with those same job facets in the job of superintendent give an indication of participant likelihood of pursuing the job of superintendent." Method: This was a field survey "designed and implemented according to procedures established by Dillman" (2000). The study was "a combination of the quasi-experimental and correlation designs, as explicated byCampbell and Stanley (1963), and involved three analytical procedures: Winter, Rinehart Keedy, Björk 38 Planning and Changingpaired-samples t-tests, two-group discriminant analysis, and hierarchical multiple regression analysis."   The study shows that the superintendents were on average 46.9 years-old and were fairly even gender, predominantly caucasian, and 85% were married. Most participants were not superintendentcertified (87.7%), and most of those who were not certified did not intend to become certified (79.0%), suggesting relatively low interest in pursuing the job of superintendent. Most of the participants who were superintendent-certified had held their certification for five years or more (65.3%), suggesting a modest degree of intent to transition from the job of principal to the job of superintendent. People tend to see the reality of the workload and time commitment.

Germans do not use lay governance - This paper presents findings of a study that explored the governance and administration of elementary and secondary schools in Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany. The sample included 12 Bavarian schools--3 each of the following 4 types of schools--elementary (Grundschulen) and secondary (Gymnasien, Realschulen, and Hauptschulen). Data were gathered from interviews with school principals or headmasters and some administrative staff, observation, and document analysis. Findings showed that the selection process for teachers in Germany is much more rigorous than in the United States. Principals are experienced classroom teachers with proven ability who continue to teach. In addition, the entire district apparatus is missing; there are no superintendents, lay boards of education, and so forth. Bavarian schools appear to function extremely well within a framework of fairly tight external control, while enjoying strong professionalism among educators and freedom from the micromanagement that all too often plagues their American counterparts. Findings underscore the need for fundamental and systemic reform in the United States; high student achievement must be preceded by advances in teacher professionalism.

Deals with the struggle of public service professionals that resist changing the occupational norms that would decrease their power even though it would benefit their clients. To examine the relationship between professionalism and change, data were collected from elementary school principals, local school board members, and lay members of community health planning. Principals were slightly less inclined than school board members to accept change. The least professional of the three groups, community health members, were the most negative about change. The mixed findings may result partially from the spurious relationship between professionalism and change. Two additional variables were introduced to test this hypothesis: amount of "turbulence" or dissatisfaction among clients and diversity of viewpoints within groups. Controlling for the former variable yielded little difference; however, there was a strong positive relationship between diversity of viewpoints and change. Consequently, group consensus is seen as a major variable in predicting acceptance of change.

The principal for whom Rhee worked said that there was "clear evidence of actual, knowing falsehood" in statements Rhee made about the magnitude of improvement in test scores for her students. Frederick Hess, who was not involved with that school or its faculty said : "There's simply no way with these data to say anything, good or bad, about Rhee's teaching performance,"

The principal for whom Rhee worked said Rhee's statements about the magnitude of improvement in test scores for her students were "clear evidence of actual, knowing falsehood." Frederick Hess, who was not involved with the faculty or school responded "There's simply no way with these data to say anything, good or bad, about Rhee's teaching performance,"

DC is expanding the use of the data from value-added evaluation models. "And the conclusions made using IMPACT as a basis will be just as flawed as the instrument they rely upon."