Leadership

This profile tool will help you to compare your current instructional practices with a set of indicators for engaged learning and high-performance technology. For each category, there is a description of the indicators and examples that fall along a continuum. There are three examples for each indicator. Select the example that best describes your current practice, even though it may not represent your instructional goals. You may select only one example for each indicator.

If you use business intelligence products, pivot tables or queries, you'll find Tableau a breakthrough for quickly answering deep questions. Customers are working 5 to 20 times faster using Tableau. Use Tableau Desktop as a stand-alone application. Or if you can't keep the secret to yourself, use it with Tableau Server for a complete web-based analytics and dashboard solution for your company.

What is a Data Warehouse? A data warehouse is a storage and analysis application that allows schools to collect and store student and school data from a number of sources and from multiple years. A data warehouse application allows data to be viewed in a multidimensional manner through numerous filters, slices and attributes. A data warehouse is intended to be an analytical system to view and compare current data with longitudinal data, to identify trends and to help develop educational improvements. A data warehouse does not replace a student information system or finance/HR application.  Rather, a data warehouse brings together key data elements from numerous systems, including assessment results and demographic data, to allow for in-depth analysis and data-driven decision making.

As your partner in your quest for sustainable high performance, TetraData offers specific solutions to fit the needs of any school system. We do our homework -- striving to know how far your district has come and where it wants to go. With that knowledge we create a package of products and services -- your roadmap that will take your school system to the next level and beyond.

Just5Clicks works with K-12 school districts to capture, manage and communicate information.We specialize in all aspects of district operations with emphasis on student achievement. Our goal is to provide simple and easy to use applications that contain timely and relevant information for teachers, principals and district staff.

School districts create acceptable-use policies (AUPs) to define what is--and is not--acceptable behavior when using their computer resources. But at a time when computers and internet access are seen as increasingly important tools for instruction, many school leaders are struggling with how best to enforce these policies in the event that students transgress them.

A new web site sponsored by McGraw-Hill Education's Urban Advisory Resource offers advice on improving schools from superintendents and other education leaders across the country in an easily accessible format.

An attorney for a high school student who brought a free speech lawsuit against her school district last year said he now plans to file a libel lawsuit against the principal.

Why don't we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it's because we've been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies -- far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity -- are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. It's a message with deep resonance. Robinson's TEDTalk has been distributed widely around the Web since its release in June 2006. The most popular words framing blog posts on his talk? "Everyone should watch this."

It's time to recognize that conventional management ideas are broken - and start thinking of something better.

First Things First, a framework for school reform, has one goal: to help students at all academic levels gain the skills to succeed in post-secondary education and good jobs. In the process, FTF helps districts and schools meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind. FTF districts and schools commit to: * Strengthening relationships among students and adults. * Improving engagement, alignment and rigor of teaching and learning in every classroom, every day. * Allocating all resources - budget, staff, time and space - to achieve the first two goals. Our partners achieve these changes using three strategies: * Small learning communities. * The Family Advocate System. * Instructional improvement.

Fortune asked the top ten companies to share their best practices for developing leaders in a global economy.

Think you have the skills it takes to succeed as a leader? Take our quiz and find out if a climb to the top is in your future.

Tech visionary Lawrence Lessig made a sobering prediction Tuesday at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference: "There's going to be an i-9/11 event," he said, "an event that demonstrates the instability of the Internet, and that inspires the government to a response." He said he believes this digital disaster - a major hacker attack or other act of cyber-terrorism in the next 10 years - will prompt the U.S. government to clamp down on Internet freedoms in an online parallel to the Patriot Act.

When - Thursday, August 21, 2008 2pm, ET Description - School administrators across the country are working hard to offer healthy and attractive choices in their competitive food and beverage offerings. Still, concerns persist about inconsistent information, community support, student acceptance and revenue implications.

Respectfulness towards others is the key to a more civilized workplace The challenge for life at work is this: how to be a "business" person and a "human being" at the same time. How to be compete, yet cooperate; be hard-nosed, yet ethical; keep one's nose to the grindstone, yet still take time to "see" and acknowledge others; be professional, yet personal; to make a profit and yet not be greedy.

Time Management and To-Do Lists are less effective at coping with work overload I have to draw this article by Linda Stone in The Huffington Post to your notice, because it gives one of the best explanations I have come across on how to be become truly more productive in times when you simply have too much to do ("Is it Time to Retire the Never-Ending List?").

Most people try to cope with ever more demanding jobs and escalating targets by working longer hours. Sometimes it seems to be the only way, even if the impact on lives and relationships is almost wholly negative. But what if responding to workplace pressure in that way is dealing with the wrong issue - trying to manage and extend time, when what you need to be doing is managing your energy levels?

There's a Chinese proverb that goes something like this: "Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand." Leaders should know by now that people tend to resist change when it's forced on them. "Telling" is what initiates the resistance. It causes those being told to spend their energy mostly on NOT doing what you've told them. Yet that resistance is not so much about the change; it's all about being changed.

We need leaders who see themselves as learners. How can we help school leaders to reconnect with their inner leader? How can we take risks within the parameters of the school environment?