Abstract
Leadership Matters. By fulfilling key responsibilities and key practices, school principals can have a profound, positive impact on student success. This issue offers several important articles that principals will find valuable in their pursuit of becoming more accomplished and skillful.
How early college principals approach college-going issues on their campuses has direct implications for students’ postsecondary opportunity. In the lead article, researchers Duncheon and DeMatthews examine college preparation on early college campuses through the lens of the principal. Findings indicate that principals prioritize instructional rigor, targeted interventions, embedded supports, and student enrichment as key efforts to enhance college preparations and opportunity on their campuses. This research offers preliminary insight into how school leaders in an innovative school context shape college access for underrepresented students. Practical and useful strategies that secondary principals can use to help them build a school culture that fosters increased college access and opportunity are discussed.
School discipline and school safety are primary areas of concern for school administrators. The second article summarizes the research literature regarding suspension in response to nonviolent and subjective offenses for racial/ethnic minorities. Fenning and Jenkins examine how principals can better understand how to be critical consumers of research studies when making administrative decisions. Basic research methodologies and designs are discussed followed by a review of strategies for reviewing and evaluating research. The authors recommend that principals, as critical consumers, need to both read and critique the research studies available in order to find what is appropriate and workable for their particular schools and students.
Secondary school administrators increasingly include students with disabilities in general education classrooms with co-teaching models. In this article, researchers Sinclair, Bray, Wei, Clancy, Wexler, Kearns, and Lemons examine teachers’ perceptions of their co-teaching practices with a spotlight on the administrator’s role in supporting quality co-teaching. Drawing from the lessons learned from co-teachers within their study, the authors developed a list of guiding questions school administrators can use as they approach supporting co-teachers in their building. Important considerations are presented that will help administrators navigate the difficult process of assessing the current state of co-teaching and planning for future implementation.
School leadership can be developed and strengthened from many approaches, including, but not limited to, transformational, instructional, distributed, and social justice leadership. In the final article, researcher Wang presents an alternative perspective to develop school leadership from the social network perspectives. Social ties, network structures, social influence, and school culture are used to outline the social network perspectives of school leadership. Findings indicate that from the social network perspectives, school leadership starts with forging social ties that serve as the foundation for shaping network structure, gaining social influence, and building a nurturing school culture. Using the table of behaviors that school leaders need to demonstrate to build a sturdy social infrastructure, principals can gain powerful insights that have great potential to inform next steps.
Principals and school district leadership will find these articles thought-provoking and enlightening. Important concerns and issues are discussed that inform principals’ essential work in improving schools. Each article is a “must read”!