The Principal Challenge: Leading and Managing Schools in an Era of Accountability » (1st Edition)

Marc S. Tucker is president of the National Center on Education and the Economy. A leader of the national standards movement, he is coauthor of the prize-winning book Thinking for a Living and Standards for Our Schools.

Judy B. Codding is an award-winning former high school principal. She is now vice president of programs for the National Center on Education and the Economy and coauthor with Tucker of Standards for Our School.

Based on two years of research supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Broad Foundation, and the New Schools Venture Fund, The Principal Challenge focuses directly on the causes and cures of the crisis in school leadership. Marc Tucker, Judy Codding, and a stellar list of experts from the United States and abroad paint a revealing portrait of what it means to be a principal now, how and why most graduate schools of education have failed to provide the training principals need, what the military and business sectors do to create and support their leaders and managers, what the state of the art in professional training looks like, what other nations are doing to address this problem, and how to apply the very best practices in the world to solve the crisis in school leadership.

This book is honest and hard-hitting. And it offers realistic solutions. Based on the thorough analysis provided by the chapter authors, the editors of The Principal Challenge offer an imaginative proposal for a new kind of institution that will train school principals to be turn-around artists. Drawing on the new forms of executive development programs in our business schools, they propose a similar program for school principals. The approach involves a close collaboration between the new institution and entire school districts, combining face-to-face instruction with web-based delivery. The innovative curriculum they describe, like the best approaches in business and industry, uses carefully developed cases, simulations, games, action projects, seminars and journaling, The editors offer a clear conception of what it might mean to be an instructional leader, a way of thinking about what it takes for a principal to be a strategic thinker, an approach that principals can use to take advantage of the best current thinking on knowledge management and professional development, a conception of the principal as school designer, an emphasis on the use of data to drive planning, and a host of tested ideas that principals can use to lead their schools to better results.