School Principals Putting Bullying Policy to Practice

School principals must rely on state statutes and district policies to navigate reports of school bullying. Investigating reports to determine the outcomes may vary depending upon the districts definition of bullying, the investigation process, and follow through to reporting the findings of the investigation to the involved children and youth’s parents. However, investigating reports can be challenging due to the confusion of what constitutes bullying. This confusion can be especially troubling for parents who believe their child is being bullied. In order to understand principals' perspectives on bullying, two focus groups were conducted with nine urban school principals. Researchers examined principals’ perceptions of how state- and district-level policies were used within their bully investigation practices. These principals suggest that a clear, specific district wide definition of bullying and step by step procedures to investigate reports, along with the state anti-bullying statute, provide a valuable guide for follow-through and back up in determining cases of school bullying. In addition, they identified how policies and district mandates affected parents, particularly when reporting their investigation findings. Implications for bully prevention policies are discussed.

Perspectives of Urban School Principals From Nontraditional Contexts: A Study of Urban Public Charter and Private School Leaders

Principals from 76 urban public charter and private (Catholic) schools located in three midsized cities participated in a sequential explanatory investigation measuring perceptions of key elements related to school administration. Topics include students, selves, and elements related to the job of principal. Findings indicate that most principals view few administrative tasks as very challenging yet regard experience and skills as very important. Principals also perceive high level of authority over areas related to instruction. Comparisons by school type indicate close alignment of perspectives.

Challenges and Opportunities for School Improvement: Recommendations for Urban School Principals

Insofar as urban school systems that are often identified as ineffective include such a large segment of U.S. P-12 students, it is vital to improve academic success. To provide context, the article first discusses key challenges facing urban schools. Second, the article identifies and briefly reviews a variety of approaches to reform models often employed in efforts to improve student learning in urban schools. Third, the article briefly discusses the importance of principal leadership in relation to school success and an overview of approaches to leadership. Then, the article offers recommendations regarding leadership, instructional leadership, cultural leadership, and change leadership important to urban school reform. The article rounds out with a brief conclusion.

A Community College District Chancellor’s View on Transformational Leadership

In an effort to promote school improvement, principals have primarily focused on developing quality teachers as a method of enhancing the academic achievement of students. This article seeks to shed light on the experiences and per-ceptions of urban principals regarding teacher effectiveness. Specifically, this article focuses on principals’ outlooks on teachers’ in three areas: student achievement, hiring and retention, and school culture. Empirical data from this study was derived from a mixed-method cross sectional survey administered to urban school principals in Arizona and California. It was evident in this study that principals perceive teachers as either well qualified or very well qualified to educate urban students. These findings are incongruent with the greater literature on this topic which illustrates the quality of urban school teachers is in question in comparison to non-urban teachers. The implications of principals’ overwhelmingly positive outlook are discussed coupled with recommendations for future research.

Urban School Principals, Deficit Frameworks, and Implications for Leadership

This article presents the findings of a qualitative study of four middle school principals in one urban school district. It focuses on principals’ almost exclusively negative descriptions of the families and communities served by their schools. Whereas much previous writing on this topic has attributed such deficit attitudes to a few bad-thinking educators, this article argues that these principals beliefs are in fact aligned with prevailing attitudes about urban communities, the purposes of schooling, and what leadership can and should do in urban schools Remedying principals’ deficit frameworks is a prerequisite for school improvement and will require selecting, preparing, and supporting principals differently; it will also require making visible the systems of belief that obstruct connections between urban schools and communities