2019 Summer Journal of Scholarship and Practice

The three articles examine leadership and provide ways in which superintendents can use reflection and introspection to enhance their work.

The first article is written by Diane Ketelle and Betty Lin. The writers address leadership in an aesthetic context, explaining how it provides a buffer between management and administration by focusing on “the development of leadership qualities and dispositions that contribute to a leader’s emotional and sensory awareness and general self-awareness.”

In the second article, Douglas Wieczorek and Deani Thomas ask the question, “What Did We Learn from Race to the Top Teacher Evaluation Systems?” How did public school district leaders, building leaders, and/or teachers engage with the United States’ RTTT program teacher evaluation policies in the context of their beliefs, previous experiences, and local school community contexts? The authors describe how a “power of belief and emotion in the change process comes from authenticity in relationships. Positive changes can be promoted when leaders emotionally support those they lead through the process of connecting their existing beliefs and current emotions to proposed changes.”

In “Good Governance and the Influence of the Superintendent,” by Kim Bridges along with fellow authors Stephanie Downey Toledo, and Annie Knickman Plancher, it is proposed that superintendents should reconceive their roles to become lead “influencers” of good governance among both board members and the public.

The issue’s book review by Art Stellar examines recent leadership at the federal level in Rick Hess and Michael McShane’s collection of essays, Bush-Obama School Reform: Lessons Learned published by Harvard Education Press in 2018. National educational reform enjoyed perhaps its most productive era during the sixteen concurrent years of the Bush and Obama administrations. The federal role in education greatly expanded. What happened and what lessons can be learned from this surge in Federal education policy?