May 2018: School Administrator

The option of reduced schooling appeals to a growing audience, but does the evidence warrant its use?

Promoting learning time reforms that cross ideological divides to benefit students most in need

Are superintendents as engaged as others in their work, and does this vary in districts of different size and location?

The father of a female student has confessed to paying for sex with a teenage prostitute. His name does not appear on the county’s database of sex offenders. Should the principal share any information with the school’s parents?

How a newly hired superintendent turned around a bad situation involving a domineering board member with micromanaging tendencies.

ON OPENING DAY of my 10th year as a superintendent, I challenged all of our district’s employees with this: If what we most want for our students is they be agile, curious, interested, independent learners, then we must be that very thing first.

TEACHERS ARE REPORTING alarmingly high rates of dissatisfaction with their work, according to recent surveys by MetLife, the American Federation of Teachers and the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences.

The problem of over-direction in K-12 education is not new. It first gained attention in the aftermath of Sputnik and re-emerged in recent decades as legislatures applied new pressures on teachers in the classroom.

THOSE OF US who began watching television when shows were still in black and white or who love reruns from the 1950s and 1960s probably remember “The Twilight Zone.”

Recognizing that students can learn anywhere and at any time is the optimal starting stage.

In a typical school district of 5,000 students, there will be more than 200 schedules just in the elementary schools — schedules for the school itself, schedules for special educators, social workers, reading teachers, music teachers and so on.

Considering a later start for your high school? It’s likely not going to be a smooth process. But those who took the plunge say there are a variety of steps districts can take to make success more likely and less painful.

In our zeal to achieve, to learn and to do more, sleep can be a casualty.

When Eric Conti, superintendent of Burlington, Mass., Public Schools, blogged last October about a proposal for a later school start time for high schoolers, he included a link to a New York Times article on “The Science of Adolescent Sleep.”

Paul Hill and Georgia Heyward of the Center on Reinventing Public Education developed these recommendations, based on the experiences of school leaders who’ve already made this transition.

One of the few constants in education over the past 150 years has been the 180-day school calendar, despite the learning gaps the long summer recess creates — gaps educators are working diligently to close.

What a school attorney believes you ought to consider when responding to public expressions at a board meeting or on the sidelines of the playing field.