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Preparing for the worst, hoping for the best: School leadership for emergencies

According to The Washington Post, more than 331,000 children at more than 350 schools have experienced gun violence during school hours since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. And while school shootings tend to capture news headlines, they are not the only ill plaguing schools today.

According to the CDC, about one in five high school students report being bullied on school property. These numbers do not include the faculty and staff that may have also been affected by these situations. Not to mention the increase in severe weather events – in the first three months of 2023, schools across the nation have scrambled to secure buildings and protect students because of heavy snow, rain, flooding, tornadoes and wildfires.

The unfortunate reality is that it’s not a matter of if an emergency impacts a school–it’s a matter of when. And when an adverse incident occurs, time is of the essence. Here are three tips to help educational leaders effectively manage safety gaps and mitigate risks in their school community and ensure a swift response.…Read More

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4 essential components of behavior support in the classroom

The 2021-2022 school year began full of promise. Students, families, and educators were ready to get back to pre-pandemic learning routines. Almost no one was prepared for how the landscape had changed – many educators had left the profession, staffing needs were at an all-time high, and students were engaging in more frequent and more severe challenging behaviors.

The disruption wreaked by Covid dramatically impacted our students, especially those who were at-risk or experiencing behavior challenges prior to the pandemic. School leadership often struggled to meet the training needs of their staff–many of whom were brand new–especially needs related to behavior support.

The influx of staffing issues coupled with the uptick in challenging behaviors highlights the need for dedicated, integrated behavior support systems that are proactive, responsive to students’ individual needs, and grounded in evidence-based practices proven to increase prosocial behaviors.…Read More

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How a former music teacher approaches school leadership and learning

The pandemic has taught us that change is inevitable, but being prepared can set a school apart. It’s important to bring together research and outside learning tools to a team that is always striving and driving in the same direction. As a principal, I’m enthusiastic about what lies ahead for our school and district after a year of adjustments.

Like the characters in the Ron Clark book, Move Your Bus, we are all independently and collectively moving together to reach a positive objective. As a former music teacher, I see it as an orchestrated process where all members, from school leadership to teachers to custodial staff, realize their role, importance, and dynamic in the school’s overall symphony. It takes communication, organized teamwork, and a belief in modern data-driven approaches to bring forth learning success.

A school is an orchestra…Read More

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Professional Learning Summer Webinar Series

Flinn Scientific is hosting a safe return to school series of webinars, designed to provide facts and information to enhance student learning and facilitate instruction in a safe format, regardless of the learning modality.

Webinars cover safety measures, processes, and protocols required to keep students and staff safe. They have curated the top recommendations from recognized leaders in education, safety, and protection worldwide to help you sort through the overwhelming avalanche of content and readily get to the facts, links, and information that you need.

For School District Personnel
Guidance to Safe School Re-Entry: We all recognize that there is not a ‘one-size fits all’ solution to safely returning to school. In this session, they discuss safety preparation and concerns within schools and maintaining a physically and mentally healthy school environment.…Read More

10 K-12 cybersecurity must-dos

Cybersecurity has always been a high priority for K-12 administrators and staff, but with the rapid push to remote learning brought on by COVID-19, school leadership has had to consider how to educate through the lens of cybersecurity.

While school years are closing up for the 2019 – 2020 year, it’s still unknown what our learning environments will look like for the 2020 – 2021 school year. Let’s look at 10 things that K-12 schools must focus on – whether the next school year takes place in person on via remote learning.

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4 ways school leadership encourages proficient readers

At a time when schools are held accountable to the highest level of standards, strong school leadership is critical for success.

Fortunately, researchers have been exploring the school leadership factors that enable schools to successfully provide interventions to struggling readers, even in the face of complicating factors (e.g., a high percentage of the student population qualifying for free and reduced lunch).

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Study finds successes, challenges in shift to intensive principal preparation

A report released from the Illinois Education Research Council (IERC) at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, in partnership with the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (UChicago Consortium), assesses the progress of sweeping legislation to redesign the way school principals in Illinois are prepared, with the goal of improving schools statewide through higher quality leadership. The report summarizes findings from a two-year study assessing the progress of these ambitious reforms and describing the changes that occurred as a result of the new policy.

“This in-depth look at principal preparation programs is the latest in our series of studies of Illinois’ school leadership and provides insights into the challenges programs face after major reforms and the innovative ways that they have navigated through these challenges,” says IERC Executive Director Janet K. Holt.

Illinois’ new principal preparation policy required universities across the state to shift from a general training model geared toward multiple school administrative positions to more targeted and selective principal-specific preparation beginning in the 2014-15 school year. As a result, the study finds that preparation programs experienced substantial, but not unexpected, declines in enrollment.…Read More

School leadership under the microscope

Catch up on the most compelling K-12 news stories you may have missed this week

Every Friday, I’ll recap some of the most interesting and thought-provoking news developments that occurred over the week.

I can’t fit all of this week’s news stories here, though, so feel free to visit eSchoolNews.com and read up on other news you may have missed.

Don’t miss our interactive thought leader interviews from ASU+GSV! Click here.…Read More

Teacher of the year: Let us lead

New Haven’s teacher of the year put on a “phosphorescent” shirt and lit up an Omni Hotel ballroom with a challenge to a school reform crowd: Let teachers be leaders without forcing them to leave the classroom, the New Haven Independent reports. David Low, the New Haven Federation of Teachers’ vice president of high schools and this year’s teacher of the year, made those remarks Thursday night at the opening session of the 7th annual Yale School of Management’s Education Leadership Conference at the Omni. Low took part in an opening panel moderated by state education chief Stefan Pryor. Low took a seat on stage in the ballroom beside Michael Sharpe, CEO of FUSE, a Hartford charter school operator; Rae Ann Knopf, director of the Connecticut Council for Education Reform; and Steven Adamowski, a former Hartford superintendent…

Read the full story

Report suggests new system for principal evaluations

A new report suggests that principals must be more involved in school reform discussions.

Principal evaluation systems should not be based solely on student achievement gains, but rather on the quality of a principal’s school-level leadership and performance, according to a new report released by the American Institutes for Research (AIR).

The report, titled, “The Ripple Effect,” found that principals and other school-based leaders are being left out of education reform discussions. “Principals’ voices, at times, have been lost in efforts to define effective school leadership and rapidly improve educational quality,” it states.…Read More

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