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Staying on Track

An Educational Leader's Guide to Preventing Derailment and Ensuring Personal and Organizational Success

Second Edition
By: Dale L. Brubaker, Larry D. Coble

Identify and prevent potential career derailment!

This completely updated guide helps you assess your chances for derailment, identifies how you might sabotage your prospects for promotion or retention, and provides strategies to remedy the situation. The authors address the following questions:

What causes an educational leader to derail?
What are potential accountability and high-stakes testing derailment factors?
What skills are most important for improving data-driven decision making, student achievement, and test results?

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Product Details

Grade Level: PreK-12
ISBN: 9781412939362
Published By: Corwin
Year: 2006
Page Count: 200
Publication date: July 11, 2006

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Description

"This second edition is moving, realistic, and candid. New chapters on how to negotiate accountability pressures and the seasons of an educational leader's life are excellent. Every would-be and present administrator would benefit from reading this book."
-Seymour B. Sarason, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Yale University

Identify and prevent potential career derailment!

School leaders deal with pressures, pitfalls, and opportunities every day. The authors maintain that creative leaders can keep schools moving in the right direction by reflecting on their natural talents and maximizing the strengths of their staff.

This completely updated guide helps you assess your role as an administrator, shows how you might sabotage your prospects for promotion or retention, and provides strategies to remedy the situation. Two new chapters address the political realities of the No Child Left Behind Act and answer these queries:

What causes an educational leader to derail?
What are potential accountability and high-stakes testing derailment factors?
What skills are most important for improving data-driven decision making, student achievement, and test results?

This new edition will help you start, or keep, your forward momentum and get you closer to your ideal job.

Author(s)

Dale L. Brubaker

Dale L. Brubaker is Professor of Education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has also served on the faculties of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He received his doctorate in foundations of education from Michigan State University. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books on education and educational leadership, including CREATIVE CURRICULUM LEADERSHIP (Corwin), STAYING ON TRACK, (Corwin), and CREATIVE SURVIVAL IN EDUCATIONAL BUREAUCRACIES.

Larry D. Coble

Larry D. Coble is Managing Associate with School Leadership Services, A Division of The Coble Professional Group, a leadership and management consulting organization, and Director of the Collegium for the Advancement of Schools at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He provides speeches and seminars on leadership nationwide. He was a Senior Program Associate at the Center for Creative Leadership and served as assistant principal, principal, and superintendent in school systems in North Carolina. His most recent superintendency was in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He received his doctorate in educational administration from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is coauthor of STAYING ON TRACK (Corwin).

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Prologue: A Cautionary Tale

1. Accountability and High-Stakes Testing

The National Level

The State Level

The School-System Level

The School Level

Conclusion

2. Self-Assessment Checklists

Checklist A

Checklist B

Conclusion

3. What Causes Educational Leaders to Derail?

Causes of Assistant Principal and Principal Derailment

Causes of Superintendent Derailment

Conclusion

4. Antiderailment Strategies

The Recommendations

Conclusion

5. Professional and Personal Plans for Development

What Works and Doesn’t Work in Professional Development

Professional Development Recommendations for a School or School System

A Personal Development Plan for Improvement

Conclusion

6. Preparing Teacher Leaders for Tomorrow’s Leadership Positions

A Grounding for Teacher Leader Development

The Realities of Context in Which Teachers Lead

The Teacher Leader and the Presentation of Self

The Teacher Leader and Meetings

The Teacher Leader as Networker

Conclusion

7. The Seasons of An Educational Leader’s Career

Preparing the Way to Become an Educational Administrator

Entering Educational Administration

Settling In—The Middle Years

The Later Years as an Educational Administrator

Conclusion

Afterword

Resources

References

Index

Reviews

"An exciting guide to help aspiring educational leaders develop."

Terrence E. Deal, Professor of Education
University of Southern California

"Filled with practical, useful ideas to help you get (and keep!) your career going in the right direction. All school administrators should make this book a part of their personal learning plan. We are using it as a part of our intensive leadership training program."

Richard E. Maxwell, Executive Director (Retired)
Buckeye Association of School Administrators

"This second edition is moving, realistic, and candid. New chapters on how to negotiate accountability pressures and the seasons of an educational leader’s life are excellent. Every would-be and present administrator would benefit from reading this book."

Seymour B. Sarason, Professor Emeritus of Psychology
Yale University

"If all aspiring and practicing school leaders heeded the suggestions in Staying on Track, a tremendous loss of administrative talent to attrition could be avoided. Administrators can discover how to grow their own capacities to sustain their careers rather than to attempt to escape the realities of their jobs by running from one position to the next or resigning in disillusionment. This new edition offers two additional chapters aimed at helping leaders understand the four stages of an administrative career and how to avoid derailment by the high-stakes testing movement."

Sue F. Burgess, Superintendent of Schools
Dare County Public Schools, NC

"Offers advice in plain terms, checklists of key points to remember and implement, and a season-by-season overview of what to expect in the career of an educational administrator. A helpful and practical-minded guide to being the best administrator one can be."

Library Bookwatch, November 2006

Other Titles in: Leadership | Principal Mentoring, Induction & Coaching | Reflective Practice

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Review Copies

This book is not available as a review copy.