EDU 5571

Administrative Leadership in Schools

Professor Frank Smith, Ed.D.        Spring  2004

"The school leader as bricoleur is confronted with a myriad of complex problems; problems that reflect the political, cultural, economic, and social dynamics of the world."

Course Description: This course focuses on the various roles that administrators will be expected to play.  The contributions of organizational theory, the research on effective schools and in the social sciences toward an understanding the role of the administrator as well as the influences of the bureaucratic structure.

Required Class Readings:

Civic Capacity - What, Why, and Whence, Stone. C., (2003) retrieved 5/15/04 from http://www.bsos.umd.edu/.

Civic Engagement in America, The Saguro Seminar, retrieved 4/2/04 from http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/saguaro/ 

With critical issues like desegregation and funding facing our schools, dissatisfaction with public education has reached a new high. Teachers decry inadequate resources while critics claim educators are more concerned with job security than effective teaching. Though urban education has reached crisis proportions, contending players have difficulty agreeing on common program of action. Much of the problem with our schools lies with the reluctance of educators to recognize the profoundly political character of public education. The contributors show how urban political contexts vary widely with factors like racial composition, the role of the teachers' union, and relations between cities and surrounding metropolitan areas. The various authors of case studies consider how resistance to desegregation and the concentration of the poor in central urban areas affect education, and they suggest how cities can build support for reform through the involvement  of business and other community players.

Drawing on vast new data that reveal Americans' changing behavior, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from one another and how social structures — whether they be PTA, church, or political parties — have disintegrated. Until the publication of this groundbreaking work, no one had so deftly diagnosed the harm that these broken bonds have wreaked on our physical and civic health, nor had anyone exalted their fundamental power in creating a society that is happy, healthy, and safe.

Central Islip Mathematics Improvement Paper

Improvement Plan Presentation

 Course Synthesis

Books I was inspired to read beyond this course: