Leading for Learning: Annual Reports

The Education Week series "Leading for Learning," funded by the Wallace Foundation, includes annual reports on leadership in education.

Leading for Learning 2008

Read the Full Report: Education Week's fifth annual Leading for Learning report, funded by The Wallace Foundation, examines the leadership challenges facing the nation's rapidly growing charter school sector. It includes new research on the characteristics of charter school principals, and the pressing issues they face, from the National Charter Schools Research Project at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Chat Transcript: Leading for Learning 2008

Paul Hill and Betheny Gross from the Center on Reinventing Public Education answered questions inspired by Education Week's newest "Leading for Learning" report on charter schools.
• Read the transcript.

Stories featured in the 2008 report include:

Wanted: The Perfect Person: The charter school movement faces daunting leadership and management challenges, especially as the sector continues its rapid expansion.

Preparation Programs Can’t Match Demand: A growing field of specialty programs has emerged to train principals for the demands of running charter schools.

Differing Organizational Models Help Charters Divide Up the Load: Given the wide range of duties involved in leading a charter school, it can be tough— and, some experts say, inadvisable—for one person to go it alone.

The High-Wire Job of Charter School Leadership: Being a charter school leader brings other challenges not often faced by principals of traditional public schools, who receive support from their districts’ central offices.

Opening a School Draws on All of Founders’ Skills: In less than a year, two principals went from writing a charter school proposal to sitting in the homes of their new students to guarantee them and their parents academic success.

Many Charter Boards Seen as Unprepared: The boards that run them serve in relative obscurity, even as they face distinctive challenges.

Calif. Group Puts Muscle Into Charters: In California, where a quartermillion students will attend charter schools this year, many charters have tapped a savvy advocacy group for support and expertise.

Management Networks Strive to Grow Like-Minded Schools: A new approach to the leadership and management of public schools has taken hold over the past decade.

Leading for Learning 2007

Stories featured in the 2007 report include:

Leading for Learning: About This Report
This special pullout section is the fourth annual Education Week report examining leadership in education, an important topic in an era of high-stakes accountability for public schools.

Getting Serious About Preparation: The nation’s schools need principals who know instruction, and that focus is helping to shape more coherent professional programs to select and train the next generation of school leaders.

Joining Forces: Greeneville City and Kingsport district officials entered into a collaborative partnership to help East Tennessee State revamp its educational leadership program.

Real-World Lessons: Since 2000, New Leaders for New Schools has recruited and trained more than 300 principals and placed them at the helms of troubled schools in cities across the nation. But the nonprofit organization aspires to much more.

A National View: When Arthur Levine wrote a scathing report on the preparation of American school leaders, the one institution he singled out as a “promising model” wasn’t even in the United States. It was England’s National College for School Leadership.

Leading for Learning 2006

Stories featured in the 2006 report include:

Leading for Learning: About This Report
This special pullout section is the third of three Education Week annual reports examining leadership in education.

Building Capacity: States face new challenges as they try to help schools and districts improve learning.

Kentucky: The state expands its ‘distinguished educator’ program to districts, including their school boards.

New Mexico: The state requires "priority schools" to use a continuous-improvement program.

Pennsylvania: Distinguished educators are assigned by the state to help low-scoring districts.

Leading for Learning 2005

Stories featured in the 2005 report include:

Leading for Learning: About This Report: This special pullout section is the second of three Education Week annual reports examining leadership in education.

Theory of Action: The idea that schools can improve on their own gives way to a focus on effective district leadership.

Guiding Hand: In a poll, superintendents report more active roles.

Forward Motion: In Gilroy, Calif., educators have learned a common process for improvement planning. The rest is up to schools.

In Sharp Focus: Central office played a leading role in standardizing practice and monitoring data in Clarksville, Tenn.

Read the transcript from the Sept. 21, 2005 Education Week live Web chat on the 2005 report.

Read also the Education Week 2005 national leadership survey: "From the Top: Superintendents on Instructional Leadership."

View all charts, tables, and graphs included in the 2005 report.

Leading for Learning 2004

Stories featured in the 2004 report include:

Tackling an Impossible Job: After years of hearing that a principal’s main job should be to raise the quality of instruction, districts and states are experimenting with ways to make that ideal a reality.

Putting Out Fires: For one typical elementary school principal, routine duties consume most of the day.

Charts: Instructional Leadership: To see how principals go about their work, the Education Week Research Center analyzed data from the federal 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey.

Read the transcript from the Sept. 17, 2004 Education Week live Web chat on the 2004 report.