INTRODUCTION
When you want to know the best 20
steps to take to improve the work and learning atmosphere in your school or how
to pass a bond referendum, build a business case (with forecasting and
benchmarking), significantly raise your schools’ reading scores, or wear
the right shoes when the top school office is yours, then talk to top
superintendents (and former principals) plunk in Middle America, like
Illinois!
Our picks
were Jim Rosborg, Max McGee, and Jim Burgett. Their biographies show why.
We gave
them a dual mission: (1) Tell their colleagues how to be both effective leaders
in a school setting and innovators with curriculum, and (2) Openly discuss
every major problem facing in-the-field school administrators and principals
today. The only guidelines were absolute honesty, clarity, real examples, and
as little mumbo-jumbo jargon as possible.
The one
area we couldn’t adequately confront was finance, which in most states is
relatively prescriptive. But we zeroed in on grant writing, collective
bargaining, bond issues, foundation-forming, union-supporting, and
technology—the kinds of financial things this book’s readers can do
something about.
We feel
that learning from others who daily face the same headaches and hopes that you
do is usually a whole lot more useful than trying to build a book around
patched-up, outdated procedures templates. So we have tried to cram as much
practical how-to stuff into 320 pages as we could, and then set up a website
with even more follow-up info, plus the authors’ photos!
While the
pages in this book read conversationally, the advice is flat-out serious,
because schools and teaching kids is about as serious a task as we face in
The Second Edition!
The introduction
above, and the first edition of this book that it introduced, found such
positive reception that we sold out three full printings, plus a fourth run
solely made for an investment firm that wanted all of the administrators in its
area to have a copy on their desk!
Now
it’s well into 2006 and rather than simply go to press as is again, I
asked each of the authors to update his chapters (several were virtually
rewritten with new material) and to provide us with five new case studies to
add to the earlier ones, so we could keep the information current and
immediately applicable.
They
happily complied with this grumpy old editor’s requests, although
“happily” may be a tad exaggerated. That was a double good fortune
because it makes this upgraded edition even better than the first, which has
also been widely adapted as a textbook for graduate school administration
classes across the country.
My
requests were a real imposition because all three were at the same time writing
the heart of a composite grand new book with a working title of The
Perfect School.
Another
benefit has accrued since the release of What Every Superintendent and Principal
Needs to Know in 2003. All three of the editors, by popular demand, are
gracing lecture halls, educational conferences, and school administrator
upgrade gatherings, building on the book’s old and new contents, and
sprinkling in up-to-date applications.
So here it
is, what we call in-house “Supt #2,” with
new windows and repainted doors on a still-fresh foundation that we think will
stand strong for centuries. Good stuff, with more good stuff.
Gordon Burgett,
Publisher
Check here
if you want to order the book (in print or digital format) or one of the
many reports from the
"Excellence in Education for Superintendents and Principals"
series...
Would you like to read Chapter
1?
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