Action-Oriented Principals: Facing the Demands of External Pressures

Principals in today's schools face a wide range of requests and demands from a variety of sources that are often conflicting. There are government mandates, rules and regulations such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). There are state rules and regulations for program review, curriculum standards, testing, licensing of teachers, length of school day and year, transportation, graduation requirements, and activities. There are accrediting agencies with their own sets of guidelines for how schools should be operated, teachers qualified, resources allocated and progress assessed. The action-oriented principal of the twenty-first century is being called upon to respond to all of these and many more external pressures. They often become mired in the arbitration of problems caused by the divergent values, beliefs, and opinions of those many stakeholders in the educational process. The purpose of this text is to act as a resource and a guide for administrators of tomorrow's schools by being a proactive leader and leading schools by strategic planning and community involvement instead of waiting for things to happen to them from the external communities.