5 Essential Skills of School Leadership

In today's changing environment, leaders need a concrete guideline to help them meet new challenges and to update standards and assessments such as The No Child Left Behind Act. These new regulations and laws pertain not only to accountability issues, testing methods and assessment, teacher certification requirements, and safety in schools, but serve to update pre-existing methods in leadership skills. This book will help those in leadership roles develop skills to successfully adopt new techniques that are vital when dealing with national and state requirements and enacting new laws that pertain to education.

This book provides a detailed and comprehensive look at theories of leadership styles and behaviors and presents the reader with five characteristics that enable a rookie or veteran leader to become proficient and effective in their role. A guideline, using real life stories and examples, demonstrate how to bring about change and be a successful leader utilizing these five traits: insight, interpersonal skills, self-growth, flexibility, and keeping in touch with the community.

This book will of interest to administrators and professors of educational leadership.

Nancy Langley is a Foreign Language Department Chair, Fairfax County, Virginia.
Mark Jacobs is a district level administrator at Webster Central Schools, Webster, New York.