The Superintendent's Fieldbook: A Guide for Leaders of Learning

"Much of what we know about how to be successful in our roles as superintendent is generally learned the hard way. Having a resource to turn to in an effort to mitigate the trial and error nature of our approaches in dealing with the challenges of today′s superintendency provides a compelling reason to pick up the book."
Howard Smith, Superintendent of Schools
Public Schools of the Tarrytowns, Sleepy Hollow, NY

"New and current superintendents, or prospective school leaders should read this book. I think the authors tied in a lot of leadership theory and practices that would compliment individual styles of school superintendents."
Gina Segobiano, Superintendent
Signal Hill School District, Belleville, Illinois

Learn how to navigate effectively through the new demands facing districts and schools!

The goals and challenges for district leaders are constantly changing. Leadership and governance are only parts of the puzzle when other elements such as the NCLB legislation, budgets, standards and assessment, changing demographics, and public engagement are brought into the picture. Today′s superintendent needs an effective tool to help steer the school district to success.

Drawing on the experiences of nearly 200 superintendents over the past ten years, The Superintendent′s Fieldbook offers guidance that can be referenced again and again. Written for current and future superintendents, principals, school board members and teachers, this valuable guide is divided into nine sections--each offering ideas to implement, practical lessons, exercises, and questions for reflective practice.

The authors identify seven key "commonplaces" of the successful modern superintendent including:

• Leading within a governance structure
• Understanding and addressing standards and assessment
• Considering race, class, and the achievement gap
• Developing your schools′ principals from building managers to leaders of learning
• Exploring collaborations with agencies of government and organizational allies
• Engaging your community to construct a shared vision of the future

Vignettes describing real events and situations will help you connect lessons learned to your own district experiences, and help you and your district thrive in the rapidly changing world of education.

Nelda Cambron-McCabe is a professor, Department of Educational Leadership, Miami University, Ohio. She was an advisory board member and a coordinator of the Danforth Foundation Forum for the American School Superintendent. Her recent publications include co-author with McCarthy and Thomas, Public School Law:  Teachers’ and Students’ Rights 5th ed., (Needham, MA.; Allyn & Bacon, 2004) and co-author with Senge, Lucas, Smith, Dutton, and Kleiner, Schools That Learn (New York:  Doubleday, 2000).

Luvern L. Cunningham, Ed. D., University of Oregon, has served in administrative and teaching roles from K-12 through graduate school over more than four decades. A member of the Danforth Forum advisory board, his specialties are educational leadership, the school superintendency, educational governance, inter-institutional collaboration and inter-professional education and practice. He served in university professorships at Chicago, Minnesota and Ohio State and, for several years, as Dean of the College of Education, Ohio State University.

James Harvey is the Executive Director of the National Superintendents Roundtable and a doctoral student at Seattle Unviersity. He is Senior Fellow at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, University of Washington, and was a member of the Danforth Forum’s advisory board. Earlier he served in the Carter administration and on the staff of the Education and Labor Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. He helped write A Nation at Risk (1983) and, co-authored A Legacy of Learning with David Kearns, former CEO of the Xerox Corporation (Washington: Brookings Press, 2000).

Robert H. Koff directed the Center for Advanced Learning at Washington University, St. Louis. He previously served as Senior Vice President of the Danforth Foundation, Dean of the School of Education, SUNY at Albany, and professor of education at Stanford University. He served on a number of state and national advisory bodies at the invitations of Governor Mario Cuomo and President Carter and provided editorial advice to journals such as the Journal of Educational Psychology.