Robert O. Slater

Toward a Theory of School Effectiveness and Leadership

ABSTRACT The research on school effectiveness and school improvement lacks theoretical development. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the construction of a theory of school effectiveness and leadership. The contribution made here is in the form of a typology of school effectiveness. In the early stages of theoretical development, typologies are often useful devices for organizing what is known and for focusing attention on important questions and areas for further exploration. Within the typological framework offered here, school effectiveness is supposed to be a function of three major factors: administrative appropriateness, teacher preparedness and student readiness. While parents and community effects are important, they are assumed to be mediated by these three factors. The most ineffective schools are those in which the administration is inappropriate, the teachers are not prepared to teach and the students are not ready to learn. In the most effective schools, the opposite is the case. ...

The Sociology of Leadership and Educational Administration

Three of the most frequently asked questions of leadership are: (1) What is it? (2) Why 0is it important? and (3) What are its conditions? How we answer these three questions of leadership depends in no small degree on our assumptions about the nature of social organization.

Making Democracy Work in Our Schools: From Theory to Reality

Of the various qualities youngsters must have to promote and sustain democracy in America, by far the most important is the capacity to reason. We can give them this capacity if we change the way we do business in the classroom.