Best Leadership Practices for High-Poverty Schools

Best Leadership Practices for High-Poverty Schools presents both the practice and theory of best leadership practices in high-poverty schools. Authors Linda Lyman and Christine Villani take a unique approach by inviting readers into two high-poverty elementary schools where they will experience, through in-depth case studies, how two extraordinary principals model and practice their beliefs in the ability and worth of all children. Lyman and Villani demonstrate that a successful learning community for children of low-income families is based on the beliefs and attitudes of the school leader and the entire school community. Preparation programs for school principals typically do not provide for study of the complexity of poverty or the leadership practices that contribute to successful learning and achievement for children in high-poverty schools. The concluding questions that the authors pose provide a guide to developing best leadership practices that make a difference to the learning, achievement, and lives of children who live in poverty.This book offers: an insightful overview of research about leadership strategies and beliefs in high-poverty schools, causes and remedies for the achievement gap, evidence of continuing racial and ethnic prejudice, the widespread deficit thinking that limits learning. The authors challenge leaders, teachers, staff members, and others to examine their own attitudes and beliefs and then to commit to creating successful learning communities for all children from low-income families. This book is written as a resource for aspiring and practicing principals, or anyone interested in improving educational opportunities for children from families living in poverty.

Linda L. Lyman is a professor in the Department of Educational Administration and Foundations at Illinois State University. Dr. Lyman was a faculty member at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, for nine years, before joining the faculty at Illinois State University in 2000. Her previous book is titled How Do They Know You Care? The Principal's Challenge. Lyman's career has included positions as a secondary English teacher, regional consultant in staff development and gifted education in Nebraska, and administrative assistant at the Nebraska Department of Education. As a professor her research, presentations, and publications have focused on leadership, with an emphasis on issues of gender, caring, and poverty. At Illinois State University Dr. Lyman teaches primarily in the principalship program. She serves as executive director of Illinois Women Administrators. Christine J. Villani is an associate professor in the Department of Education and Educational Foundations at Southern Connecticut State University. She has a B.S in Speech/Language Pathology, a M.A. in Speech/Language Pathology, a M.A. in Psychology, a Sixth Year Diploma in Administration and Supervision and an Ed.D in Administration, Policy and Urban Education from Fordham University. Villani is a former elementary principal and elementary assistant principal. She has taught and lectured on the topics of leadership, supervision, curriculum development, educational change and school law. Dr. Villani is the author of three earlier books and various articles on the above named topics.