A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by understanding, responding to, and influencing the larger political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context.
Sandy is a Lead Teacher in high school. He is politically active in his community, and encourages his students to follow suit. He attempts to make important connections between the curriculum and the life of the town where he lives and teaches.
Recently, there have been a host of military recruiters that have been hanging out around the front office and talking to students about recruitment options. Sandy is fervently anti-war, but recognizes that the recruiters are doing their job and might believe in the opportunities they promote to the students. However, Sandy does not want to see kids fall blindly into the promotion that the recruiters are offering to students. He knows that under the No Child Left Behind legislation, recruiters are to have access to contact information of students if the school wishes to be eligible for federal funding. However, he realized that there was another component of NCLB that had not been implemented: that students and parents have the right to �opt out� of the information release upon their request, and that districts are responsible for informing them of this opportunity. After seeking advice on the matter from his own direct supervisor and receiving none, he crafted a form and distributed it to students to advise them of their rights. After several students returned the forms to the school district office, the local School Board wrote a policy that would uniformly inform high school students (and their parents) of this component of NCLB.
One of the classes that Sandy is responsible for teaching is American Government. Recently, he became part of a collaborative with a professor teaching an Introduction to Political Science at the local state university. In the model that the two designed, high school students, who have largely lived in the area, collaborate with university students, who are largely from other areas of the state. In small groups, the students generate concerns about the community and areas where they would like to see improvement. The students together do research about these issues and connect them to their respective curricula. The issues they have explored include public transit, homelessness, high school dropouts and migrant laborers. The high school students give the university students a window into the local culture, while the university students provide understanding of research and writing techniques to their younger counterparts. At the end of the semester-long project, students design a presentation that they bring to the class and to county authorities, who are invited to the program.
Sandy also is concerned about the manner in which the state�s high school graduation requirements test students in the eleventh grade on material they learned in freshman science and social studies classes as freshmen. Unlike in math and language arts classes, some of this material is addressed for the last time as a ninth-grader, then tested two and a half years later, giving plenty of time for students to lose their knowledge, which is not integral to most occupations that the students may pursue. Unfortunately, these two widely-failed (but required) tests provide a challenge for many students in finishing their diploma. Living in a state that is struggling to provide economic development opportunities, Sandy sees this as one more barrier for individuals, and for the state. He has regularly met and spoken with representatives to the state legislature and the school board about lobbying for adjustments to these graduation requirements.
From local initiatives, to state regulations, to federal law, Sandy works an educational leader from a variety of angles. He is willing to �step out on a limb� when it means that there may be a better opportunity for students. He sees himself as an activist for the full educational experience and refuses to be limited by the status quo.