What makes a school leader one of the best among her/his peers? How can schools and school districts succeed in keeping the best? How can they help enhance the ordinary to become one of the best? This volume seeks and offers answers to questions such as the above. The volume deals with a wide range of educational leadership roles and diverse personal backgrounds of leaders-all within difficult financial times. Cooper and Conley have included here an excellent selection of highly focused but interrelated new scholarly works designed to place high quality school leadership at tomorrow's center stage along with teacher effectiveness and student success.

Naftaly (Tuli) Glasman, reasearch emeritus professor of leadership, University of California, Santa Barbara

Keeping and Improving Today’s School Leaders: Retaining and Sustaining the Best is a compilation of seven research studies focusing on school principals. Bruce Cooper, professor of educational leadership and policy at Fordham University Graduate School of Education in New York City, and Sharon Conley, professor of education in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, edited the book and present information on supporting school leaders.The book offers data-based conclusions on the socialization of assistant principals in a rural school district and characteristics of administrative teams that could be enhanced to support renewal and appreciation of teams. Professional development that is consistent in delivery and yet flexible is needed to sustain and improve principals. Another finding in the design of effective professional development of principals to enable leadership succession is to consider career goals of the principals. In addition, consideration of the teams of leaders in buildings, rather than a singular focus on the lead principal, can increase the efficiency of the group and the satisfaction of those are the team.

AASA Journal of Scholarship & Practice