The Principal′s Guide to Managing School Personnel

by Richard D. Sorenson (editor), Lloyd M. Goldsmith (Editor)

A comprehensive guide to building successful relationships with all school personnel! Ideal for practicing and aspiring principals, this in-depth resource presents policies, procedures, and techniques for managing faculty and support staff and creating effective work environments. The authors provide case studies, strategies, and reflective exercises in each chapter to help administrators evaluate their schools and practices. Based on ISLLC and ELCC standards for school leadership, this book covers:

216 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2008

Reviews

[Jan Raspen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is old and should not be used by colleges and universities today. That being said, it was the required text for one of my graduate classes.
Besides being terribly out-of-date in regard to today's sensibilities and current case law, this book also espouses a patriarchal tone that grated on my last nerve. So. Many. Problematic. Passages. SO MANY.
In case you'd like to read the worst parts of this book, here's a document I created: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S...

[James Kittredge · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book reads like (amiable) corporate leadership horseshit, for the most part. Like most leadership texts, the book's instruction is largely predicated on an abstract, overly simplistic, conceptual model of behavior. In this case, it's the "Personnel Success Model": a Venn Diagram designed to evaluate the intersection of "School Vision," "Personal Vision," and "Personal Skills." It gets gussied up with a lot of hot-button phrases and best practices that appear throughout current educational literature, but ultimately, almost every chapter's take-away boils down to treating people with respect, soliciting and valuing employee feedback, empowering subordinates to become leaders themselves, and giving teachers trust and autonomy to do their jobs.

The book contains a few case studies and some basic, practical prescriptions for best practices. For example, I learned that if one of my teachers is a miserable shithead who complains about his job all the time and is mean to his kids, I might not want to renew his contract. Look, it's fine. The book doles out the information it's supposed to, but I can promise you that no principal in a Title I high school is taking a break from putting out all the myriad fires that spring up during his day to think, "Fuck me, I sure wish I could remember Sorenson's Venn Diagram today! Surely that would be the solution for my 9th graders' functional illiteracy."

I guess I'm glad I read it, but it's not one that's going to hang out on the bookshelves in my office.

[Rachel Maleski · Rating 2 out of 5]

The information in this book is relatively outdated (multiple references to NCLB), has strong undercurrents of unconscious racial bias and homophobia, and clearly manifests patriarchal leadership tropes. I approached this book with a very open mind ready to learn, and I was immediately displeased by the frustrating fictional case studies. While the majority of the legal and policy-based information is still relevant, the way in which it was written was quite off putting for me.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid, defensible guidance. Not exciting or particularly cutting edge, but quality info.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 2009 edition by Sorenson and Goldsmith is good overview on the principal's role for someone new to educational leadership.