[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Public School Challenge
Principals face new challenges as they enter a new millennium of educating America's youth. These challenges are often merely mutations or manifestations of older and existing problems. They may require innovative approaches or new emphasis, as educators attempt to address them in the context of our rapidly expanding society.
Recent events have again focused the nation's attention on violence in U.S. public schools, an issue that has generated public concern and directed research for more than two decades.
Despite long-standing attention to the problem, there is a growing perception that not all public schools are safe places of learning, and media reports highlight specific school based violent acts. More than half of U.S. public schools reported experiencing at least one crime incident in school year 1996-97, and 1 in 10 schools reported at least one serious violent crime during that school year. Ten percent of all public schools experienced one or more serious violent crimes (defined as murder, rape or other type of sexual battery, suicide, physical attack or fight with a weapon or robbery) that were reported to police or other law enforcement officials during the 1996-97 school year.
These conditions will have to be addressed and successfully dealt with by all school administrators in the next century.
The siege of public policy concerning the needs of special education has also created several new areas of concerns for school principals. Twenty-second century principals must be willing to redefine and tailor their roles as they alleviate the disparities that exist in the areas of special education and inclusion. An article published by Allington, McGill-Franzel, and Schick (1997) presented the findings of researchers who interviewed principals of elementary schools where large numbers of children were being retained and/or referred to special education. The researchers wanted to learn why so many children had problems at these schools and what the schools were doing to resolve the problems...........
