Essential Lessons for School Leaders - Softcover

Joseph F. Murphy is the Frank W. Mayborn Chair and associate dean at Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University. He has also been a faculty member at the University of Illinois and The Ohio State University, where he was the William Ray Flesher Professor of Education.

In the public schools, he has served as an administrator at the school, district, and state levels, including an appointment as the executive assistant to the chief deputy superintendent of public instruction in California. His most recent appointment was as the founding president of the Ohio Principals Leadership Academy. At the university level, he has served as department chair and associate dean.

He is past vice president of the American Educational Research Association and was the founding chair of the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC). He is co-editor of the AERA Handbook on Educational Administration (1999) and editor of the National Society for the Study of Education (NSSE) yearbook, The Educational Leadership Challenge (2002).

His work is in the area of school improvement, with special emphasis on leadership and policy. He has authored or co-authored 18 books in this area and edited another 12. His most recent authored volumes include Understanding and Assessing the Charter School Movement (2002), Leadership for Literacy: Research-Based Practice, PreK-3 (2003), Connecting Teacher Leadership and School Improvement (2005), Preparing School Leaders: Defining a Research and Action Agenda (2006), and Turning Around Failing Schools: Lessons From the Organizational Sciences.

Joe Murphy′s latest book is another masterful compilation of common sense, research knowledge, and leadership wisdom. This book takes the mystery out of sound and effective educational leadership and communicates its salient precepts in a down-to-earth, practical manner that not only imbues a leader with much-needed guidance, but greatly enhances one’s opportunity for success as well. The book’s organization reflects a clever, relevant, and elegant structure that is enjoyable to follow and hard to put down.

Murphy’s Essential Lessons for School Leaders is one of those unusually uncomplicated, powerful, straightforward, and authentic books that any sensible school administrator looking for what really works in school leadership needs to have on their personal library shelf.

"Essential Lessons for School Leaders includes 140 brief vignettes, each one exploring a differing leadership topic. Emotion is 60% of what attracts people to a product. From the first essay forward, Joe Murphy seizes the reader’s heart and mind with riveting themes."

"Joseph Murphy has distilled his life experiences into this collection of lessons that cover a broad range of topics from details of professional practice to larger philosophical perspectives on school leadership. The lessons are entertaining, thoughtful, and pragmatic enough that rookie school administrators as well as seasoned veterans will find something valuable for their professional growth."