This book examines crises facing schools that are covered in the press as well as those that do not receive as much attention but are just as challenging to school leaders.

Matthew J. Pepper is coordinator of research and data quality for the Metro-Nashville Public Schools and is also on staff at the National Center on Performance Incentives at Peabody College. He has lately worked on district data quality issues and a university-district research partnership. Tim London is a teaching fellow in the School of Education at Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, focusing on educational leadership. He has been a teacher and school administrator in the United States and abroad and has worked with the American Federation of Teachers and a nonprofit foundation that provides educational opportunities to underserved families. Mike Dishman is an associate professor of educational leadership at Kennesaw State University and an attorney whose practice concentrates on the representation of public schools. He is the coauthor of six books on school law and leadership and serves on the editorial board of the Peabody Journal of Education. Jessica Lewis is a research associate at the National Center on Performance Incentives of Peabody College and currently heads the center's evaluations of performance incentive programs in Texas.

Chapter 1 Foreword Chapter 2 Understanding Leadership During Crisis Part 3 External-Unpredictable Chapter 4 "The Birds Were on Fire" Chapter 5 "It was an area that was highly devastated-it . . . received 8 or 9 feet of water." Chapter 6 "A student [came] down and said there's a . . . guy in the . . . English classroom with a gun." Part 7 Internal-Unpredictable Chapter 8 "I thought, 'Oh, God. This is bad.' Then I found out it was much, much worse." Chapter 9 "[H]e kept returning to, 'She cost me a cow!'" Part 10 Internal-Predictable Chapter 11 "I think that we finally have the people that we need to get the job done." Part 12 External-Predictable Chapter 13 "[V]ery typical teaching within a large district - dysfunctional and comfortable." Chapter 14 "There weren't enough affluent white kids to spread out." Chapter 15 "If you want to do good, but you don't want to fight for it, then go raise puppies." Chapter 16 "You're not going to need that money this year, right?" Chapter 17 "You begin to make progress after three years, and, all of a sudden, that is taken away from you." Chapter 18 "It was like a steamroller. We sort of saw things coming and we couldn't prevent . . . it." Chapter 19 Six Principles for Leading Schools during Crisis